My definition of a commercial pool is any pool other than a backyard pool.
There are two essential areas of swimming pool service operation,
· Physical skills
· Knowledge
Learning a service process; how to change valves for a backwash; how to empty the hair and lint pot etc. doesn’t take too long. Learning how to manage filtration and sanitation takes years.
Everyone is experiencing high staff turnover in the pool industry (like other industries). This results in the difficulty of retaining staff long enough for them to fully understand everything that’s involved in running and managing pool filtration and sanitation.
How can you expect people to pay thousands of dollars to be trained by an RTO when you have no way of knowing if there will be a return on that investment? Yes Frank, there does need to be a return on investment.
To manage this problem every pool needs its own unique set of checks and tests that need to be carried out at pre-defined intervals. This might be stating the obvious but without these records (preferably kept electronically) it is extremely difficult to solve problems that are occurring with a pool.
Knowledge can only come with experience, study and research. Hopefully some of our blogs will assist in this process.
Sanitation, however, is an area where knowledge is essential. It is very important for people involved in pool servicing to make the effort to thoroughly understand pool chemistry. If you do not have the necessary knowledge, then you will have to rely on someone who has that knowledge. That’s poses another difficulty. Do they know what they are talking about?
I do not recommend using software to work out the quantities needed. Managing sanitation also means managing costs and you cannot do that effectively if you do not understand what is going on in the pool.
Some of you will now be thinking that I’m talking rubbish. Fair enough. Yes, it is easy to do a test and thrown in some chemicals to make a desired adjustment and then say that all is well. Good. How long will that last?
It’s not until you work with a web connected chemical controller that you realise how much you don’t know; how much you don’t see as you walk beside a pool. We discovered this 11 years ago after we repaired a badly botched pool upgrade at an independent primary school. We took a giant leap without realising it.
We installed an Aquarius Technologies web connected chemical controller. What an eye opener. We were no longer looking at a pool at a point in time but every minute with graphs showing the history at 30-minute intervals.
Imagine travelling all day on a train with your eyes shut. You are only allowed to open them for one minute three times during the journey. Wouldn’t see much would you. That’s like doing three chemical tests in a day without the benefits of a web connected controller.
Web connected Aquarius Ultima Controllers have been the best teacher I have had in the Swimming Pool Industry. I am still learning thanks to these units. Every pool is different so there is always something different to learn, just when you think you know it all.
With a web connected Ultima controller you can see,
………………the list goes on.
To efficiently service a commercial pool you need to,
Servicing, I’m afraid, isn't just about scooping a few leaves and enjoying the eye candy.
