Pools to Avoid for Sure!

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Hey, welcome to the pool grade podcast show.
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In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about fine-tuning your pool route.
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I'm going to go over some pools that you may want to pass on.
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I know it's hard to pass a business out there, but there are certain accounts that you're going to probably regret if you take.
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I'm going to go over some of these for you here, and I think you can identify it with me on some of these for sure.
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So I've been doing pool service since 1988.
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So I definitely have a big list of love and hate.
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You know, the ideal pool for me, and this is something that everyone has a different ideal pool.
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But my ideal pool, and I've had several of these ideal pools, is something that's about 12,000 gallons, maybe 10,000 gallons.
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The backyard is all cement, the equipment is new or newer.
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There's no trees around the pool.
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Of course, there's no shade because of that reason, but I could live with that.
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But there's no trees, there's no planters around the pool, there's no bushes around the pool, there's no elevated planters where mud can run off into the pool.
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There really is nothing.
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And if it has an automatic cover with a key, that's even better.
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But that's kind of my ideal pool, and I love these all cement decks with no trees around.
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However, these are pretty rare, and the pools that you're gonna run into are not gonna fit this ideal model very often for sure.
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If you do get one of these, do whatever you can to keep them.
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And it's one of those things where you have to kind of find things to do at the pool like that.
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You know, you have to spend time checking the chem chemistry, you know, maybe check the cyaneric acid every week, whatever you have to do to kill some time because there isn't a lot to do at these ideal pools, in my opinion.
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But the pools that are less than ideal abound out there, you know, in droves.
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And the first one I'll start with, and this is one that I think you can agree with, are the pools that have a lot of heavy debris.
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Now, there can be a lot of reasons for the heavy debris, it could just be that the trees need to be trimmed, it could be that the customer loves shade, which a lot of people do, or it just could be the setup of the yard.
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I've had I've had this pool before, or this scenario before, where the yard is like a forest, and it's beautiful back there.
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And then the pool builder builds the pool, and the customer drops it right in the middle of the forest, basically.
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Not the best ideal place.
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The pool builder doesn't really care.
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He's building the pool, he's getting paid, he's out of there.
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It doesn't matter if there's you know gigantic trees all over the place, pine trees, oak trees.
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It's not his problem.
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And I've had to deal with this before where the pool's dropped in the middle of a forest, and these pools are a pain.
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I mean, all year round is full of debris.
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You could do some things to kind of mitigate the problem.
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And I do talk about the pool skim pool skim often.
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Now, the pool skim is a device that you can put in a return jet, and it turns that return jet into another skimmer basically with a weir, and that takes debris off the surface of the pool.
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A lot of times that does help a little bit, but ultimately you're going to have to spend time cleaning the bottom of the pool, cleaning out the skimmer basket, leaf raking the surface.
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And these pools can be very time consuming.
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They're also very discouraging, and in my opinion, I don't know about you, but I'll be doing pools and I'll I'll get through four or five pools, and then Mr.
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Jones's house is coming up next.
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I'm like, oh man, it was a little bit windy yesterday, or you know, it was windy this week.
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I wonder how the pool looks.
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You get back there, and yeah, the pool doesn't look that great.
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I mean, it's covered with leaves, not to where you can walk across the surface.
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I've had pools like that, but it's just really bad, and it's something that you have to deal with if you want to keep that pool, of course.
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Now, if you're doing bids for pools and you see a pool that has the potential to be a heavy debris pool, I don't know.
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I mean, it depends on where you're at on your pool route, if you need that pool or not.
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If you're well established and you're trying to get really good pools on your route, I wouldn't take it.
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It just wouldn't be something that's worth your time and effort.
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I mean, if you charge more for it, maybe, but you gotta realize that you're gonna be cleaning this thing 48 weeks out of the year, and it's gonna be a miserable experience for you in a lot of cases where the pool just looks terrible every week using your vacuum system, you know, you're spending extra 20 minutes there getting the leaves out, then it's really a drain on your physical and mental well-being.
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I tell this story often.
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I was walking to one of my regular accounts, and this one is okay.
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It had a pine tree nearby, it was not the greatest pool, but it wasn't terrible.
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I could live with pine needles.
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It had actually had an old creepy crawley, which does really good with pine needles, by the way.
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So the old creepy crawlies did really well with the pine needles.
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Next door, there was a pool guy walking out, he had his leaf bagger or leafmaster, and it was full of leaves.
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He had a skimmer, but he had a leaf rake full of leaves, and he's like, Hey, if you want this pool, I'll just give it to you.
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Now, when a pool guy wants to give you a pool for free, and he's walking out with a leaf master with the bag full, with the you know, with the leaf rake with the leaf rake full of leaves, maybe dragging a trash can behind him, who knows?
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You don't want that pool.
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That's the pool that he's trying to get rid of and trying to find someone to take it over, and you're like the first victim he sees because usually the pool next door.
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I would say just don't do that.
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And I would say that heavy debris pools are something that you want to do when you're starting out because you have no choice, but as you get established, I would definitely wean those off the pool route so that you're not spending so much time and effort and energy at these pools.
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This next wood may surprise you because they're beautiful and they're usually on a hillside and they're nice to look at.
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And don't get me wrong, I really like the styling of them.
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I I if I lived on the hillside, I'd probably put one in myself.
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And these are the infinity edge pools.
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Now, the reason why I don't like them, and a lot of them don't have a lot of trees and debris around them, which is nice because you don't have to worry about that.
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Some do, some are on the hillside with trees over overhanging it.
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What I don't like about the infinity edge pools is the amount of headache that they create for you.
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Now, there's different ways of setting up the system.
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A lot of them will put the spillway or the infinity edge and the basin on the same pump, which makes it difficult sometimes if you want to turn that off or adjust it.
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Others will put the basin on a separate pump.
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Regardless, that basin is a problem because a lot of times it's just not holding the water.
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Some have an autofill, some aren't filling up correctly.
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To get the infinity edge to work properly is a pain in a lot of cases.
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And then a lot of builders aren't putting skimmers in for whatever reason.
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Well, I know why they're not because it looks clean without it.
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And the infinity edge is supposed to take all the debris and the dirt that falls on the surface and drop it into the basin.
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So the basin on the bottom, you know, it runs the whole length of the infinity edge pool.
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And that usually is where the debris and dirt goes into.
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So this takes some effort to clean as well.
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It also takes some effort to keep it, keep it algae-free.
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So what I like to do is I like to put a floater with a little trichlor tablet in there.
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If it's on a separate pump, I'll do this, and that way there's a little bit of chlorine being dispensed there.
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You can use liquid chlorine every week in there as well, but you have to really keep the basin kind of chlorinated, in my opinion, from the ones I've taken care of.
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And you have to brush them every week, and then you have the vacuum, the dirt, and the debris out of there.
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And most vacuum systems will fit in there, no problem.
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You can just push it forward and get all that out of there.
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But there's an extra layer of maintenance because of the basin, maybe not having a skimmer, and the equipment is always usually below sea level, so it's always down below somewhere, which is another layer of problems because then you're turning valves off, you're doing whatever you need to do to empty the pump basket out, clean the filter.
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So to me, it's a big headache.
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There's a headache factor with infinity edge pools, and sometimes they start to leak water, they start to sink.
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A lot of different things happen to these pools that I've taken care of.
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So I try not to take them if I can avoid it.
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I mean, if you have to take an infinity edge pool, take it.
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But to me, there are just a lot of extra headache and a lot of extra work that if you're well established, you may not want to take one of these on.
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I would say this next one you're gonna run into eventually on your pool route.
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And that's where the builder is kind of a nerd, or the homeowner wanted like a lot of things done, and the builder obliged basically.
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So you get back there, you're doing the bid on this pool, and there's like five pumps, there's like four water features, there's two filters.
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It's a big headache, you know.
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You may even have like you may have a spa where it's spilling over slightly on all three sides of it.
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Adjusting the valves for that takes a lot of fine-tuning, and then when the filter starts to get dirty, you have to readjust the valves, you have to adjust the pump runtime sometimes to get the water features to flow perfectly, the drizzle water down, maybe.
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So these are another headache where the pool is overdone, there's just way too much going on in the pool.
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I had one that I was doing for a while for a builder, it was just a temporary account for me, and I think I filmed it on I have a YouTube video.
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It's like an all-glass, it was an all-time pool, and this one had a spa spillway that had to be set perfectly with the speed, and then there was there was like a lot of other water features there, and basically I was just maintaining it until he he was able to.
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I think the guy was selling his house or something, I can't remember exactly.
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It was just temporary, but it was a big headache temporarily.
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It also had an acid and chlorine pump that didn't work too well for whatever reason.
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I'm not sure why they were kept on malfunctioning, had all these pumps and water features, and it was just a big hassle to go back there and take care of it.
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And it's something that you have to also put into the equation.
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You know, how much time are you going to be spending fiddling with the equipment?
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The customer may text you, like, hey, the waterfall is just not not you know flowing as the way I want it.
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Can you come adjust the valves?
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To me, these are headache pools when they're like overdone.
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Now you may like them, you may want to keep it on your route, you may like, you may nerd out and be able to adjust the valves and have fun with it.
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But to me, I just like the simple pools with one pump, one filter, one heater.
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Really not nothing really to adjust.
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And you get back there, you do your pool, you do the pool, and then you leave without having to fiddle with stuff.
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So it's really up to you if you want to take one of those project pools on.
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I try to avoid them.
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If you're starting out and you get a few of these, that's fine.
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I mean, you'll get used to it.
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I had one one of these pools, one of these project pools where there were these ball valves on the on the return lines, and and I couldn't figure out what they were for.
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I could I till this day, I don't even know what the ball valves controlled or turned off, and I don't even know if the builder knew what they were, he just had them on there.
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So you'll have some weird plumbing where you don't even know where this line goes.
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And I've had one where I'm like tracing the plumbing.
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I'm like, okay, this one goes here.
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I just gave up.
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It's like I can't figure this out.
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So you may be successful doing these accounts without even knowing what all the valves do, which is sounds weird, but if you've had one of these on your pool route, you understand what I'm saying.
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You're not going to be able to figure this thing out.
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And maybe the builder won't even doesn't even know what he did when he built it.
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This next one might be unavoidable in your service area.
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And I mentioned my ideal pools like 12, 10,000, 12,000 gallons, 14,000 gallons.
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These are ideal pools for my area because if there's any kind of weather event like the Santa Ana winds, they're fairly easy to clean because they can only hold so much debris.
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But the large pools, they're a problem, and you may not have a choice in your service area.
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They may all be 30,000 gallon pools, but I try to avoid anything over 20,000 gallons because of the factors that I mentioned.
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If the pool does turn on you, algae, or if there's a windstorm, you'd be amazed at how full a large pool gets with leaf debris.
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I mean, I've I've had 30,000 gallon pools before where I'm spending 30 minutes just skimming the surface and then I leave because I have my rule of 30 minutes per pool during a windstorm.
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And after 30 minutes of skimming the surface, there's still surface debris on the pool.
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It's that's how big that pool is and how much debris was in there.
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So the bigger the pool, the more debris it's gonna fill up with when it's windy, the more the harder it's gonna be when the pool turns on you and you have algae in the pool.
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And the big pools also require a lot more effort, maybe more filter cleaning, maybe more attention than a small pool.
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I'll take a you know less than 14,000 gallon pool every day of the week, and I'll avoid anything greater than 20,000 gallons every day of the week.
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It's just my preference to have the smaller pools, and unfortunately in my area, small pools are prevalent, and the large pools are prevalent in some areas as well here, and I just avoid them because I just don't want to deal with them.
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Now you can make more money with a large pool, obviously, you can charge more for it.
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But to me, if you're fine-tuning your pool route and you're trying to get the best of the best, I would say most of the large pools, unless they're easy to maintain, no debris, and you like doing it, would be out as as soon as as I can get a nice small pool to replace it, the big pool's out of the picture.
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And then the last I'll end with this, and these are pools where the equipment is, you know, the equipment is so old that it's basically running, but it's not running.
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The pool is functioning, but it's not functioning.
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So what I mean by that is that yeah, the pump is moving the water and you can keep it somewhat clean, and the filter is doing okay, but it would just be so much better with a new cartridge filter and a new pump, new VS pump there.
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But the customer is so reluctant to change anything that you know if it's not broke, don't fix it as their attitude.
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And so I try to avoid those pools where the equipment is older and the customer just won't do anything.
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If you're here in Los Angeles County like me, you probably have some accounts with a Purex pump or a PacFab filter.
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These these were that's circa 1990s, the PacFab and the Purex brand.
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Basically, Penter bought these companies, and if you have one of these, the equipment is pretty old in that case.
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You're looking at 25 plus years old, and the customer should have changed it by now.
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So these are like indicators.
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If you have like a dura glass pump, you know, the black pumps that look so ancient.
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I don't know.
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I would just caution you that if you get you're bidding an account and you run into one of these old filters, like a Hayward Titan filter, or if you have a if there's a filter with a kind of like oil rig kind of pump back wash valve, it looks like you're like pumping oil.
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That's super old.
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So the customer hasn't changed it.
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He may not change it when you take over the account.
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So just kind of keep your antennas up to see when you get the bid, you know.
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Oh, your equipment's like 30 years old.
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Are you wanting to update it soon?
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If they're like, nah, it's still working, don't worry about it.
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Then I don't know.
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I don't know if I would take that account because the old old equipment will work, but at the same time, it won't work that great, and you're gonna be struggling with the pool with really old equipment.
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And I've struggled with them before, and I would say that if the equipment's old, you know, brass pump, something that's gonna date it, you know, 2000 series filter, you may want to pass on that and just look for pools that have somewhat newer equipment.
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Now, again, all of this is to say you're established, you have a good size route, and you don't need accounts.
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If you need accounts, if you're starting out, everything I said here, just ignore it.
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You're gonna take all these accounts and you're gonna live with all these things because you have no choice.
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You're trying to build up your business.
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But if you're established, you should be a little picky and you shouldn't be picking these accounts for sure if you can avoid it.
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Looking for other podcasts, you can go to my website, swimming for learning.com on the banner, click on the podcast icon.
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There'll be a drop down menu with over 2,000 podcasts for you there as well.
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And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer you can learn more at poolguidecoaching.com.
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Thanks for listening to this podcast.
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Have a good rest of your week.
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God bless.