A word of advice

It seems the problem that we had with the pipe which takes water from the skimmer to the pump in our pool is not uncommon. There have been five other houses on our estate where the same thing has occurred and probably countless more elsewhere.

As Andy Cole, who replaced the pipe for me explained, the flexible pipe that pool construction companies use can be affected by chlorine. When I chlorinate my pool, I often put the chemicals directly in the skimmer box. As the water is drawn through from there the level of chlorine in that pipe has been unusually high especially when I’ve used use shock chorine and rapid release chlorine in preparation for visitors. Slow release tablets should not cause the same problem.

Andy tells me that the rigid pipe which he has used to replace the split flexible one will not not affected by chlorine so I should have no further problems. However, I am going to play cautious and add any rapid release chorine directly into the pool rather than in the skimmer box. Any other chemicals that I add such as flocculent, PH+ and – will also go into the pool rather than in the skimmer. That way I will avoid a concentration of chemicals in the new pipe which should hopefully last a lot longer than the old one.

Another tip that Andy gave me, never use the vacuum to remove leaves from the bottom of the pool. The vacuum is also connected to the pump by flexible pipe and can easily get clogged if you try and suck leaves through it. Actually I had already come to that conclusion myself and have always used a net to remove leaves before using the vacuum to clean the pool floor. At least I got something right!