With spring finally in bloom and summer soon to follow, pool installation and maintenance service companies are beginning to prepare for the busy days ahead. As the temperatures rise and customer calls come flooding in, there’s only way for business operators to enhance worker productivity and overall customer satisfaction — by stocking their pool trucks with all of the necessary essentials.
Whether it’s a new pool installation or routine cleaning service, a robust toolkit can ensure every employee is equipped to tackle any customer request. From installers to cleaners, check out our breakdown of the top pool truck essentials you need on hand this swimming season.
Pool Installation Truck Essentials
Pool installation service providers know firsthand that pool installs require dramatically different tools than a pool maintenance and cleaning service company. In fact, some of the heavy equipment required to construct a pool can be the size of the truck you’re driving! However, there are some smaller essentials you should consider keeping on hand when working on an install project.
Excavation Tools
Excavation is the first step of any in-ground pool construction project. To nail the job the first time around, you’ll want to ensure you have a measuring tape, paint and string on hand to visualize the pool’s dimensions before digging. Once you begin digging, some sort of earth moving machine, such as a backhoe, will be required to achieve the desired depth of the pool.
No, a backhoe won’t slide into the bed of your truck — but, you should have a few smaller tools on hand to assist during the digging process. Shovels, rakes, pick axes and sledgehammers should also always be kept in the truck to more accurately shape the curvature and sharp corners of the pool.
Wall Construction Tools
Once excavation is complete, your next step is to construct the pool walls. At this point, necessary tools will vary depending on the customer’s material choice. For instance, fiberglass, vinyl or cement wall options all require different tools and equipment. However, there are a few universal options that should be kept on hand.
To ensure the foundation of the pool is even, a transit level, site levels or laser levels should always be kept on hand. Once the construction of the pool walls are underway, various hand tools such as wrenches, drills and shims should be used to maintain proper leveling. Likewise, a waterproof caulk gun should also be kept in the truck to seal off any leaks.
Plumbing Tools
Once the excavation and wall construction process is complete, a pool will need to undergo plumbing work for the pump and filtration system to effectively operate. To complete common pool plumbing processes, piping tools such as hacksaws, tongue and groove pliers, hole saws, pipe cutters, and PVC glue and primer should always be stored in the truck.
Pool Cleaning Truck Essentials
If you operate a pool cleaning service business, you’re very aware that the levels of required cleaning vary significantly from pool to pool. To conquer any quality of pool this spring and summer season, make sure you keep these pool cleaning truck essentials on hand.
Skimmer
From tree leaves to lifeless insects, a pool’s surface can quickly collect debris, making swimming quite uncomfortable. Fortunately, debris build-up can be one of the grossest yet easily fixable concerns a customer may face. To quickly eliminate these floating annoyances, always keep a pool skimmer in the truck.
Algae Brush
One of the most common issues in a customer’s pool is the build-up of algae on the pool walls. While water borne algae can simply be treated with chemicals, algae build-up on walls will require a bit of elbow grease to eliminate. Make sure you always have both nylon and stainless steel algae brush options readily available to effectively clean the specific pool material you’re dealing with.
Manual Vacuum with Telescoping Pole
Once you break up the algae in a customer’s pool, you’ll need to remove it from the water. By staying readily equipped with a manual pool vacuum attached to a telescoping pole, you can clean all depths of the pool and quickly rid the water of these contaminants.
Filter Cleaner
Outside of manual pool cleaning processes, a healthy pool relies on the presence of a quality pool filter. To maintain the quality of a customer’s pool filter, always keep filter cleaner chemicals on hand to remove dirt and grime that can impact filter efficiency.
Pool Maintenance Truck Essentials
A typical pool maintenance and cleaning technician may not require as many heavy duty tools as an installer to get their job done. But just as installers need to work with multiple material options, so do maintenance techs — meaning cleaners will also face varying customer needs each day. To best tackle any and all pool maintenance concerns, make sure these essentials are readily available in your truck.
Water Test Kits
To pinpoint exactly where a customer’s water quality stands and what sort of treatment it will require, it’s crucial you always have a water test kit on hand. Options including liquid and strip test kits help you measure levels of chlorine, hardness, alkalinity and pH levels in a customer’s pool to help further determine what treatment services the pool will require.
Pool Sanitizer: Chlorine, Salt, or Bromine
Pool owners have a choice of a chlorine, salt or bromine-based pool. Depending on the pool type, specific sanitizing chemical bases maintain proper levels of bacteria and contaminants within the customer’s pool. To match the needs of any customer pool type, stock the work truck with all three of these essentials.
Pool Shock
When a customer’s pool endures large water changes, algae issues or even an unfortunate missed trip to the bathroom, bacteria levels may spike. Once this occurs, the water is essentially un-swimmable. Always have pool shock chemicals on hand to help bring sanitizer levels up to safe and swimmable levels.
pH Control and Algaecide
Following a water test, a pool professional may discover that a customer’s water has an unbalanced pH level. These off-balance pH levels can actually create harmful swimming conditions as well as algae outbreaks in the water. To fight algae attacks and improperly balanced pH levels, always have algaecide and pH control chemicals readily available in the work vehicle.
Be Prepared for Anything This Pool Season
Aside from maintaining a well-stocked pool truck to tackle each and every customer’s needs, operating a leading pool installation or maintenance company relies on proper business management. That means you should have your employees, finances and customer information in order this coming pool season. With FieldPulse, you can organize client details, schedule work orders, and create customer invoices all from one convenient platform — so you can get back to business without any added stress.
To learn more about what FieldPulse can do for your pool construction and maintenance business, schedule a free demo today.
