Maintaining a pool’s chemical balance is a task that requires serious organization and coordination. Unless this is your full time job as a pool operator, maintaining the chemical balance of several pools, especially when they are at different locations, is an even greater task, and is often too much to handle for one employee, no matter how experienced they are.
This task falls on the shoulders of certified pool operators (CPOs), who often have many more responsibilities than simply maintaining pool functionality. Individuals aren’t always only a CPO by trade or profession. Instead of hiring a “CPO,” hotels and public pools hire a groundskeeper, facilities manager or maintenance supervisor who is CPO certified. As a result, CPOs usually have their hands full juggling a number of jobs and tasks other than pool maintenance on a daily basis.
On top of their other responsibilities, many CPOs do have multiple pools to keep track of. Sometimes these pools are conveniently in the same complex, but just as often CPOs are in charge of several pools at different complexes in the same area. CPOs must be within 20 minutes travel of all pools they supervise at any given time, and depending on the state, if a CPO isn’t within this range, the pool they are in charge of may be fined or shut down by the local health department.
For CPOs, the logistics required to keep all of these pools up to code and chemically balanced can be a lot to handle, and non-digital testing methods and paper chemical pool log books are often insufficient methods for reliably maintaining pools. A fast, modern, digital solution for both the water testing process and data recording would help CPOs and on-site employees have better control over the conditions of their pools. The LaMotte WaterLink Spin Touch and the Pool Shark H2O app are the solution, and can remove much of the stress of pool management.
CPO Certification
To become and remain a CPO, certification must be completed once every five years. Thankfully, this isn’t very frequent, but it can still be slightly frustrating whenever the time comes to be re-certified. This is mostly due to the length of the course, as it is 16 hours long and is often condensed into two days, which is a lot of time that could otherwise be productively spent elsewhere.
In the moment, CPO certification can be a lot of new information to take in, especially in such a short time, and it can all be hard to recall afterwards. Some of the particularly difficult details to remember are all of the calculations involved when doing the math to determine how much of a particular chemical to add to a pool, especially when trying to handle dozens of other duties.
A system that could automate all of the calculations for adding pool chemicals, keeping pools chemically balanced and providing chemical logs for health departments could help CPOs tremendously.
The Pool Shark H2O app can help do just that, by taking the results of a pool or spa water chemical test and performing the calculations instantly for the user.
This improves the calculation process in almost every way, making it easier for the user by performing it for them, performing it incredibly quickly, and performing it with consistent accuracy that human error doesn’t always allow for. Pool Shark H2O presents the users with the exact amount of chemicals to add, making it incredibly user friendly and minimizing the likelihood that calculation errors will enter the process.
Distributing CPO Tasks, Without Distributing Responsibility With Confidence
As mentioned before, CPOs are busy people, with a multitude of tasks requiring their attention on a daily basis. For this reason, they often don’t have time to test and record chemical logs for multiple pools three times a day, especially when managing several pools at different locations. Passing the pool water testing process off to other employees on location is a common practice, as it allows CPOs to focus on other duties. The drawback to this is that this can sometimes lead to inaccurate testing and calculation.
Whether errors are due to hurried work, carelessness, laziness or incompetence, the resulting inaccuracies can lead to incorrect chemical amounts being added and overcorrection. Overcorrection can throw off the chemical balance of the pool, wasting expensive chemicals in the process and potentially decreasing the life of the pool and its equipment. On the other hand, under-correction can jeopardize the health of bathers and potentially cause the pool to go cloudy or green. Sick bathers due to a chemically imbalanced and possibly unclean pool can lead to a pool being shut down and/or lawsuits against the pool owner and operator. Cloudy or green pools should always be shut down until chemicals can be applied to clear the water. If chemicals have been out of balance for too long, this can sometimes require a pool to be drained, cleaned and refilled with water and chemicals, which can cost thousands of dollars.
The Pool Shark H2O app and LaMotte Spin Touch can put these fears to rest and allow CPOs to delegate the responsibility of water testing and pool chemical logging with confidence. When it comes to testing, the LaMotte Spin Touch is a digital tester that is faster, easier to use and more accurate than non-digital testing alternatives. The ease of use that a digital tester provides dramatically decreases the likelihood that employee error can lead to inaccurate testing results. Once these results are gathered by the LaMotte Spin Touch, they are sent via Bluetooth to the Pool Shark H2O app, which not only does the calculations for chemical corrections, but also logs the pool chemical levels in real time in a secure cloud database. This gives CPOs the ability to see the most recent chemical levels at all of the pools they supervise, and can send CPOs and employees notifications about which pools haven’t been tested recently and which need attention to correct chemical balance.
Digitizing CPO Documentation
When compared to the paper test logs that have been used to record chemical levels for years, digital chemical level updates are a massive upgrade. Older testing workflows require testing employees to log testing results by hand in a log book, which can lead to a number of issues including improperly transcribed chemical levels and damaged or lost log books. Paper log books are also inconvenient as they take up lots of space, needing to be filed away in storage for one to seven years in some cases. When the data is logged with a paper test log, if a pool needs attention or chemical correction, employees need to contact CPOs over the phone, which is itself a flawed process. CPOs aren’t always available to answer the phone at any given moment due to their busy schedules, and even aside from business, calls can be missed for many reasons. Data can also be misreported over the phone, so false alarms and phone tag can both be avoided by presenting the data to CPOs directly through the Pool Shark H2O app. Live updated data also helps CPOs to prioritize which pools need attention most immediately, rather than having to write down or remember these details when communicating over the phone.
The information presented to the CPO by the Pool Shark H2O app and the LaMotte Spin Touch makes it feel as if every employee conducting tests is a CPO. Testing and calculations are accurate and consistent, and the data and results are updated live for the CPO to see. Additionally, the location of the conducted tests is included, helping to not only identify which pool is being measured, but to hold employees accountable by identifying false tests and data entries. Thankfully, the ease of use presented by the digital solutions of Pool Shark H2O and LaMotte Spin Touch decrease the likelihood that employees will rush through or inaccurately conduct pool water tests.
For a CPO, integrating the use of the Pool Shark H2O app and LaMotte Spin Touch can bring both organization and peace of mind. Not only do these digital alternatives make the pool water testing and maintenance processes far easier to handle, but they allow CPOs to give others this responsibility with far greater confidence, all while having a live look at how well their pools are functioning.
