Competence Counts: The Pool Pro’s Edge

Customers don’t judge by jargon; they judge by what they see and how their pool performs after you leave. We dive straight into the habits that signal true professionalism on a pool route: a 30–40 second equipment scan, disciplined filter decisions, and a firm stance on water-level responsibilities that keeps you out of liability trouble.

You’ll learn a simple checklist for catching leaks, reading filter pressure, and spotting a dirty salt cell before a homeowner does. We talk through the real cost of “I’ll clean the filter next week,” why a quick backwash rarely saves the day, and how to protect your margins by doing the hard work at the right moment. We also get practical about safety and optics—why you should avoid driveways, how to handle muriatic acid without scarring a brand-new deck, and the small presentation cues (uniforms, tidy trucks, clear logos) that build trust long before test strips touch water.

We break down the habits that prove competency on a pool route, from fast equipment assessments to firm water-level boundaries that prevent liability. We also cover pro presentation, customer communication for parties, and the smarter way to handle filters, chemicals, and parking.

• scanning equipment in 30 to 40 seconds for leaks, pressure, and salt cell status
• avoiding the filter clean delay that leads to algae and callbacks
• setting clear rules for water level to prevent overflow and property damage
• turning systems off and documenting low water with photos and messages
• parking off driveways, securing acid, and protecting decks from stains
• preparing for parties with shock, higher chlorine, and cleaner removal
• uniforms, clean vehicles, and first impressions that win trust
• using service agreements to define roles and reduce risk

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (01:03):
Hey, welcome to the Pool Grey Podcast Show.
In this episode, I'm going to goover some common mistakes that
you can make out there on yourpool route.
And I'll go over some things toavoid that can create liability
as well.
And a lot of this has to do withproper training and just being
aware out there of everythingthat's going on around your

(01:23):
service account.
Are you a pool service prolooking to take your business to
the next level?
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(01:44):
There's an expected level ofcompetency in every field out
there.
Pool Service is not anexception.
We want to hire competentpeople, and of course, your
customers want to hire someonewho knows what they're doing out
there.
And we get frustrated, I getfrustrated myself when you're
somewhere where somebody is notcompetent.

(02:06):
Maybe at a restaurant theyforget to put something on your
order or forget to give younapkins or hot sauce or
something like that.
But at the higher levels,incompetence is really
frustrating.
And I would say pool servicedefinitely is at the higher
professional level.
For example, I had an appraisaldone one time on one of my

(02:28):
rental properties to get a cashout, and it had a three-car
garage, and the appraiser put onthe report two-car garage.
And of course, you know, youlose like$10,000 in value with
that kind of thing, and it'sreally hard to get him to revise
it.
But what makes this worse isthat on the cover of the
appraisal is a picture of thefront of the house that he took,

(02:49):
and you can clearly see thatit's a three-car garage house.
Now, of course, that'sfrustrating and irritating when
you see something at that level,someone being incompetent.
So be aware that the customersare watching you and looking for
a competent service.
Now, here are some things thatare very basic as far as being

(03:11):
aware of your pool serviceaccounts and not making a simple
mistake.
Like I just shared about two orthree car garages.
And it's being aware of theequipment, you know, the
condition that everything is inwhen you get to the stop.
So always when you get to thepool, and I try to remind
everyone to do this, it's reallyimportant out there to do an

(03:35):
assessment of the equipment.
It should be something that youcan do within like 30 seconds,
40 seconds.
Look for anything odd going on,you know, any kind of leaks that
are there.
Because the worst thing that youcan do is leave an account, then
have the customer text you latersaying, Hey, I noticed there's
water leaking by the equipment.
This is a big irritant forcustomers when they go out there

(03:56):
and they see water by theirequipment or water leaking.
It's something that they feelthat you should be aware of and
they hire you to maintain theirpool and you shouldn't have any
leaks by the equipment area.
Another thing to be aware of isis the salt water cell needing
to be cleaned, and is the filterpressure high?

(04:16):
And do you need to backwash thatpool or clean that filter?
These are all things that rightaway when you turn on the pool,
you can see if this is what itis necessary to be done.
The salt system will let youknow when the salt cell is
dirty, usually, with a flashinglight or some other indicator.
And of course, the filterpressure gauge is pretty easy

(04:37):
for you to look at and read.
Now, with that, that's like yourprimary thing is to make sure
that anything obvious that thecustomer walking out there
behind you can see.
For instance, if you leavedebris in the pump basket,
that's also highly irritating toa lot of customers because they
hire you to make sure thateverything is operating
smoothly, and you don't want anyof that to be held against you

(05:01):
by missing something very simplelike that.
Now there are different levelsof customers, of course, some
are extremely picky, othersdon't even go out to their pool
and look at it, and you'll knowwhich ones those are on your
route.
But in general, you just want toshow competency by doing a scan
of everything to make sureeverything is operating
correctly.

(05:21):
Then, of course, there are a fewthings that you should avoid
doing to show that you have agood level of competency, and
that is if you get to a pool,and I'm I've been guilty of
this, so it's I'm not picking onanyone out there, but it's you
know, if it's a long day, it'shot out, and you get to one of
your service accounts, and itlooks like you have to clean the

(05:44):
filter.
And I've done this before whereit's like, well, you know, I'm
tired, it's really hot, I havetwo more pools to do, I just
don't feel like cleaning thefilter, and so you give it a
quick backwashing, put a littlebit of D back in there, and hope
for the best.
Typically what happens, and thishas happened to me, you get back
to the pool the following weekand you have a pretty big algae

(06:06):
bloom because you didn't takethe time to clean the filter,
the backwash wasn't gonna doanything, and you kind of knew
that because you know D filtersand you know when they need to
be cleaned out.
And it's something that you knowyou can avoid by not falling
into the trap of kind of being alittle lazy and kind of kicking
the can down to the followingweek.

(06:29):
And I've done this, and soagain, if you've done this, I'm
not picking on you.
I'm just letting you know thatit's possible to avoid the
situation.
The consequences of that, ofcourse, is algae and the
customer not being happy withyou when you could have cleaned
the filter.
And I understand that cleaningthe filter in the middle of your
route when it's not scheduled tobe cleaned, is a real pain, but

(06:52):
it's something that you're gonnajust have to bite the bullet and
do, and that shows a level ofcare for the customer and kind
of a high level of competency tothe customer that you took the
time to clean the filter andthen the next week the pool
looks great.
I think there is a misconceptionfrom the customer that the pool
service has to maintain thewater level in the pool, and

(07:14):
clearly you would want to makesure that the customer
understands that it's not yourjob to fill the pool up.
You shouldn't be doing that fora number of reasons.
One, you don't have time tostand there and properly fill
the pool up, usually when you'reat your stop.
And two, you create a huge andI'm talking huge liability issue

(07:35):
if you were to turn the water onthe fill line and forget to turn
the pool off.
One of my group members calledme because his employee was at a
pool and the water line was offto the house, and the pool was
low on water, and so he figured,well, this turned the water line
back onto the house.
I'm not sure why they turned itoff, and then of course he
turned the fill line onto thepool and he didn't think

(07:57):
anything of it, turned the fillline off and left without
turning the water off again tothe house.
And so what was going on, theywere remodeling the property,
and the plumber had removed thewater heater, and you kind of
get where this is going.
So if you remove the waterheater and you turn the main
line off to the house,obviously, if you turn that back
on without a water heaterattached, you could potentially

(08:19):
flood the whole property.
But you know, it's one of thosethings where you're overstepping
your boundaries really of whatyour service entails, and that
situation should never happenbecause it's really not your job
to fill up the pool water.
No, I have a one-page serviceagreement that I can send you.
Just email me at DavidAswimpoollearning.com.

(08:41):
Again, DavidAswimpoollearning.com.
And in that service agreement,it's not a binding contract, but
it just says what you do andwhat the customer is supposed to
do as far as pool service, youknow, your duties there and the
customer's responsibilities.
And in that agreement, thecustomer is responsible for
filling the pool up with water.
Now, in that situation, insteadof turning on the water to the

(09:04):
house, what the technicianshould have done is just turn
the pool pump off and left itoff until and message the
customer saying the water isreally low, the pool's not
operational right now.
I added a little bit extrachemicals to the pool and I left
it off.
Can you please fill the pool up?
And then once it's filled, I'llyou know the following week I'll

(09:24):
turn the pool back on, or youcan turn the pool back on, or
whatever you want to messagethem.
But turning the pool off is thebetter option than filling up
the pool, and of course, let thecustomer know I like taking a
picture of the water line whenI'm there at the stop, and I'll
snap a picture of it showingthem how low the water is, and
I'll send it to the customer andask them if they can please fill

(09:45):
the pool up.
I'm leaving the pool off fortoday, and if you can turn the
pool back on, or whatever howyou want to handle that, but
it's better to turn the pool offif it's not operating properly
than you yourself to fill thepool.

(10:18):
And of course, there's tricks ofthe trade like leaving your
truck keys there on the fillline.
But I've done this before myselfas well, where I get to my
truck, and of course I don'thave my keys, and I'm like, oh
yeah, I left the water on, sothat's you know, it does work in
some respects, but I've also hadto go to my truck to get
something out of it, so I get mykeys, go over there, and I

(10:40):
forget to put it back on thefill line, and that's happened
to me as well.
Thankfully, I remembered beforeI left the stop, but it's not a
bulletproof way of preventingyourself from that liability of
letting the water run floods thewhole backyard, floods the
customer's house, the neighbor'shouse, runs down the hill.
And believe me, I've heard ofthose incidents before where you

(11:02):
do so much damage that is apretty big liability claim.
And of course, that's an aptlocation for that plug because
you should have liabilityinsurance, and there's no reason
not to have it in your poolservice business.
Something that you should alsodo is try to avoid parking your
vehicle in the customer'sdriveway.
Now you may not have a choice ifthere's no street parking, I

(11:25):
understand that.
But I generally, as a rule, 95%of the time, do not park in the
customer's driveway.
And there's a few reasons forthis.
One, you could leak chemicals ontheir driveway.
I've done this before myself,where the mural of acid kind of
leaked a little bit on theirdriveway.
Thankfully, it was an olderdriveway, it didn't matter, but

(11:46):
I always thought, well, what ifthis was a brand new driveway
and they had pavers or whatever?
That would have been a bigproblem or a big issue.
Sometimes cars leak oil, yourtruck may leak something onto
the driveway, so you definitelydon't want to park on their
driveway unless absolutelynecessary.
And if you ever call a vendor orsomeone to come do a service on

(12:07):
your house, you'll notice thatthey rarely will park in your
driveway as well because theykind of figure this rule and
know that it's better not to youknow damage anyone's property.
And secondly, you also want tobe very cognizant of the muradic
acid that you're carrying backto the stock because not only
can you damage your driveway bysome of it leaking from your

(12:28):
truck bed, but if you have maybea service cart or a tote and
you're bringing it back there,or a riptide cart, and you don't
have the lid on securely, orthere's some acid that leaked
out, and it gets onto theirdecking as you're walking or
anywhere in their backyard.
It could be really expensive tofix it.

(12:49):
It's really unsightly to haveyou know acid burn drops all
over the back patio areadecking.
So it's one of those thingswhere you definitely have to be
extremely careful when you goback there.
There's one of my members alsothat had this pool that had this
beautiful deck that they put in.
It was you know just fantasticlooking and beautiful coping.

(13:12):
And when you got to the stop oneday, the customer had these blue
booties right there by theentrance to the pool, and there
was a note saying, Please wearthis when you're walking around
the pool.
So that's like the highest levelof the customer caring about
their deck.
You can't even walk on therewithout having booties on your
shoes.
And the funny thing is, thismade this technician so paranoid

(13:35):
that he would leave everythinglike way off to the side, walk
back over to it, and then walkover to the pool.
You never put anything down onthe deck itself.
It's kind of funny, but if thecustomer is that paranoid about
you leaking anything or stainingtheir deck, it's really
important to respect that.
But for any customer, you justdon't want to spill chemicals
anywhere around their deck area.

(13:56):
And again, that just shows alevel of competency in your
business that you're not gonnaspill chemicals and leave burn
marks all over their pool deck.
Here's one that I think isimportant.
You want to make sure yourcustomers have really good open
communication back and forthwith you because this is
something that's reallyimportant when they're having a
pool party.

(14:17):
You should be prepared for apool party, especially if
there's gonna be 20 or 30 peoplein the pool, and the customer
should let you know, hey, uhthis weekend I'm having, you
know, my kid's birthday party isgonna be like 20 of his Cub
Scout friends in there in thepool.
Is there any way you can shockthe pool or prepare it?
That should be a normal thingthat your customers convey to

(14:37):
you because when you get to thatstop, you definitely want to put
in some non-chlorine shock.
You also want to maybe boost thechlorine up to at least 10 parts
per million if there's asaltwater generator, put the
output on 100%, and you justwant to make sure that
everything is set there.
I personally like removing theautomatic cleaners myself, and
so if the party's on a Saturdayand you're there on a Thursday,

(14:59):
sometimes the customer wants youto stop by on a Friday before
the party, which is okaysometimes.
You can do that, but I preferremoving the cleaner myself in a
lot of cases because I've hadcustomers damage the cleaner.
I've also have customers damagethe player's quick disconnect,
or they'll pull it out of thewall and break off the tabs.
So it's better if you remove thecleaner, it's just an automatic

(15:21):
cleaner in there before theparty yourself.
If the customer wants you to gothere before to maybe shock the
pool and clean it, you candefinitely do that.
There you may want to give theman extra service charge, they
should have no problem payingyou an extra charge to make sure
the pool is ready for the party.
But you definitely want to makesure they communicate to you
that there's gonna be a partybecause what's gonna happen on

(15:41):
the other end of that, if theyhave the party and the pool's
not ready for it, when you getthere that following week, it's
usually a disaster.
The pool looks terrible, and allthat could have been prevented
if they would have informed you,and you have to again let them
know that there should be somekind of communication when their
pool is gonna have heavy use andnot the normal use that you

(16:02):
expect.
And this last one isn't anythingthat really has to do with the
pool itself, but it does have todo with your business and how
you present it.
I think you should have auniform of some type that you
wear when you go to the pool.
They're really affordable.
You can go to you know fourimprints and order shirts that
have your logo on it.

(16:23):
Anything that makes you lookmore professional is definitely
a must, especially if you haveemployees.
Make sure they're wearing yourcompany logo shirt.
Maybe everyone dresses the same.
You know, I prefer to weardockers, slacks out there, you
look a lot more professional,and then of course your vehicle
should be fairly clean.
I mean, it doesn't have to bewashed all the time every week,

(16:45):
but it shouldn't look reallybad.
And I kind of have you know,there's a standard of you know
which vehicles look good whenyou hire somebody, regardless of
the field they're in.
But if you call a plumber andit's just an unmarked white van
that looks like it's from the80s and it's never been it's all
rusted on the bottom and nothinglooks like it's been taken care

(17:05):
of, you may not want to hirethat person just based on the
optics of it.
If someone else pulls up in atruck that's wrapped and it's
beautiful looking, you know, youprobably are gonna hire that
person or feel more comfortablewith that person.
Not saying that the person withthe beater can't do good
service, it's just that thefirst impression is really
important when you pull up to astop, and it does show a level

(17:29):
of competency when you presentyourself in a professional
manner.
So keep that in mind if you'retrying to expand your route or
if you're trying to do a lot ofbidding, that the first
impression that the customergets is usually the impression
that sticks.
Whether it's true or not, it'sjust a reality of doing
business.
When you walk into a fast foodrestaurant, like a mom and pop

(17:51):
place for the first time, thefloor is dirty, looks really the
tables aren't wiped down, youknow, no one's wearing uniforms
that are working there.
Chances are you're probablygonna walk right back out the
door and go somewhere else, andyou know, you're not gonna have
a high regard for someoneoperating a business like that.
And the same goes with yourservice.

(18:11):
You want to make sure thatyou're professional and the
customer is gonna respect youjust based on your appearance.
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(18:32):
Click on that, and there'll beover 1700 podcasts for you
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And if you're interested in thecoaching program that I offer,
you can learn more atpoolguycoaching.com.
Thanks for listening to thispodcast.
Have a good rest of your weekand God bless.