Seasonal guide
Getting your pool ready for summer
A North Texas opening checklist, in the order that actually works. We have marked which jobs are worth doing yourself, because most of them are.
What a North Texas summer actually does to a pool
Two things make summer here different from summer in most of the country. The first is how long it lasts: the pool is under real heat load from May into September, not for six weeks. The second is evaporation. In peak heat a pool in full sun can lose a quarter to half an inch a day to the air alone, which means chemistry is constantly being diluted by the make-up water replacing it.
That is why a pool that was fine in April drifts in July on the same routine. It is not that anything broke. The pool is simply working harder, and so is everything bolted to it.
The checklist
In order. The order matters more than people expect, particularly the first item and the chemistry one.
- 01
Clear the cover and the deck first
Everything on the cover ends up in the pool if you pull it in the wrong order. Get the debris and standing water off before anything else, or you start the season fighting a problem you created in ten minutes.
Do it yourself - 02
Bring the water level back up
It should sit about halfway up the skimmer opening. Too low and the pump pulls air, which is hard on the seals and the motor. Too high and the skimmer stops skimming.
Do it yourself - 03
Run the pump, then listen to it
A pump that screeches, rattles or trips the breaker is telling you about a bearing or a seal. That is far cheaper to deal with in April than in July when it fails on the hottest weekend of the year.
Doable, ask if unsure - 04
Check filter pressure against its clean reading
Note the pressure with a clean filter. When it climbs about 8 to 10 psi above that, it needs backwashing or cleaning. Without the baseline the gauge tells you nothing.
Doable, ask if unsure - 05
Balance before you shock, not after
Shocking a pool whose pH is out of range mostly wastes the chemical. Get pH and alkalinity right first, then sanitise. In this heat the order genuinely matters.
Doable, ask if unsure - 06
Look hard at the waterline tile and the grout
A Texas winter is mild but it still moves things. Loose or hollow-sounding tile and crumbling grout are worth catching before the summer bather load works on them.
Worth a professional - 07
Check the heater and the automation before you need them
Nobody finds out the heater is dead until the first cool evening in October. Fire it once in spring so a failure is a scheduled repair rather than an emergency.
Worth a professional - 08
Watch the water level for a week
This is the one most people skip, and it is the one that saves the most money. See the section below.
Do it yourself
The one worth doing properly: is it evaporation, or a leak?
Spring is when a leak that started over winter finally becomes obvious, because the pool is running and being watched again. It is also the easiest time of year to mistake a leak for normal summer evaporation, and to spend a season topping up.
The test costs nothing. Put a bucket of pool water on a step so the level inside the bucket matches the level outside it. Leave it 24 hours with the pump running as normal. Both should drop by the same amount, because both are losing water to the same air. If the pool dropped noticeably more than the bucket, the water is going somewhere other than the sky.
If the bucket and the pool match, you do not have a leak and you do not need us for this. That is a real answer, and it is free.
Stuck on any of it?
Two items on that list are the ones people call us about. If the bucket test says the pool is losing water, that is leak detection and guessing at it gets expensive. If the equipment will not come back up after a winter off, that is a repair, and most of what we fix was installed by somebody else.
Tell us what the pool is doing and we will tell you whether it needs attention now or whether it can wait.
Serving Richardson and northeast Dallas. Leak detection reaches about 70miles.
Frequently asked questions
When should I open a pool in the Dallas area?
Most people open far later than they need to. Once daytime temperatures are consistently in the seventies the water starts warming and algae starts growing whether the pool is open or not, so opening early is usually easier than opening late. A pool that sat covered through a warm spring is the hardest kind to bring back.
How much water loss is normal in a Texas summer?
Evaporation alone can take a quarter of an inch to half an inch a day in peak heat, and more if the pool is in full sun with a lot of wind. Losing that much is normal. Losing an inch or more a day is not, and that is worth investigating.
Can I do all of this myself?
Most of it, yes, and the list above says which parts. The jobs worth handing over are the ones where a wrong call gets expensive: heater and automation faults, tile and grout, and anything where the pump is behaving oddly. We would rather tell you to do the easy half yourself than sell you a package you did not need.
My pool went green over winter. Is that a bigger job?
Usually less dramatic than it looks. A green pool is a filtration and chemistry problem, not a disaster, and most recover in a few days. See our green pool cleanup page for what is actually involved.
Do you take over pools that another company was servicing?
Yes, and spring is when most of those calls come. We will tell you where the pool actually is rather than pretending it is fine.