McKinney | July 2023

2023 HOME EDITION

ASK A POOL CARE EXPERT

Texas Teal Pool Services oers full-service pool maintenance, including chemical tests and adjustments, netting, vacuuming, and more. Trevor Allen, the CEO and owner of Texas Teal Pool Services, started the company in 2019 and services areas from McKinney to Van Alstyne. WHEN SHOULD HOMEOWNERS START GETTING THEIR POOL READY FOR SUMMER? out of the pool real quickly. But too much of it and then it’ll actually kind of lock up the chlorine from working. [The

does make it a bit better. What [the salt] does is you have a piece of equipment on the pump side of things, and when the raw water runs through that, it turns sodium chloride salt into sodium hypochlorite, which is liquid chlorine. So all saltwater pools are actually chlorine pools, it’s just producing the chlorine from the salt. WHAT’S ONE THING TO AVOID IN POOL MAINTENANCE? There’s a couple forms of chlorine. There’s the granular stu, there’s liquid, and then there’s tablets. Tablets are obviously a slow release. There’s a chemical called cyanuric acid in those tablets, and over prolonged use it keeps building that cyanuric acid up, and what cyanuric acid is it’s stabilizer for chlorine. So too little of it, it burns

any dirt or debris. You just kind of check on the equipment as well and make sure everything is working properly. WHAT IS YOUR BEST POOL MAINTENANCE TIP? Really just empty skimmer baskets, especially when we get towards the fall and spring and everything, you got all the dropping and leaves. Those skimmer baskets will get clogged up, and it’ll aect the ow of the pool, so just emptying those out. I tell most of my customers to try to have a little bit of a chemical reserve as well, just like a little bit of chlorine. So If I’m there on a Wednesday, and you have a huge 40-person pool party on Saturday, or a huge storm rolls through, you can add a little bit of chlorine to give it a boost so you don’t get any algae or just to look better. WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE OR MISCONCEPTION YOU SEE ABOUT POOL MAINTENANCE? So a lot of people’s biggest misconception, every pool guy knows, is the pool is not being cleaned by saltwater. The salt is a little bit better for your skin. Like I have eczema, and it

dosage requirement is] one chlorine tablet per 10,000 gallons of water. You can denitely double those dosage requirements in the summer sometimes even triple if need be, but those are the dosage requirements. WHAT SHOULD HOMEOWNERS LOOK FOR WHEN SELECTING A POOL CARE COMPANY? One thing they should check for is that all their employees are certied. It’s called a certied pool and spa operator, CPO for short. It’s not an expensive thing. It’s basically pool guys can go and take a class for a few days and then test on that, and if you score well, you get certied. It’s really helpful to learn about all that.

I would say all year long but really early, early spring, right after we get those freezes usually and the heat starts coming up. People usually take a little too long and call me like in the middle to late spring and say, “My pool is green, we just opened it.” Like no, you should have opened in February, early March. HOW OFTEN SHOULD A POOL BE MAINTAINED? Every week. Now if your pool is real big, like some commercial pools, meaning community pools and stu like that, those should be maintained about three times a week, but just a residential pool, once a week cuts it unless you have a huge pool. WHAT DOES A REGULAR MAINTENANCE SESSION LOOK LIKE? I test the chemicals, and I add any chemicals that are necessary. I brush the water line, the steps and ledges. Empty out the skimmer baskets. Clean the bag or basket, and then we net the pool for any leaves and vacuum as needed for

Trevor Allen Owner and CEO Texas Teal Pool Services 905 Spring Falls Drive, McKinney 469-999-8205 www.texastealpoolservices.com

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MCKINNEY EDITION • JULY 2023