It is a beautiful, sunny day here, early spring in Virginia. You are joining our last episode of our pool orientation series, How To Vacuum and Clean Your Pool.
If this is the first episode you’ve seen out of the series, recommend that you go back,
check out the other episodes because we’re going to refer to a lot of the terminology,
a lot of things from those previous videos in today’s article.
Without further ado, let’s go learn how to vacuum and clean your pool. Well that was a really fun intro. It’s not that often that I drive a golf cart through the lobby of our office.
Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?
With your pool purchase, right, part of the base package is to get all the essentials
you need to clean your pool on a daily basis.
You are going to get a brush, which will be used to scrub the sidewalls of your pool,
particularly during the opening and closing process.
You want to make sure that all the debris that’s left over from the pool being stored
over the winter gets brushed loose.
You may have algae at some point.
Remember that does not tend to happen as much with a fiberglass pool and when it does, it is much easier to get off and clean up.
You just take this brush and knock it loose.
The second thing you’re gonna get is the skimmer net; self-explanatory. You’re gonna use this to skim the debris off the top of your pool.
You’re gonna use this a lot here at the beginning of the season because the trees, the flowers, things are beginning to bloom and as those petals fall off the trees and things like that, it’s all going to blow into your pool.
Your skimmer’s not gonna be able to keep up here in early spring, so make sure you use
your skimmer often. You’re gonna get a vacuum head, which this is gonna be the tool of choice for today.
It’s got a set of wheels.
It’s weighted, so it stays down at the bottom and will connect directly to a hose and into
your skimmer, which we’ll show you here shortly.
Speaking of the hose, you will get a hose to use and a telescopic pole. All of these devices, the skimmer, the brush, and the vacuum head, all attach to the end
of the telescopic pole, which can extend in length so that you can reach all nooks and
crannies of your brand new fiberglass pool.
It’s really exciting that you’re in this phase. You have purchased your pool.
It’s installed. You’re now learning to use it. This is just tremendous.
We’re excited for you. Super excited. Okay.
So now that we’ve gone over this quick components, let’s head over to the pool and show you how to assemble them, how to hook up your vacuum and begin the vacuuming process. Let’s go.
Alright, so we’re over here at the skimmer. Now I mention this is where you will connect your vacuum so that you can get the suction aspect of the vacuum to function properly.
We do not include main drains or any other suction element to the pool, so it’s inside your skimmer.
So a couple of things here. We already have the vacuum head attached to the telescopic pole. It just snaps on very easily, and I like to stretch out the hose on the pool deck to make sure that all of the coil and all of the kinks are out of it.
It’s completely straight. It’s far easier to manage that way than trying to manage a pile of spaghetti that’s just come right of wherever you store the hose. You’ll notice on either end of your hose, one end of the hose will swivel.Okay?
The connection point will swivel. The other end will not. The swivel end is what you want to connect to your vacuum head and so we’re gonna go ahead and connect that.
Just like that.
That allows the vacuum head to pivot and twist as you need it to in the bottom of your pool while you’re vacuuming.
The next thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna pull the skimmer basket out and then we’re
going to prime the hose.
The reason we want to prime the hose is remember in a previous video, we talked about air is not good, or we talked about air not being good for your filtration system because that pump operates on being full of water.
We don’t ever want to introduce air to that. And although pumps today, the pumps of today, are designed to self-prime, so it probably could correct itself very easily, it’s just a good idea to keep as much water in the system and not introduce air when possible.
So we’re going to pull the skimmer basket out and it’s probably in the locked position.
So we’re just gonna lift that up. There’s not a lot of debris in this but you can see, there are a lot of petals and things from the trees already, so you’re gonna have to clean your pool far more often here in early spring than once the summer season gets going.
Alright, so by priming the hose, what do I mean by this? Well, we’ve gotta fill this hose with water before we connect it to the skimmer. So it’s connected to the vacuum head,
we’re gonna place this down into the water, and then we’re going to slowly feed the hose into the pool by shoving it straight downward and what is happening is the water is taking up where air was already into the hose.
So the air is being pushed out the other end. The hose is filling with water.
Because I’ve stretched the hose out on the pool deck, everything is neat, orderly.
There are no giant knots. Now you can tell that the hose is filling with water because the majority of it is not floating.
Much of the hose is down into the main tank of the pool. So we know we’re getting more air out of the hose as we go. So we’re starting to see some water come out.
That means we have pushed everything out. We’re gonna dump this in and shove it through the skimmer port.
That’s the last little bit of air coming out of the hose. Shove it through the skimmer line, down into the suction side of the skimmer. All right, so our vacuum is now connected.
Now as you begin to learn to vacuum your pool yourself, you’re going to make a few mistakes early on.
Everybody does. It’s no big deal. But here’s what to look out for. Number one. When you’re putting the hose in, it’s very easy to have the handle, the vacuum handle, slide off the edge of the pool deck and into the pool.
So to prevent this, loosen the handle nut, lengthen the telescopic pole, tighten it back
down, and then your vacuum pole won’t slide into the pool. Mistake number two that’s often made is to take the vacuum hose and go over top of the pool deck and down into the skimmer that way.
That introduces air into the hose and subsequently into your system.
So to prevent more air in your pump than necessary, keep the hose in the water at all times and enter your skimmer through the skimmer plate in the sidewall of your pool.
The third mistake that’s easy to make when learning to vacuum your pool is to bring the
vacuum head up out of the water.
Now, it’s not an easy mistake to make when you’re vacuuming the main tank of your pool, or the deeper areas, but if you have a tanning ledge or you want or need to vacuum your steps, benches or ledges, it’s very easy for that vacuum head to come up out of the water, temporarily, before getting to those spots.
Just take your time and make sure you keep the vacuum head submerged under water at all times. Again, this prevents air from being introduced into the system.
Now that we’re done vacuuming, the first thing I need to do is disconnect the hose from the skimmer.
I simply pull the hose out in reverse order from which I put it in the pool. So I want to get the vacuum head to a comfortable spot or you could even pull it out and then
go ahead and drag the hose all the way out on the pool deck.
We’re gonna place the skimmer basket back in place, get all the debris out,
cover the basket back up and then finish pulling up the hose.
What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna keep the hose, keep a section of it raised at all times
and work our way down the hose.
You can see that it is removing all of the water from the hose which makes it much, much easier to carry and store away.
So how do you organize the vacuum hose for your pool?
Well you want to get it into some nice coils so it’s easy to carry, so that it’s easy to
store away.
And there’s a little trick to it.
So you’re gonna start with one coil.
And every coil you make after that, you’re gonna put a little twist into the hose.
If you’re right handed, as I am, you’re gonna twist the hose, or if you’re coiling it counterclockwise, right?
I just tend to work with my right hand.
You’re gonna twist the hose a little bit into a counterclockwise direction and if you coil
in the other direction, twist in the other direction.
This keeps the hose nice and organized, easy to work with, easy to maintain, and you’re
good to go.
Alright.
We’re gonna put this away and then put the vacuum head and pole away.
Alright, so I mentioned there may be some tough spots in the bottom of your pool that
don’t get picked up with vacuum or during that process.
So after you pull the vacuum out, simply remove it from the end of your pole, snap the brush on; of course yours won’t have this brand new tag on it.
Knock those spots loose and again your filtration system will be able to pick them up and get that cleaned out of your pool.
It may be helpful, you may find that it is helpful, to have more than one telescopic
pole for your pool. Often times homeowners like to keep one for the skimmer net and then a second one for the brush and the vacuum.
Maybe just more convenient for you. Maybe one is enough and you simply don’t mind, but just food for thought.
Alright, we’re gonna head over to the strainer pot now, which is attached to the pump.
We’re gonna make sure that all the debris we picked up during the vacuuming process,
it’s cleaned out of its drainer pot and put the system back into normal operation.
Let’s go.
Now that you’ve vacuumed your pool, just remember as we discussed in a previous video, that all of the debris is going to be captured in the strainer pot.
So that strainer pot needs to be cleaned out after you vacuum or at least checked.
Just as a quick refresher on how to clean the strainer pot, first thing you need to
do is shut off your pump.
You then need to isolate the strainer pot and the pump by shutting the valves off before
and after.
Place the “off” tab of the valve towards the strainer pot on both sides.
Then pop the lid loose, remove the basket, empty the debris, and place the basket back
in place and then secure the lid.
Don’t forget to put the valves back in the normal operating position before turning your
pump back on.
Alright. So now you know how to vacuum your pool, you know how to assemble the vacuum, get all the parts needed.
You know to get the water into the hose to get the air out, so that you don’t introduce
air into your system and lose prime and of course, we had a refresher, we went over again
how to clean out your strainer pot.
One of the more common questions about vacuuming your pool is, what speed should the pump be on?
Well in most cases, normal operating conditions, or the normal operating speed of your pump will suffice, but you may find it necessary to increase the speed at which you could simply move your pump to AUX 2, which is that higher speed, the same one you would press to check the pressure of your filter system, to know when that needs to be cleaned.
Again, another thing we mentioned in a previous article. Go back and check out all those article. Keep this playlist handy in your browser so that you can go back and review this information at all times.
We’ll see you guys in another article.
