New Pool Manager!

Hello all, My name is Matt and I am an aquatics director from Maine.

I manage two indoor pools year round as well as an outdoor pool facility during the summer months (June-August). I will soon be completing my CPO course and getting up to speed on everything since I haven't operated a pool in a few years. Prior to this I was a lifeguard and coached swimming part time and years ago I was a pool supervisor. The 3 main pools I am in charge of are a 25 yd lap pool, a 20 yd therapeutic pool, and a 25 yd outdoor lap/family pool. We also have a couple of wading pools and 2 water slides that dump into another small pool.

I'm sure I'll be on here a bunch in the next few months looking for advice!

Unfortunately, I'm almost the only one here with extensive commercial pool experience - it's what I've done, locally for 25+ years. There are other commercial forum members, but they tend to show up only when they have a specific problem . . . and then leave. After all, for most of them it's 'just a job' and often a temporary one at that.

If you are going through CPO training, this thread will help, though it's pretty technical: http://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/17723

Please note that that thread is at TFP, not here. Also there are a number of guys in that thread who are not necessarily knowledgeable or correct. Chem_Geek is both. And although he has no experience himself with commercial pools, he's very familiar with the literature, and at this time, probably knows more about pool chemistry, from an analytical point of view, than anyone else in the world, and I mean that literally. That's kind of amazing, considering that he's acquired all that information in a little more than 10 years, since he first registered here in 2001 or 2002.

Both he and I will be very busy with regular posts through July 4th or so. If you want to ask questions after that, specifically about indoor pools, Chem_Geek has some ideas about those. I'm personally not sure they work, but I haven't had an indoor pool to try them on, since he proposed them.

Meanwhile, if you'll enter all your pools in the pool chart, we'll have that organized and posted by the time we can get around to answering commercial pool questions. http://pool9.net/pf-chart/

Good luck.