Daily maintenance of your above ground pool need not be an onerous job. We’ll break the maintenance tasks down into summer maintenance and winter maintenance. Obviously you’re going to be putting a bit more work into the upkeep of the pool in summer seeing as that’s when it’s going to be more heavily used (unless you’ve got yourself a pool heater), so we’ll start off by looking at that.
Summer Maintenance
The simplest maintenance job will be done for you automatically, that is, filtering your pool. Your job will be to clean out the skimmer box which catches all of the leaves, flowers, bugs, sticks and other stray items caught on the surface of the pool before being sucked in. It’s a good idea to check and clear the skimmer box every couple of days to ensure that your filter runs at its most efficient.
If it has been particularly windy and there are a lot of trees surrounding the pool area the chances are there’s going to be more than the usual amount of debris in the water. A quick 10 minute skim with your pole skimmer will clear the pool of most of the rubbish and will save you clearing it from the skimmer box later on.
Adding chlorine is a daily task in summer, particularly if the pool’s been used reasonably heavily. The recommended dosage will be found on the side of your chlorine container but as a rough guide you’ll need to add around 35 grams / 10,000 litres. And you’ll be using granulated chlorine in an above ground pool – not liquid. See the section on pool chemicals.
If you haven’t bought yourself an automated cleaning device you will be required to vacuum your pool around once a week to pick up any leaves or grit that has settled on the bottom. Depending on the size of the pool this should only be a half hour job and, in my experience, if you do it first thing in the morning it is quite a relaxing job.
Winter Maintenance
To put your pool to bed for the winter you need to start off with a super-chlorination. This will consist of adding around 7 times the usual amount of chlorine to the pool to keep it clear for a few weeks at a time. It would also be more than worthwhile to buy yourself a pool blanket to cover the pool with, otherwise you’re going to be looking at a pool that will slowly fill up with leaves and other stuff. This will also save on the twice daily filtering that you would do in summer although the occasional filter is advisable in the colder months just to get the water turning over.
Pool Maintenance
