A hot tub can be working and still not be ready for winter. It reaches 102 degrees. The jets come on. The water looks clear. Nothing is leaking badly enough to leave a puddle. So everything must be fine, right? Not necessarily. October is a useful time to pay attention ...

You turn on the hot tub, settle into your usual seat, and immediately notice something is different. The jets are running, but they don't have the same force they used to. Maybe every jet feels weaker. Maybe only one side of the spa is affected. Or perhaps the jets start ...

The water in your hot tub can look perfectly clear and still be telling you it's time for a change. Maybe you're adding sanitizer more often. Maybe the water develops foam every time the jets turn on. Maybe balancing the chemistry has become a weekly argument with the test strip: ...

You set your hot tub to 102 degrees. A few hours later, you check the display expecting it to be ready—and the water is still several degrees short. Maybe you never paid much attention to heating time during summer. Now that the evenings are getting colder, though, the difference is ...

Closing a pool can look deceptively simple. Clean the water, add whatever closing products you normally use, shut down the equipment, put on the cover, and forget about it until spring. The problem is that your pool doesn't stop changing just because you can't see it. Water chemistry still matters ...

Clear water can be reassuring. The pump is running. The water looks good. Nothing is leaking across the equipment pad. After a full summer of swimming, it is easy to look at the pool in September and conclude that everything made it through the season just fine. Maybe it did ...

September creates an awkward question for pool owners in Portland and Vancouver. Summer is technically winding down, but that does not necessarily mean swimming season is over. We can still get warm afternoons, and plenty of homeowners would rather squeeze a few more weekends out of the pool than cover ...

Labor Day weekend is one of the biggest weekends of the year for backyard pools. Family visits, neighborhood barbecues, and one last celebration before summer winds down often mean your pool gets more use over three days than it normally would in an entire week. The last thing anyone wants ...

You cleaned your pool filter, put everything back together, turned the system on, and checked the pressure gauge. Instead of dropping back to normal, the pressure is still much higher than you expected. Did you miss something? Not necessarily. High filter pressure after cleaning is a common issue, and it ...