Phoenix water guide

Why Valley pools fight the water, and how to win.

Hard water, 115-degree sun and monsoon dust make Phoenix pools different from anywhere else. Here’s what’s happening in yours, in plain words.

Try the water lab
Hard water and white crust
When to drain and refill
Summer chlorine
Monsoon cleanups

White calcium crust along cobalt pool tile

Water lab

Drag the readings. Watch the pool.

These are the three numbers your tech checks every week. Move them and see what each one does to the water.

pH7.5

6.8 acidic8.2 basic

Free chlorine (ppm)3.0

Calcium hardness (ppm)350

1001,000

Your tech’s targets: pH 7.4 to 7.6, chlorine 2 to 4 (a little higher in July), calcium 200 to 400.

pH: balancedChlorine: rightCalcium: fine

This is a happy pool. Clear water, comfortable on the eyes, and nothing building up on the tile.

The test vial on the right is phenol red, the dye in most pH tests. At 7.5 it turns the same orange-red as our main button.

Hard water

Where the white crust comes from.

Valley tap water carries a lot of dissolved calcium. Up to a quarter inch of your pool evaporates on a summer day, the water leaves and the calcium stays. It settles where the water meets the tile.

The same tile after bead blasting, clean and glossy

BeforeAfter bead blasting

Slow it

Brush every week

Calcium grips rough spots first. Weekly brushing keeps the tile line smooth so it has less to hold.

Balance it

Keep pH from creeping up

High pH pushes calcium out of the water and onto your tile. Holding 7.4 to 7.6 helps more than anything else.

Remove it

Bead blast the tile

Once it’s crusted on, fine glass beads take it off without hurting the tile. From $395, no draining needed.

Old water

When to drain and refill.

Every gallon you top off adds more minerals. After three to five years, the water is so full of dissolved solids (TDS) that chemicals stop working well.

Drain between October and April, never in summer
Expect 15,000 to 25,000 gallons, about $50 to $120 of water
We drain to your sewer cleanout, never the street
An acid wash while it’s empty brings stained plaster back

See drain and acid wash

An empty pool with fresh white plaster after an acid wash

2 daysHow long the July sun can take to burn off a week of chlorine in an unprotected pool.

Summer chlorine

Why pools turn green in July.

Sunlight breaks chlorine down fast. Stabilizer (CYA) works like sunscreen for it, but too much makes chlorine sluggish.

That’s why your tech checks stabilizer before summer and runs chlorine a little higher from June to September. It’s also why Every Other Week service switches to weekly for those months.

Already green? Start here