Billiard Cloth
When it comes to picking a color and type of cloth for your pool table it can sometimes be a struggle. If you are selecting a color for your new table or for recovering you existing table, I suggest selecting a color that is more of an accent color in your room. With such a big splash of color you don’t want your area to be too monochromatic. I know I’m no designer, but I always seem to find customers agree with that perspective. We carry tons of different colors so I’m sure we will have something that will work in your rec room. Everything we carry is also Teflon protected for easy clean up and durability. We also carry blended cloth to ensure the longest possible life for your cloth. Some higher wool cloth might play slightly faster and have less resistance, but they tend to wear more quickly while actually costing more. If you are in need of some new cloth be sure to stop and check out our selection of colors…and if you don’t want to change it yourself you can always have our service department do it for you. Hope to see you soon!
Craig
Debunking A Spa Myth
I will fully admit to not remembering everything I have said on this blog over the years, but just the other day I was faced with a spa request that is always tricky to explain. I had a customer walk in and say they wanted a small spa with lots of jets. Now, I understand that people are wanting more than just a couple of jets in a spa, but I think there is confusion out there that more jets equals better therapy and that simply is not the case. Jet count is important, but effective movement of water through those jets is even more important. All spas mix air with water and the air mixture is equal to every jet. Because of this smaller jets tend to have a higher psi and aren’t quite as effective at delivering the heat and massaging benefits of true hydrotherapy. Many manufacturers take advantage of consumers just looking for a high jet count by using a great deal of these small jets that may look impressive but fail to truly deliver the therapy they are supposed to provide. Since very few people actually wet test the spas they don’t really get a fair comparison of a spa that does things the right way and one that uses smoke and mirrors (or excessive jet counts). Hopefully that all makes good sense, if not stop in and I will be happy to show just what I mean…and I will be sure to show you exactly why the products we carry do things the right way.
Craig
What Spa Mode To Operate On
Customers often ask which spa mode they should operate their spa on for peak energy efficiency. The two most common modes are “standard” and “economy”. The standard mode operates much like setting the thermostat on your home HVAC unit, one places the temperature where they would like it and the spa will stay there all the time.
Winterizing Your Spa
First of all, I don’t understand why anyone would want to winterize a spa. Most of our customers find that using “their spa on a cold winters day, is just the thing their body needs to warm up the bones and take care of all of their aches and pains. The tough part of using the spa in the winter, is getting to the spa in the cold. Once you are in a spa, one could care less if there is a blizzard raging! Getting out is easy as well, the entire body is warm to the core and one barely feels the cold on the way back to the house. For those that are resolute on winterizing their spa, here are some tips.
Closing The Pool For The Season
Three recommendations:
1. Get any leaves out that are on the bottom. Some people say the heck with a few leaves in the pool. The fluids in the leaves can stain the liner. This is difficult to clean in the spring.
2. If you have an algae bloom, kill it before closing. Brush the liner real good, attack the algae with proper chemicals to kill it, and then close it up. You can always vac out the dead algae in the spring, but live algae will stain the liner too.
3. Do NOT winterize using strong doses of chlorine shock. A better choice is a specialty winterizing kit that does the work without hurting your cover. The problem with using shock to close is the elevated chlorine levels ‘gas-off’, weakening the seams of your cover and greatly reducing the life of the cover.
We will be glad to answer any questions you might have about winterizing your pool. Just call or stop in. –Max
New Item . . . EZ Drain Covers
New for us this year is the EZ Drain cover. This cover takes the aboveground pool cover to the next level. Traditionally aboveground pool covers take a beating when there is too much water on top of the cover. The opposite can be just as much of an issue when the wind whips the cover up and down. With the EZ Drain cover you have a mesh center that allows water to pass through a drain that is connected to your pool return fitting. The cover maintains just the right amount of water on the cover and saves you the unnecessary waste of dropping your pool water level for winter. In addition to these great features, the cover also boasts the highest thread count of any of our winter cover options at 15 strands by 15 strands per square inch. All of these features will help extend the life of the cover and save you the hassle of draining water from your cover during those cold and miserable days.
Craig
Clean Your Skimmer Basket And Save Yourself Some $!
It’s simple. Leaves drop from the trees and the wind carries them to your pool. The filter does its job and sucks the leaves into the skimmer basket. They build and build, and water flow is reduced. The pressure from the motor cracks the skimmer basket and the leaves travel on their merry way to the basket on the front of the motor. The pressure re-builds and that basket cracks, allowing the leaves to get pulled into the impeller housing where they clog it. Now no water is going through the system and the motor continues to run.
What are you out? At the minimum, a basket or two. Pretty minor expense, but if the motor is allowed to run with little or no water going through it, you may burn out the motor. Big problem and big expense!
The solution: When leaves begin to drop, check your basket every morning and every evening and empty it. It only takes a minute but it could save you hundreds of dollars. –Max
Time To Change The Hot Tub Water
Why not? The fall season is upon us and after that comes winter. The last thing you want to do is try and change it in the heart of the winter when it is bitter cold. So let’s do the math. If you change it NOW, the next change would be due in late December to mid January while the weather and temperature is still manageable. After that comes the spring change—April to early May.
If you wait another month from now to change the water, the following change falls smack dab in the middle of February. Can you say five below zero! Plan now to avoid the February cold and freeze.
A little advance planning will allow you to enjoy the tub in water that still is fresh and balanced. –Max
Spa Pillow Maintenance
In a word, don’t remove your spa pillow unless it is absolutely necessary. We get quite a few people walk through the door with pillows that are torn apart or destroyed from having the plastic nodes broken off. These are the plastic pieces that snap into a receiver in the spa shell. Generally, manufacturers give little or no warranty because they are easy to damage, so any warranty you get is generally through the good will of the retailers. But if you MUST remove the pillow, do this:
- Gently slide your hands in behind the pillow and exert even pressure outward. Try to get as close to the nodes as possible.
- Do NOT simply grab the pillow and yank from the corner. The nodes will not release from the receiver and the pillow will either tear or the nodes will rip out of the back.
The only reason pillows are removable is for when they discolor or wear out. Let them die a natural death. Don’t assist. –Max
Safety Cover Patches And Parts
Do you have small hole in your safety cover? If so we can help you out. We carry patch kits that will help from making that small hole into a giant one. The patches are made of the same material that your cover is. It is not recommended for patching anything over 3”. They come in Solid blue, green or green mesh. We also carry extra grommets and springs. We also carry the installation bar, which is used to take on and off the springs. Stop in and see us for any of your safety cover parts today. – Tim
Debunking An Aboveground Myth…#2
The vast majority of our customers that have shopped around for aboveground pools come in to the store looking for a resin pool because that is what they have heard is the best. Well, you won’t get that same endorsement here. The argument is always that resin won’t rust like steel. The question you should immediately ask at that point is why is the wall made of steel then? The reason…steel is stronger. The same applies for toprails and uprights. While it is true that resin doesn’t rust it does chalk, discolor, crack, and warp. If properly protected through hot dip galvanization, and other methods steel will provide you with a much more durable and long lasting pool than resin. Not all resin is bad, but gas assist injection molded resins are far more expensive to produce and that is not what you are going to get with pool “specials”. Our inground pool manufacturer uses the story of bridges to explain why steel is superior and I have to agree. You don’t often see bridges made of plastic. Consider the fact that we have installed over 3200 steel wall inground pools and never replaced a single panel in almost 32 years. If that isn’t validation, I don’t know what is.
I Saw The Exact Same Thing At Walmart For One Dollar Less!
I would like to have a dollar for every time I have heard that, or that Kroger’s has liquid chlorine for 50 cents less per case. Lincoln proclaimed that “All men are created equal” and if this were the same for pool and spa chemicals then I would follow people to Walmart to get my chemicals as well. After working in the pool and spa industry for almost 15 years now I know that all chemicals are not created equal, and do have a definite shelf life. I also realize that the person who just put that gallon of algae remover on the shelf knows nothing more about that product than what is on the label. This is where we as pool experts working in a pool and spa retail store have the highest ability to accurately answer your questions. I though cannot answer questions about another product that was not purchased here. As I said previously all chemicals are not created equal and this comes down to concentrations, fillers, and composition. With the wide variety of chemical manufacturers on the market, and the different blends sold by these manufacturers it is impossible to know everything about every other company’s product. I think sometimes that customers feel we are not being helpful when they call in about usage of another product and we are not able to give them answers. Keep in mind this is kind of like calling a Ford mechanic and asking questions about a Chevy part, I understand that they are both car parts but there are enough differences that a question answered incorrectly could cause major problems, and be a source of much dismay.
Amazing Feronclean!
Several weeks back, I wrote about one of our contract furniture customers that first bought from us in 2002. The customer had a couple of chairs that he thought were finished serving swim club members and destined for the landfill. Those chairs, complete with their new slings and glides, are now providing comfortable seating again.
When these chairs were brought in for me to look at, a 3rd chair that needed a new bolt and an insert was brought in as well. Telescope’s excellent parts department was able to tell me how to make the repair, and the chair is repaired and ready to go. However, while it was here, I couldn’t resist a little experiment. The chair’s white sling was looking a little gray, as this particular chair was from the Swim Club’s 2005 purchase. Over the years, I have always used a product called Feronclean on my outdoor furniture at home. My furniture has a few thin white stripes in the pattern, but it also has green, navy, and burgundy stripes. The Feronclean always made the white look like white again, so I was happy. My quest with this all white chair was to see how Feronclean would fare on a much tougher job. I wet down the entire chair, covered one-half of the sling, and then sprayed the cleaner on the exposed half and let it sit for a couple of minutes. Some light scrubbing and a rinse revealed a night and day difference. The pictures I took during this process tell the story better than I can.
So, what does this all mean? Well, it means that my recommendations of this product over the years were so very much justified. It means that Telescope makes great furniture, that the Gordon Feron & Company makes a great cleaner, and that the swim club is getting a much cleaner chair back!
How Can You Not Love Cincinnati?
With things like Graeter’s Ice Cream, Skyline Chili, Hudy Beer, and did I mention the weather. Where else in the world can you get at least 3 if not all 4 of the seasons in one week? Alright so seriously, the ability of the weather to turn on a dime is one of the most maddening things about this city, along with the traffic on I-275 north in the morning. It is however weather changes like this that make the need for a solar cover that much greater in this area. The mid to upper 80′s mid week to the 50′s at the beginning of the next, by using the solar cover the warmth that was created by the sun is trapped in the pool by the solar cover instead of floating off into the atmosphere. For those of you with heaters you are even more familiar with the need for the solar cover, looking out your window on a cool morning and watching the heat that you paid for to put in the pool rising off as steam. Granted adding a solar cover is not going to raise the temperature 20 degrees in a day, but you could honestly expect 3-5 degrees on a warm sunny day. This is where the high need of a solar cover comes in. The warm water is less dense than the cold water and rises to the top, and as such is what evaporates at night. By putting the solar blanket on it will trap that heat in your pool water. I realize solar covers can be bulky and difficult to be removed or put on by one person, and that is where a cover reel would come in handy. The ability to simply turn a crank and wind the cover up is kind of a dream come true. The other option is a liquid solar blanket which creates a “skin” on the surface of the water that cannot be seen, felt, or tasted but does prevent the evaporation of the pool water. I invite you to stop in and speak to one of our sale associates about which heat retention system is right for you. Hope to see you soon.
Inground Pool Opening Suggestion
As the winter snow thaws away and the temperature starts to climb we start field calls for pool openings and more interest in new pool installations. With this in mind, I wanted to remind all of those pool owners with mesh safety covers to get the cover off early. Mesh covers are great for their safety and low maintenance throughout the fall and winter months, but they do run the risk of allowing algae to grow if you don’t get the pool up and running a little earlier. Between sun, rain, and nature’s habits mesh covers can allow for the growth of our little green enemy. It is easy enough to avoid if you get the pool up and running early enough to cut it off at the pass. Just a little something to make your pool opening a little easier on you and save you a little cash in the process.
Craig
