Professional Pool Service
Hard groundwater makes pool openings tricky in Lodi, CA. Nevergreen Pools handles filter cleaning, staged chemistry, and new plaster start-ups.
Fill water in Lodi comes out of the ground hard. Calcium hardness readings around town routinely land well above what a plaster pool wants, and there is usually iron riding along with it. That matters more at start-up than at any other point in the year, because a pool that has been sitting still through a foggy winter has had months to concentrate that mineral load through evaporation. Bring the pump back online without testing first and you can push scale onto the tile line within a week, or set a brown iron stain that no amount of brushing will touch.
A proper start-up is a sequence, not a switch. The equipment gets inspected before anything spins, the water gets corrected in stages rather than all at once, and the filter runs on a schedule built around the volume of debris that came in over the winter. Skipping steps is how people end up asking for a drain and an acid wash in June on a pool that only needed two patient weeks of chemistry in March.
Nevergreen Pools handles pool start-up service in Lodi in partnership with Vintage Pool Service, a Central Valley company that has run routes out of East Yosemite Avenue in Manteca for years. Between the two crews we open pools across Lodi, Stockton, Manteca, and out toward Copperopolis every spring, and we know what this water does to plaster when it is left alone.
Calcium hardness is the number most homeowners never look at, and it is the one that decides whether your plaster stays smooth. Groundwater across Lodi is mineral heavy to begin with, and every gallon that evaporated last summer left its calcium behind as the level dropped. Top the pool off with a hose and you add more on top of that. By spring, a pool that started last season in a reasonable range can be sitting far above where plaster is comfortable.
We look at the saturation index rather than any single reading, because hardness, pH, alkalinity, and temperature all pull on each other. Water that is oversaturated drops calcium onto the surfaces as scale, first at the waterline where evaporation concentrates it, then on the tile and inside the heater. Water that swings the other way goes looking for calcium and pulls it out of the finish, which is what etching and that chalky feel underfoot actually are. Getting a Lodi pool into the middle of that range is the first real job of the start-up.
Iron is the second one. It arrives dissolved and invisible, then oxidizes the moment chlorine hits it and lands on the plaster as a rust colored stain. If a test shows metals in the fill water, the sequestrant goes in before the chlorine comes up, not after. Order matters here, and it is the single most common thing that gets done backward on a pool the owner opened themselves.
Before any chemistry, the equipment gets checked cold. Pump lid gasket and o-rings, basket and impeller, drain plugs, union fittings, valve gaskets, and the filter itself. Winter is hard on rubber, and a lid gasket that flattened out over a damp season will pull air instead of water and cook a shaft seal on the first day of run time.
Staging matters. Dumping acid, chlorine, and conditioner into the same water on the same afternoon gives you readings that lie to you and a real chance of clouding the pool or bleaching a mark into the finish. We correct one thing, let it circulate, and test again. On a pool that went green over the winter the chlorine demand can be enormous, and clearing it takes repeat visits across a week or two rather than one heroic shock. Cyanuric acid gets set deliberately, because Lodi summers run into the high 90s and low 100s and unstabilized chlorine is gone by lunchtime, while too much stabilizer locks it up and leaves you sanitizing nothing.
A freshly built or replastered pool is a different job, and the first two weeks decide how that surface looks for the next ten years. Plaster cures underwater, and while it cures it releases calcium and drives pH up hard. Left alone, that becomes scale and blotching on a brand new finish.
The fill goes in continuously, no stopping and starting, which means a hose that keeps up and a weighted cloth so the stream does not cut a divot into soft plaster. The pump runs around the clock at first. The surface gets brushed several times a day to knock plaster dust down before it settles and hardens. pH is tested and corrected daily, sometimes twice, because it climbs fast. Depending on the finish and the fill water it is either a bicarbonate start or an acid start, and given how hard the groundwater is, the bicarbonate approach is more often the right call in Lodi. No salt for the first month on a saltwater system, no heater until the water is balanced, and the first vacuum passes go to waste rather than through the filter.
An established pool that wintered in decent shape is usually swimmable a day or two after the visit, once chlorine holds a reading and pH settles. A pool that turned green needs longer, generally one to two weeks of filtering, brushing, and staged correction. New plaster is the long one, and swimming waits until the cure chemistry stabilizes, usually a couple of weeks in.
The last piece of a start-up is the run schedule, and it is the piece most people get wrong. Delta nights cool the water enough that a schedule copied from a neighbor in Stockton, or carried over from last September, will not fit the shoulder season here. We set run hours to turn the water over based on the pump, the plumbing, and the time of year, then extend them once tilling and harvest start putting dust in the air. Pools under mature oaks and sycamores need more filter time and more frequent basket checks than an open yard does, and anything within reach of the breeze off the Mokelumne picks up cottonwood in early summer.
Once the pool is open we can hand you a written run schedule and chemistry targets, or pick it up on a regular route. Either way, pool start-up service in Lodi should end with a pool that holds its own balance, not one that needs a rescue in July.
Related services in Lodi: Pool Maintenance in Lodi and Pool Rebalance in Lodi.
