The most important tip for taking care of your own pool...
I know that reads like spam.... Trust me, I ain't lying. Every year I hear countless stories of people who spend way more on chemicals than they would just paying a pool guy to do it for them (for chem service of course, full service you're paying somebody to do your manual labor for you as well). Then compound the damage and make matters worse, they sell you a bunch of things that they don't need based on a bunch of analysis that they've come to without ever actually seeing your pool. The least amount of trips you make to the pool store, the better. If that happens to you then the chances are you are NOT doing the thing that I'm alluding to. Listen, it still can... Anytime you put your own little micro environment in your yard you run that risk. It's not a chemical or some item that I'm trying to sell you, I'm not big on sales. In fact it's free. It's free and you don't even need to get it from somebody. You want to know wha