Open a Pool - Miscellaneous Items

Jonathan Broga: Hi! I am Jonathan Broga with Potomac Pool Service and I am showing you how to open a pool for the season. Right now, we are up with the equipment pad and we are going to look at a few things here that you may or may not have at your pool. The first thing we are going to do, we will take a look at the heater. All heaters will have two valves, an external value that will need to be turned on and then an internal valve that's on, whats call the Gas Valve within the heater. I can't go into the specifics of lighting each different type and brand of heater but you will need to have both of these valves open if you intend to light it yourself. Please make sure you read and understand the owners manual for your heater before attempting to light it. If you do choose to light your own heater, you would be well-advised to inspect it first. It can make a comfortable habitat for critters in the off-season that build nest on top of the heat exchanger, spiders get inside the tubes. You will want to take a look at it and make sure its clear of debris. Same goes for the top. All of this can be disassembled with a common screwdriver. If you do light it and you see smoke thats dark of any color, its not just steam. Then turn it off immediately and call a qualified professional to come take a look at your heater.

If your pool happens to have a Polaris, now is a good time to put it in. When you are putting it in for the season, give it a quick brief inspection to make sure that its ready to go and see if it needs anything. This particular Polaris attaches with a quick fitting connect on the top. Yours may have a plastic nut that threads on to the feed hose. Check for cracks, splits, lose nuts along the hose as you go. They may have loosened over winter.

Once you have checked those, take a look at the tail before you put it in. It has something called wear rings on it, that are meant to wear out rather than the tail wearing out. This particular one is missing a few rings. I am going to use it for today but probably by tomorrow, I will have new rings on it. I would rather not purchase a whole new tail. Check your bag, these tend to wear out, dry rot after a while. Check and make sure that its still serviceable. Finally, check your filter before you put the hose into the valve. This has an in-line filter. Yours may have the filter within this valve fitting. Either way, check to make sure that it's free of debris and doesn't have any holes.

I have threaded the fitting into the side of the pool. Now I am going to put the UWF, Universal Wall Fitting, into the side. It pushes in and rotates into a detent and then will be secure. If yours pops-up, check your fitting on the valve. There are two small tabs that catch this. They can easily break. So those are some tips for hooking up your Polaris. If you have a similar product like a Rayvak or another manufacturers unit, it should be similar along the same lines. Lastly, now that we have got the pool open, running, clean, if you have an automation system, this is the time to set it up. Some pools have mechanical timers, some have full automation where everything can be controlled from a pad in the kitchen or a pad at the filter equipment or a wireless pad, like this one.

Every system is a little different, so I can't specifically tell you what to do to program your controller, except to tell you it would be a good time to program it. I would program it to run 24X7 for at least the first week. Get a lot of turn overs of the water and let it get really clean backwashing it as necessary. So that's it. Just keep an eye on your chemicals, on your filter system, on your skimmers and you should be set to have a safe, fun, enjoyable summer. Thank you for watching.