With scorching Texas temperatures, summer is a busy time for pool owners and pool companies. In this Q&A, John Parsons from Pinch a Penny Pool Patio Spa in Flower Mound has a few tips for pool owners and home owners who are looking to install a pool.

What are some tips for pool owners to keep their pools and their filters clean?

Parsons: Try to backwash. If you are able to backwash your filter, try to backwash once a week. Check your pressure gauge on your filter. If it's really really sky high, anything that's over like 25 psi usually is a sign that you probably need to clean your filter. Those are pretty much the two main ones, just skimming the top of the pool and getting rid of any type of debris that may be at the bottom of the pool, making the pool have to work harder. Anything to reduce that matter would be very beneficial.

What is one thing pool owners should never do when it comes to pool maintenance?

Parsons: If you do not know something, just ask questions. If you try to push through it, and sometimes you might, you might be successful, but you also have a really huge chance of messing something up or breaking something. So just ask somebody that is in industry and if you need any help, we'll be more than happy to help you.

What tips do you have for people looking to install a pool?

Parsons: Really look into your backyard. The more trees that you have, the more you can expect debris to fall into your pool over the course of the year. Fall is typically the busiest leaf debris season, so you're going to get a lot of leaves, a ton of sticks, anything like that is going to fall into that pool. So the more foliage and trees that you have in your backyard, the harder it is going to be to upkeep, and you probably want to look into hiring a cleaning company to do your pool service for you because it is a very big responsibility.

What steps need to be taken before a pool is ready to be used?

Parsons: If it's been sitting for a while, we want to make sure that all the chemicals are actually correct in the pool. [The pool is] supposed to be crystal clear for a reason. It's a pool. It's not like a lake that you're gonna go hang out in with your friends. So you want to make sure all the chemicals are balanced. And then on top of that, you want to make sure that you're not getting any type of burning sensation from those chemicals. If the chlorine is too high or the pH is too low, those are going to cause some irritants in the water and how your skin reacts to them. So just check the chemicals before you get in and make sure the water’s actually moving.

What upgrades are popular requests for your business?

Parsons: Definitely the number one would be the robotic cleaners and iPhone automation systems. Anything to do with plugging your pool system to like an online system, so it's all based off of an app on your phone—Apple or Android. That's very popular right now, being able to control your pool from your phone, no matter where you're at. It's probably been around for about five or six years, but it's just getting better and better. And sooner or later, they're going to have cleaners that just clean everything for you. And hopefully that's sooner rather than later.