Don’t buy dad a pair of socks or yet another scarf, buy him something you want for the swimming pool.
Suggestions
Automatic cover
Automatic vacuum cleaner
Vacuum hose
Pole for net/vacuum
Vacuum head
Inflatable lounger
Pool side slide
Diving board
Counter current swim unit
Service contract
Pool side furniture
Please tell me what else you think should be on this list please.
If you are struggling to buy the swimming pool owning man or woman in your life a super duper Christmas present, search no more.
Buy them an automatic plastic slatted cover.
Best of all, buy them a solar plastic slatted automatic cover.
WHY?
Well this year I have delivered water treatment products to a private pool client, who, because of pressure of business, has not had the time to enjoy the swimming pool to full advantage.
You may say, well if they had, the weather was no good any way. Not so. Whilst we have not been able to sit out around our pool much of the summer, we have been able to use it a lot.
Now, this client’s pool is fitted with a solar slatted automatic pool cover. No oil purchased this year, so no boiler on. BUTTTTT!!! The pool has been swimable much of the summer. I have needed to remove the cover to test the water and even last week (IN OCTOBER), I could still have jumped in without it having taken my breath away.
At the top of my WANTS, for my swimming pool, is a Solar slatted automatic thermal cover. I am convinced it will save me a fortune in heating fuel, be it gas, electric or oil.
Call me, email me for a quote. I need all dimensions and some pics would be good.
Please, please, please,
Keep your swimming pool clear and clean or fully protected with a winter debris cover throughout the closed season. If it is not clear, you can not see problems.
It will cost little to dose your pool for the winter, to help keep it clear and clean. This will also save you time and money come the spring and you are getting ready to open your swimming pool.
Ask me preferably oryour local pool shop for the products to help keep your pool clear.
So you’ve put your outdoor swimming pool to bed PROPERLY haven’t you?
Do not come crying to me if your skimmer busts because the pool was too full when it froze over or your filter split and the pump cracked wide open.
Either call me, or your local pool company and get your pool winterised properly.
Clean it, lower it and etc., – unless you have a slatted auto cover. If the latter email my friend Frederic at info@oase.be for advice. Then shock it, add a long term winter algaecide and keep an eye on it EVERY COUPLE OF WEEKS THROUGH THE WINTER.
If like the customer I went to yesterday, you are in a position not to worry financially, then like him, just keep the plant running all winter.
Whilst the filter is drained, why not consider a media change. I say media change as opposed to sand change, because there are so many options and choices of media today, I know not what is in that big round or oval thing in your plan room. Email me, phone me, come and talk to me. I’ll identify your filter media and quote you to replace it with new, or just supply it for you to change it.
How long since you have had it changed?
WHAT ? NEVER ?
It may not be worn out, as it is hard to wear sand out. BUT it could be deeply ingrained with muck and dirt, right down to the laterals in the base of your filter tank – the big round or oval thing in your plant room.
What you will have next season, is a pristine filter, no contamination (once blasted with chlorine) and with good water chemistry a pool full of water as clear as gin.
My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,
We like to think at J W Green Swimming Pools Limited that we can turn your dreams into reality.
Most of you only see the finished swimming pool, but in achieving this, there are many trades, skills and passions involved in getting to the stage, where the hose pipe is turned on and the first gush of water splashes on to the swimming pool floor.
Once you, your architect or swimming pool designer comes up with the almost final drawings and specification, (because some things do change as the project progresses), for the overall project, it is then and only then that we, the swimming pool contractor, brings together all the specialist trades involved in creating the finished product.
We start with a lawn or vegetable patch, mark it out, oversee the excavation, contend with groundwater, running sand, rock, hidden obstacles such as drains, power cables, air raid shelters, in-filled moats, ancient remains of buildings, running springs, sub-artesian pressure, rubbish tips on old manor houses and as in one case on the North Norfolk coast, near to Cromer, were told to watch out for land mines.
In goes the blinding, the tonnes of steel reinforcement, the concrete base and shell, all the inlet and outlet fittings to make the water flow and help to keep your swimming pool water in tip top condition, the backfilling, the ductwork, mosaic fixing. surround flooring, air handling system, control panels, shower and changing room tiling and interior finishes to the pool hall.
We fill, run, test, commission and finally train you on general swimming pool housekeeping. After this, many people go it alone and look after their swimming pool very well. Others with a hectic life, employ staff and we train them how to look after the pool. Some people retain us on a regular basis to valet the pool and carry out the water treatment.
On most average domestic size swimming pools, it should take no more than around one hour a week to keep them in tip top condition. If you are struggling with water quality, then you are probably doing something wrong. If you took over from a previous
Whereas most trades within the building industry stick to one specific skill, such as brick laying or carpentry, your local swimming pool company will have a good knowledge of all associated disciplines and be able to introduce to you, several local trades people to call on, if needs be.
The word on the street is we are in for a major drought year in many parts of the UK.
The swimming pool industry is bracing itself for hosepipe bans, timed water turn off and the like.
My questions to the privatised water companies are;
How much water is currently thought to be lost from outdated water mains
What have you done to increase water storage in relation to the increased population and water demand since the problems experienced in 1976?
Are there any reservoir construction projects under way at present?
Are there any plans for new reservoirs and when will they be completed?
Existing Swimming Pool Owners
Ensure that you open up your swimming pools as early as possible for this season and get them into tip top condition before the hosepipe bans come into force. Get any leaks fixed, no matter how small a water loss you have.
No need to put the heating on, but if your water is crystal clear, properly balanced and treated, it will not cost you too much to keep it right, whilst waiting for the sun to shine.
If the water companies get to the stage where they start turning supplies off, they will be on the look out for any abnormal usage, when it is on.
As the water will be reasonably low temperature, once it is crystal, then until you want to use it, you will get away with minimal filtration every day, so long as you keep testing and dosing.
Once you are into the season, do put a thermal cover on all times the pool is not being used. Use your deep net and skimmer net to remove any leaves or floating debris. This will cut the number of times you will need to empty the skimmer basket, pump strainer and Cyclone if fitted.
New builds on houses and some swimming pool projects are incorporating rain harvesting tanks. With a new swimming pool, the base slab can be extended and a storage tank incorporated at one end of the swimming pool.
For you existing swimming pool owners, I do not have an easy answer. If you have plenty of space, you could look out for a large storage tank and perhaps set it in to the ground and feed it from your rainwater down pipe.
Backwashing should be at least once a week, but if you are forced to cut backwashing to once every two weeks in season, on an outdoor swimming pool, that will be approximately a twenty week season, so on an average outdoor domestic pool you are going to need between 30 and 40 M3 of water.
There is a device on the market called a Cyclone. This is plumbed in to the pre-filter pipework and will cut water usage and take out a lot of debris, leaving your main filter with less to cope with.
Where there is prolonged sunshine, it normally follows that we have thunder storms, so with luck, you will be topping up your pool or storage tank a few time in the season.
To cut down on TDS levels in your pool water, consider Ozone, UV or Ioniser units.
For those of you that have little time or tend to forget to carry out regular testing and dosing, consider a weekly visit by your local swimming pool specialist.
Swimming pools started to become popular and more affordable in the late 50′s. By the 60′s there was a boom in installations and a rapid growth of installers across the UK.
Unit Swimming Pools and Regency Swimming Pools were established in 1959 and by coincidence they were both founded in Wolverhampton. Each finding it’s own specific niche in the market.
Unit concentrated on a high spec concrete and hollow block reinforced shell, whereas Regency concentrated on the GRP – Glass Fibre – Fibre Glass laminated swimming pool.
J W Green Swimming Pools Limited evolved from a plumbing, heating and general building business owned and run by John William Green.
JWG built his first swimming pool in 1963. This was an indoor, reinforced concrete pool in Bridgnorth, designed for a private client by Twentyman Percy and Partners. The pool was built using a Unit Swimming Pool ” Unicrete Kit ”
The then founder of Regency Swimming Pools, George Tranter, had served in WWII in the RAF as an unarmed reconnaissance photographer.
George then set up an advertising agency and several other businesses after the war. In the 50′s he took an interest in a GRP lamination factory, where the ready made swimming pools evolved in several different sizes. They were moulded complete with all the fittings built in, put on the back of a lorry and delivered to your home, ready to be craned into a prepared excavation, backfilled with sand and filled at the same time with water and as is today, you had a pool in a matter of a few weeks.
George went on to sell something like eight thousand or so GRP pools, one of which was sent out on the deck of a cargo ship for a hotel in Malta.
Unit Swimming Pools started life on the old Pendeford airfield, adjacent to Boulton and Pauls.
The airfield was turned into a forerunner of what were to become Industrial Estates.
Unit brought in Anthony panel pools from America, then evolved the Unicrete Swimming Pool Kit.
They sold kits and had several installer teams building fully reinforced concrete pools all across the UK for domestic and commercial clients. A service division followed, with a team of engineers covering the UK in a small fleet of pale blue Morris Minor Estate Cars – the ones with the timber frame cladding.
Over the years Unit Swimming Pools sold or installed over five thousand swimming pools. They were taken over by the John Folkes Hefo Group, sold on to The Provincial Group and then bought by J W Green Swimming Pools in the early nineties.
Buying the Regency and Unit names included of course their customer base, which gave JWG the inroad to pool chemical and add on equipment sales.
Back to Aladdin.
Are you one of the old Unit or Regency pool owners?
Well, some swimming pools have been in service now, for over forty years, whilst many are still very serviceable, they are a little tired. The increasing market for us now, is swimming pool refurbishment. We have sand blasted off old painted surfaces, stripped renders and or Marblite finishes, shallowed pools to a constant depth, cutting water, heating and chemical bills, re-rendered and fixed vitreous mosaic, hand cut key patterns and murals, brought outdoor swimming pools inside with a range of covers and enclosures, upgraded heating systems from condensing boilers to solar panels from air to water heat pumps to geothermal systems. So do not write your old pool off, bring it back to life.
Quotations without obligation.
Whilst most indoor pool owners keep their swimming pool open all year, there are several that close them for two or three months during the winter.
One fairly obvious reason is to save on energy costs.
The second, as explained to me by a client, was that if he kept the pool open all year, there was a loss of interest by the family in using it. Wheras he found if it was closed for a couple of months – in his case December and January , then once reopened, there tended to be more use made of it. On top of which, he said there was so much going on in December, with the build up to Christmas, that there was little time for swimming any way.
So on reopening your indoor pool.
Overfill by a good few inches and give the filter at least a five minute backwash.
If you are in a hard water area, chances are there may be a build up of calcium in your filter, which can cause the silica media to bind together into lumps. This is obviously detrimental to good filtration and water clarity.
Use a specialist product to dissolve this calcium and it will pay dividends.
Sanitise the system with a shock dose – preferably using a shock chlorine to raise the level and run the system for at least twenty four hours to help to sanitise the pipework, the pool it self and the general flow and return fittings in the plant. After shock dosing, ensure the chlorine level drops below 5ppm before starting to swim.
Biofilms can build up in filters and pipework, so it is advisable to use a specialist product to remove this potential hazard from your system. This is true for spas and hot tubs, as much as for swimming pools, especially in the pipework.
Get your boiler serviced by a fully qualified engineer every year. Ideally one month before you intend to start swimming. No use waiting until the sun shines or you have planned a swimming party, to find the boiler will not fire up.
If you have a TEC (Total Environmental Control), system with one unit serving the pool and pool room air, then this also requires regular servicing and will at the very minimum require the filters to be changed at least once a year.
Test regularly for your correct sanitiser levels, ensure the pH level is correct and always read the instructions on the containers. If in doubt ASK your pool shop for advice.
Many pool shops, like us, will have an in house water testing facility, to enable you to have a comprehensive test and computer print out on the state of your pool or spa water. The print out from the information fed into the computer will then tell you what products and amounts are needed to give you perfect water balance.
Good water management is paramount to you and your family’s health.
My advice is to never swim alone, even if the other person is only sitting in the same room or round the swimming pool and in site of the swimmer.
To all our customers and suppliers merry Christmas and a happy new year. After a great break and a good knees up over the festive season we’re back and ready for the new one. We hope Santa got everything you wanted.
Best wishes and good tidings, from all the team at JWGSwimming.co.uk
Opening your swimming pool is a pretty simple process. If you winterised your pool before closing, it should be easy … removing the winter cover, balancing the pH and chlorine levels, cleaning your summer cover and relocating the bolts in your roller .
If you didn’t winterise your pool then the chances are it may have gone green with algae.
Don’t panic, and don’t waste chlorine granules trying to kill the algae, you will need to shock dose your pool with the appropriate amount of liquid sodium hypochlorite. This is a much more concentrated, unstabilized form of chlorine that will kill the algae within a day or so. (When you’ve add the sodium hypochlorite run your pump for 6-12hr then turn it off.(NO SWIMMING / BATHING until the chlorine level has dropped to a maximum of 5ppm)
Once the algae is dead you will need to see if it has sunk to the floor of the pool, it should now look brown and cover the floor of the pool.
If the algae is still suspended in the water you’ll need to treat with a flocculant to drop the algae to the bottom of the pool.
The algae should then be vacuumed to waste.
The particles are so fine your filter will not remove them ensure you vacuum to waste.
Vacuum the floor slowly so you don’t disturb the algae too much. Once you’ve removed as much algae as you can. Switch back from ‘waste’ to ‘backwash’, run backwash cycle until the water coming out is clear. Then switch to ‘Rinse’, run the pump for 30 seconds. Switch back to filtration setting. This is a good time to clean your tile band, whilst the water level is lower than normal. Use a good quality tile and liner cleaning paste. Now top up your pool until the level is halfway up the skimmer mouth.
Net excess debris from the surface of the pool and ensure the skimmer pots are empty.
If the water is still a little milky add a sparkle tab as required to the skimmer pot.
Test & balance your pH & chlorine before swimming.
We recommend bringing a sample of water to our lab for further analysis. Provided for free if you subscribe to our annual water care service. (Please call/contact us for more information.)
NB.
STOP THE PUMP EVERY TIME YOU CHANGE A SETTING ON THE MULTIPORT VALVE … if you don’t you risk damaging the multi-port valve & seal.
Another good tip is to always turn the multi-port valve in one direction, this will ensure your multi-port valve & seal last as long as possible.
ALWAYS READ THE LABEL AND FOLLOW SPECIFIC PRODUCT INSTRUCTIONS.
We take no responsibility for damage to property/equipment and or to persons incurred by following this guide.
