Most companies will not tell you what they actually do. Here is ours, in full: how we set your pump schedule, why your pH target changes with the weather, and what we are doing at your pool each month.
A pool is not a recipe you run the same way all year. The right pump schedule and the right water balance in January are not the right ones in July, and a company that treats them the same is guessing.
We balance water to the LSI, the Langelier Saturation Index. It is the water balance standard used by the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance, the National Plasterers Council, and the major chemical manufacturers, and it combines pH, water temperature, calcium hardness, total alkalinity, cyanuric acid, and total dissolved solids into a single number. Zero is perfect balance. Below that, water is aggressive and pulls calcium out of your plaster, grout, and equipment. Above it, calcium falls out of solution and becomes scale on your tile and inside your salt cell.
The reason this matters to you: water temperature moves the LSI. Calcium is more soluble in cold water. So as your pool heats up through the summer, the same pH that was perfect in April starts pushing your water toward scaling. That is why our pH target moves with the season instead of sitting on one number all year. It is also the honest answer to why St. George pools get white flakes, which we wrote about here.
Pump schedule: 10 to 12 hours, running at night. This is the one that surprises people. In winter we deliberately run your pump through the coldest hours of the night, because moving water is your first line of defense against a freeze. Freeze protection stays on, and the run window covers the hours when the damage would happen.
Water balance: pH comes up. Cold water lowers the LSI, which means water that was perfectly balanced in August turns mildly aggressive in January if you leave the pH where it was. Left alone, that is what quietly eats at plaster and grout over a winter. So the pools we hold around 7.3 in summer come up to roughly 7.6, and the ones at 7.5 come up into the 7.6 to 7.8 range.
What else changes: lower water temperature means the pool needs less chlorine, and debris load shifts from leaves to wind-blown dust. We are watching equipment and freeze protection more than we are chasing algae.
This is a real procedure, not a gradual drift, and it is the visit where a lot of pools quietly go wrong at other companies.
Pump schedule: 12 hours, daytime. Our standard summer window is roughly 8am to 8pm, or 9am to 8pm. Twelve clean hours in the daytime is the baseline we like, and then we increase from there based on what your pool actually needs.
The standing summer check: if 12 hours is not holding your water, we extend the run time before we start chasing it with chemicals. A pool that is not circulating enough cannot be fixed with a bigger dose of anything, and adding chemicals to solve a circulation problem is how you end up paying for both.
Water balance: pH rides lower. Hot water pushes the LSI up, so the summer target band on most of our pools is roughly 7.3 to 7.5. On a salt pool this takes more attention, not less, because the salt cell drives pH upward on its own as a side effect of making chlorine. Riding a salt pool a little lower on the alkalinity side is part of keeping that drift manageable.
What else changes: heat, sun, and swimmer load all burn chlorine faster, and evaporation plus top-off water concentrates calcium all summer long. That combination is exactly what produces scale on a salt cell by August, which is why summer is when cell inspection earns its keep.
The fall changeover is spring's procedure in reverse, and the deadline is set by the weather rather than by us. Run times come back toward the overnight window, freeze protection is verified pool by pool, and pH targets are allowed to come back up as the water cools. The pools that need the most attention here are the ones on a bare time clock with no automation and therefore no freeze protection at all, and those get identified before the first cold night rather than after.
Every visit includes the fundamentals: test and balance the water, brush, skim and net, empty baskets, check the equipment is running right, and tell you honestly if something is heading toward a problem. On top of that baseline, the season sets the priority.
Our standard is to be the best pool company in this city, and eventually the best anywhere. You cannot claim that, you have to show it. So we would rather hand you the actual method and let you hold us to it than hide behind a service list. If your current company cannot tell you why your pump runs when it does, or why your pH target should not be the same in July as in January, that is worth asking about.