The Impact of Climate on Pool Maintenance

Changes in climate can affect your pool maintenance, driving up costs for routine pool care and putting your pool and its fixtures in jeopardy. You’ve worked hard to create a safer swimming pool for your friends, family, and pets–far too much work to let climate change ruin your backyard oasis. Let’s look at how the climate can affect your pool routine, what you can do to minimize its impact, and how to make sure your pool use has minimal impact on the environment.

Climate Change is not Global Warming

The misnomer of global warming—and previously global cooling—is often used to talk about climate change because the long-term global threat is a significant temperature change that devastates the environment. That’s on a global scale, but your pool isn’t global. It’s local. This means you’re much more likely to notice other climate changes before any long-term rise in heat becomes the core problem.

• More Inclement Weather—Expect more storms as the climate changes, leaving you scrambling to get everyone out of the pool as lightning and rain clouds approach. Storms are formed by differences in temperature and pressure in the atmosphere, so increased volatility leads to more opportunities for storms to form.
• Increasingly Severe Weather – In addition to facing more storms, you may also notice that storms are stronger. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that most studies agree Atlantic Basin tropical storms and hurricanes have become noticeably more powerful over the past 40 years.
• Inconsistent Humidity and Precipitation – As the climate changes, wetlands can dry up, exhausting the local water sources and lowering the water table faster. Desert areas could face more turbulent monsoon seasons and the extra flooding that comes with them. 
• Shifting Weather Patterns – Finally, reliable weather patterns can shift, drastically changing the climate an area experiences. For instance, Tornado Alley, an unofficially recognized region of the country where storm seasons churn out a higher-than-usual number of tornados, has been shifting steadily eastward. This indicates the climate–and weather patterns–that lead to increased tornado activity are shifting as well.

Climate and Pool Maintenance

Regular pool maintenance involves cleaning your pool and its water and properly sanitizing it to protect it from viral, bacterial, algae, and other infestations. By carefully balancing the chemicals you add to your pool, monitoring their effectiveness, and keeping levels within recommended parameters, you’re creating a safe, fun place for your loved ones to swim. 

This balance is based on how fast and how many contaminants enter the pool area, how quickly water evaporates from your swimming pool, the equipment installed in your swimming pool, rainfall, temperatures, the amount of sun and wind, and more. As the impacts of climate change affect the environment, these stressors shift, forcing your pool care routine to keep up with the climate.

• More Airborne Contaminants – Climate change is a driving factor behind the increase in the number of wildfires in recent years. As weather patterns shift, farmland and wild areas dry out, becoming more susceptible to natural and human-caused ignition. This leads to more smoke, spores, pollen, and dust in the air that can end up in your pool. Dryer climates also affect trees, inhibiting growth and more rapidly drying out ad and dying twigs and sticks, which can also be carried into your pool by higher winds.
• Increased Evaporation – Hot, dry air has more capacity to store moisture that evaporates from your pool. As the wind blows this air across your pool’s surface, the cooler, moisture-rich air above your water is constantly being exchanged for more dry, thirsty wind currents. This climate effect on pool maintenance means not only that you’ll need to add more water more often but also that you’ll need more chemicals to treat the water as volume fluctuates, changing your saturation levels.
• Increased Utility Usage—These factors also mean you may need to run your pool’s pump more to maintain proper circulation and cleaning. Filters may need to be changed more often, and your routine must include more frequent vacuuming. When the sun goes down, your heater may need to work harder to keep up with wild temperature swings.
• Increased Flooding – If climate change brings greater rainfall to your area, natural and artificial drainage will likely not be sufficient to control and mitigate it properly. This can mean more contamination from floodwaters entering the pool, requiring more frequent water changes and conditioning.

Limiting Climate’s Pool Maintenance Effects

There are steps you can take to limit the effects of climate on your pool.

• Pool Covers – Along with helping reduce the risk of accidental drowning in your swimming pool area, swimming pool safety covers can help protect your pool from climate-based hazards. The tight mesh helps control evaporation, keep out contaminants, and block the harmful UV radiation that can inhibit your sanitation chemicals from keeping your pool water safe. This helps control the amount of additional pool care needed and the costs associated with it.

• Pool Fences – Pool fences can also play a role in reducing accidental drowning risks by preventing unsupervised access. Your pool fence also serves as a windbreak to help limit evaporation and stop contaminants before they reach your pool’s surface.
• Landscaping – Proper pool-area landscaping also helps disrupt straight-line winds. It’s also great for storing moisture to keep your soil from drying out and adding to the overall capacity for precipitation, helping to hold off localized flooding.
• Smart Accessories – Smart pool equipment that monitors your pool’s temperature, sanitation levels, circulation, and usage can help you reduce changes to your pool routine caused by climate factors. These devices make your pool care more precise and efficient, which can reduce utility, water, and chemical usage. 

Limiting Your Climate Impact

The good news is that by taking these steps to mitigate the impact of climate on your pool maintenance, you’re also controlling your pool’s impact on the climate. Reducing natural resource consumption and responsible land management in the form of fences and landscaping are great first steps toward protecting the environment. You can also look into switching your utilities to renewable sources and finding opportunities to make further positive changes in the world around your backyard oasis.

Get Your Free Pool Safety Quote

For more pool safety ideas, reach out to your local independent installation professional. They’re dedicated to protecting the pools in your community, and many also have the experience to offer advice on how you can save money and time on your pool maintenance and combat climate change’s impact. Request your free pool safety quote from All-Safe Pool today.