Most pools aren’t maintained to a good standard of hygiene. Even established businesses and public pools get it wrong. In a landmark study of over 80,000 public pools, nearly 78.5% had at least one safety or hygiene violation.
As a pool cleaning business, your reputation relies on making your clients’ pools the exceptions to that rule.
What Is a Pool Maintenance Schedule?
A pool maintenance schedule ensures that professional pool cleaners perform tasks at the right time when cleaning a residential or commercial swimming pool.
By performing key maintenance tasks at the right time (such as backwashing your filters), you can avoid future problems with water filters, pumps, and cleanliness leading to algae growth and other issues.
But with a multitude of pools located in various neighborhoods around your area, maintenance schedules can get complicated — especially considering most customers want their pool opened during the same weekend. Your schedule needs to account for customers’ locations, service time windows, unique requirements, and more.
Bad planning and scheduling can get costly — leading to thousands of extra miles on the road and hundreds of extra working hours per year.
How Businesses Should Schedule Pool Maintenance
As a business, you have to consider not just the maintenance tasks you offer, but also the number of your clients, where they are located, and the frequency and schedule of maintenance tasks you’re responsible for.
Here are a few primary strategies to optimize your pool maintenance business’ schedule.
1. Package weekly maintenance tasks for your technicians
These cleaning and maintenance tasks either need specialized equipment or a certain level of expertise to do them well.
Pool skimming: Using a skimmer net to skim the pool for large debris like leaves, bugs, grass, and more.
Scrub pool interior: Brushing the interior of the pool with a pool brush to get rid of dirt.
Pool Vacuuming: Using a heavy-duty manual vacuum to remove algae and debris and prevent algae growth and sedimentation.
Filter Tests: Testing the pressure/flow of your filters to see if they need a backwash, or you need to replace the filter sand or DE (Diatomaceous Earth).
Chemical testing: Testing the water for pH, hardness, alkalinity, and other chemical content and adjusting with chemicals as necessary.
Check and clean pool skimmer: If an inground pool uses an automatic skimmer, you need to clean it and make sure that it’s working as intended.
Pool pump testing: Inspecting valves and testing the flow with a flowmeter to see that the pump is still working smoothly. Make sure that clients’ pumps run at least 8 hours a day.
Emptying baskets & bags: Checking and empty skimmer baskets and pump strainer baskets, as well as strainer bags.
2. Plan ahead and batch maintenance calls based on location - Do not just randomly dispatch your service technicians on a first come, first served basis. Plan ahead and schedule service calls.
3. Tackle the seasonal pileup of pool openings and closings
4. Coordinate pool & spa installations - These jobs are less seasonal and often utilize a separate group of workers than your main pool care technicians.
5. Use smart software tools to help - Manually looking up addresses in Google maps, and trying to figure out the most efficient routes to drive would add hours of management work every single week.
What Happens When Pool Cleaners Don’t Optimize Their Schedules
Anything less than an optimal schedule means that your company isn’t performing to its full potential. Pool contractors often struggle with small margins and lots of competition, so that’s not something you can afford.
Inefficient fuel use.
Fewer clients serviced
Unhappy employees
Poor planning leads to no one being at home and missed opportunities
Inability to effectively deal with cancellations and rush jobs
Hours wasted on manual planning
How Route Planning and Optimized Scheduling Can Help Your Pool Cleaning Business
Without a system, you are stuck planning and scheduling jobs by hand without being able to account and re-configure for any on-the-ground changes or your drivers.
Route planning can help your pool cleaning business in a variety of ways — from getting more maintenance calls done, to saving money on gas to lowering the workload and stress of your employees.
More customers served and increased revenue with the same workforce
Less gas and time used
Better workloads for employees
Easier planning and better customer service
This article originally appeared on optimoroute.com.