A pool should be clean. But, wasted time cleaning is still wasted time. Time that could be spent more productively and on more important things – like family. So, why waste time vacuuming and raking your pool, when a properly timed “skim” could eliminate much of it.
Minimize vacuuming and raking your swimming pool floor by skimming the surface more regularly … just a few minutes could save half an hour or more … seriously. What could you do with that extra time?
Save even more time with our “magic dish soap hack” (details in a moment).
Just a few minutes skimming the surface of your pool can easily save 3-5 times the effort vacuuming and/or raking the bottom later, by keeping the debris from ever reaching the bottom in the first place.
Consider how much “wasted” time you spend preparing to vacuum your pool: swapping your rake or skimmer head for the vacuum head, getting out the hose, priming the hose, hooking it up to your vacuum head. And then, when you’re done vacuuming, you’ve got to reverse the process.
At the very least, consider raking your pool bottom rather than vacuuming, in many cases. If you get good at raking with a pro-grade tool like a deep bag ProTuff pool rake, you can get the bottom of the pool 90-95% as clean in less than half the time of vacuuming. Then, just pull out the vacuum once in awhile as a “finisher”.
But, obviously, if you can skim much of that debris from the pool surface, before it ever sinks to the bottom of the pool, you can save a massive amount of time. Skimming is considerably easier than raking or vacuuming.
Of course, you won’t eliminate ALL need to vacuum or rake the pool floor, but you can certainly minimize it. Every minute saved is another minute to spend on more important and/or more enjoyable activities. How many minutes could you save over the course of a season?
The Magic “Dish Soap Hack”
DO NOT underestimate the power of this hack. Like magic in a bottle.
Send us a video. We’d love to see you using it. Better yet, video tape your kids faces when they see you do it. It’ll be priceless.
In a small squeeze or spray bottle (a squirt gun will likely work too), mix water and Dawn dish soap at about a 10:1 water to soap ratio (you don’t have to be exact, and different brands or concentrations might need more or less soap).
Put a squirt or two of your mix out in the middle of your pool and watch the magic happen.
The minimal amount of soap that you squirt out there will immediately release the surface tension of the water, and will “push” all the surface debris out to the edges where you can quickly and easily skim it off.
Even better, this small amount of soap will also break down greases and oils left behind from swimmers AND help clump the smaller debris together, making it even easier to skim.
Moreover, the amount of soap is so minimal, you won’t cause any issues with your pool filter, pump or anything. No worries.
Alternative Application Methods
You could also try putting the above soap/water mixture into one of those bath soap foaming pumps. Pump out a handful of foam, place it on your flat skimmer or in your rake net and place it out into the center of the pool.
Or, put some dawn soap into a wet sponge, squeeze it a few times to foam it up a bit and then toss it into the center of the pool and see how you do.
The sponge will float, so you’ll be able to skim it out of the pool once you’ve gotten all the other debris out.
Pool Rakes Skim Faster Than Flat Skimmers
If you typically end up with large amounts of surface debris and/or insects, using a good quality pool RAKE to do your surface skimming can also speed the process quite a bit vs emptying your flat skimmer multiple times throughout the process, and this pairs with the “dish soap hack” perfectly.
And, of course, if you don’t catch the debris before it sinks to the bottom, a quality pool rake used properly can really speed the process of cleaning debris from the bottom of your pool vs vacuuming (we’ll discuss that in a later email tip).