Vietnam Real Estate - House For Rent in Ho Chi Minh City by Vinarentals.com

So after months of preparations and paperwork you've finally arrived in your beautiful new house in Ho Chi Minh City. The sun is shining and your new pool is sparkling blue.

But not for long if you don't take care of it! Not many things are actually quite so distressing as a green pool, even if it israining season and no one is swimming in it. For the few families who had never had a pool before,here are few pool maintenance tips.


What a well-maintained pool should look like


If you have any choice in the matter (most likely there are too many other factors when picking a house), avoid pools with overhanging trees or grasses. Also, rimless pools with an overflow look stunning but are a pain to clean up, since your pool cleaner does not cover the overflow area. They also cool the water down more quickly. If you have small kids, make sure your pool is covered with a net (or insist that your landlord installs one).


Consider hiring a pool service and ask your neighbors to get recommendations. The cost will start from 600.000 VND per month. There are many garden services that will also maintain your pool. However, those services are great with the weekly visits, but not so responsive when you have an emergency. When your pool is turning green, you want to fix it quickly, not in four days, so I think you need to learn the basics of pool maintenance yourself (and then you don't really need to pay for your pool service). If you decide to take care of your pool yourself, you will soon develop a feel for what it needs at any given time.

Swimming Pool Diagram


Have your landlord explain the pool pump to you. It has a timer that's fairly easy to understand, it has an on/off switch for the pump, and it has what looks like a large lever on top that you can lift and turn to various positions (like filtration or backwash).




Make sure your pool cleaner, which is the vacuum thing moving across the bottom and sides of your pool - is in good working order, and the hoses it is attached to don't have any holes. There should be a lot of suction and it should rhythmically creep along.


Program your pool pump so it runs a sufficient amount of time during the day, when the sun is the hottest and algae growth the fastest. During summer the pump should run about 8 hours a day, from about 8:30 to 4:30, and as little as 2-3 hours a day during raining season.



Also equip yourself with a big bucket of chlorine and perhaps a testing kit or just test strips. There are pool supply stores like Vinapool where you can have your water tested and get every chemical imaginable. But just know that at the end of the day it all comes down to chlorine. It's not rocket science. Especially during summer, you'll have to add about a cup every week, sprinkling it slowly along the edge of the pool. After it rains, or whenever the pool doesn't look sparkling clean to you, add another cup. If your pool has already turned green, shock it by adding six cups. Let the pump run for several hours after you've added chlorine to your pool.


If your pool has an overflow, clean it once a week. Scrub it well with a brush attached to a pole, then wait an hour or so for the dirt to settle on the bottom (or you can do the scrubbing the night before). Turn off the pump, remove the barracuda from the end of the hose, extend the hose with another link if necessary, and plug it into the sweeper attachment at the end of a long pole. Take care not to get much air into the hose during this process or you will lose suction, which is a pain to get back. Then turn the pump on again and slowly sweep along the bottom of the overflow. You won't need to sweep your actual pool if you have a barracuda, as the barracuda will perform this very function automatically.

Backwash and rinse your pool once a week. You best do this on the same day every week, so as not to forget. Turn off your pump, shift the lever to "backwash," turn the pump back on and run it for about 2 minutes (some pumps have a little clear tube on the side where you can see the water flowing through, and you will want to backwash until the water is running clear). Turn off the pump again, shift the lever to "rinse," and run 1 minute. This process will remove dirt particles that are caught in your filtration sand and prevent it from becoming clogged.

Every once in a blue moon, check the basket in the weir (the place at the side of the pool where the barracuda hose is attached) and clean it out. You'll be amazed to find some long-lost items. If your pool has an overflow, you might have to clean out the filter that is built into the separate circuit pumping overflow water back into the pool. Some overflow gets clogged up with grass and small leaves and there are times where you have to unscrew and take apart the entire filter and spray it out with the hose. You will know it's clogged when the overflow is, well, not overflowing.




Don't forget to swim in your pool and enjoy it! Even if you're a chicken, when it comes to cold water, you'll have worked up such a sweat from all the scrubbing and cleaning that you'll happily dive in.


All this probably sounds more complicated than it is. Once you develop a routine, your pool maintenance should take almost no time. Usually a cleaning routine cost less than 20 minutes and your reward is to look down at a freshly sparkling pool all day.