Prepare for Fall

 Fall in Southern California means back to school, colder days, lots of wind and lots of leaves in your pool. To prepare for the fall you need to make some adjustments on your pool.
Your skimmer, the hole in the pool deck at the edge of your pool, has a basket you can see when you lift the cover. This basket is meant to fill with leaves.  The circulation pump will draw water into the skimmer, bringing in leaves and dust and other debris that is floating on the pool water surface. Between the basket and the pool is the skimmer throat; Inside the throat there should be a weir blade.
A weir blade for a swimming pool is a barrier in the skimmer throat which water flows over. The bottom of the weir is attached to the sides of the skimmer throat underwater, and the top of it floats, or bobs up and down, on the water surface.   A floating weir raises and lowers its level to match the water level in a pool.  When the circulation pump is turned on, the water is drawn over the weir and into the skimmer.  The weir blade performs the skimming action by regulating the amount of water that enters the skimmer. Because it bobs up and down, floating on the water surface, it adjusts to allow only a thin sheet of water to spill over the weir and into the skimmer. This action will cause anything floating on the water surface near the skimmer to be drawn into the skimmer. When the pump is shut off and the suction stops, the weir floats into a vertical position, which prevents debris from floating back into the pool.
It does not take a very high velocity of water to get good skimming action. If you have a variable speed pump, set it to about 100 watts and any debris that gets within about 12 inches of the weir blade will be drawn into the skimmer. One of the advantages of a variable speed pump is that you can schedule it to run 24 hours a day, skimming the pool, yet you are using only 2,400 watts a day. A single speed pump uses 2,400 watts in one hour. So, for the same cost, you can skim your pool for one hour or 24 hours. Obviously skimming 24 hours a day will give you a much cleaner pool.
The next trick is how do you get the debris floating on the pool water surface to move close to the weir blade so the debris can get sucked into the skimmer basket. This is done very easily by aiming the filtered water going back to the pool, through the return fittings, so that the water is pushed in a counter clockwise direction. This will cause the pool water to begin to spin like water down the bathtub drain. This is helped along by the Coriolis effect.
Using a weir blade, a variable speed pump running 24/7, and spinning the pool water will continually clean the pool water surface. This is a perfect set up for summertime for a super clean pool.
When fall comes you need to make two adjustments.  First, remove the weir blade.  If you don’t the skimmer basket will fill up in a few hours and get clogged up and block the water from getting to the pump. This can damage the pump. Second, adjust the return fittings to push the water towards the deep end.  This will cause the debris that lands on the pool water surface to move towards the deep end and gravity will cause it to fall to the bottom of the pool. If adjusted correctly the shallow end of the pool should be clean and clear of debris and you should have a pile of leaves in the deep end.
For more information, call 661-263-7503 or visit www.poolsbyben.com.