Sal Taking Care Of Other People's Pools Since Nineteen

Nearly Every Pool Problem Is One Of About A Dozen. The Store Would Rather You Never Learned Which.

Green water, cloudy water, chlorine that disappears by evening, a pump that will not prime — they all have a number behind them, and the number is usually cheap. This is the whole job written down: every dose, every range, every price, in the order I would walk you through it standing at your equipment pad.

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33Chapters

148Pages

15 minA Week

Sal, the pool guy, at his equipment shelf

“For every homeowner who was told their water was ‘complicated’ — and charged accordingly.”

Sal · The Dedication

Section I · The Book

A Working Manual, Not A Book About The Joy Of Swimming

Every chapter in here has a real number in it: a dose, a range, a pressure reading, a price, a run time.

I have been taking care of other people's pools since I was nineteen years old. I have cleaned up water that looked like pond scum, I have replaced pump seals in the rain, and I have stood in a lot of backyards explaining to a lot of good people why the four hundred dollars of chemicals in their garage did not fix anything.

Most of what goes wrong with a swimming pool is one of about a dozen problems. Once you can recognize those dozen, the pool stops being a mystery and starts being a chore that takes fifteen minutes a week. That is the entire premise of this book, and everything in it is built to get you there in one season.

“A pool does not punish ignorance. It punishes inattention. The owner who understands nothing but tests twice a week and adds what the test says will have clear water all summer. The owner who understands the chemistry perfectly but goes three weeks without looking will be standing in front of a green pool in July.”

Every chapter is built the same way, so you always know where to look. The opening tells you what the problem is in plain language and what the fix is going to be. The middle walks you through the work. Where a chapter involves chemicals or electricity there is a safety note, and I mean it every time I write one. At the end of most chapters there is a card you can read by itself: the doses, the numbers, or the steps, boiled down.

If a method costs money, I tell you what it costs. If a product is a waste of your money, I tell you that too, and I tell you why. The dollar figures are 2026 retail prices for a homeowner buying in normal quantities. Prices move — the ratios do not. Every dose in the book is written per 10,000 gallons, and Chapter 1 shows you how to work out your own gallons before you add a single thing to the water.

One promise from my side: I am not going to send you to the pool store for anything you do not need. Every chapter that costs you money says so up front, and every chapter that saves you money shows the math.

Section II · The Difference

You Do Not Need To Be Handy. You Need To Read A Test Result And Turn A Valve.

That is the whole skill set. Everything below is the difference between treating a pool by colour and treating it by number.

The way the backyard usually goes Guessing, then buying

Water goes green, so a jug of something gets poured in — with no idea how many gallons are in the pool
Test strips read by eye against a colour card, then a free store test that ends in a recommendation to buy
Stabilizer climbs quietly for three seasons until chlorine stops working at any dose
Filter pressure creeps up and the filter gets replaced instead of cleaned
Pump runs eight hours at full speed because that is how it was set the day it was installed
A service comes twice a month for two thousand dollars a season and adds a jug of chlorine

The way this book runs a pool Four numbers, fifteen minutes, same day every week

Chapter 1 gets your gallons written on tape on the equipment pad, so every dose after it is right
A drop-based FAS-DPD kit, $95 to $130 once, gives you free chlorine, pH, alkalinity and CYA you can trust
Chapter 7 is the stabilizer trap in full, with the free-chlorine-to-CYA table that ends the mystery
Chapter 22 turns the pressure gauge into a dashboard: clean baseline, service point, and what low pressure means
Chapter 31 sets a variable-speed pump to run longer at 1,400–1,800 RPM for roughly an eighth of the power
The Fifteen Minute Week in Chapter 2: test, dose, brush, empty the baskets, glance at the gauge

What the numbers actually look like

What you are looking at	What it actually is	Where it is
Green pool	Chlorine held at shock level against your stabilizer, brushed and filtered. Back to clear in two to four days, not two to four weeks.	Ch. 12
Chlorine gone by evening	Either the stabilizer is too high for the dose, or something in the water is eating it. Two different fixes, one test tells you which.	Ch. 7, 17
Cloudy water	Six causes. Only two of them are solved by adding a product, and one is solved by leaving the pump on.	Ch. 13
Strong chlorine smell	Not too much chlorine. Combined chlorine — the opposite problem, and the fix is more chlorine, not less.	Ch. 18
Filter pressure high	A service, not a purchase. The gauge tells you when, and the number is your own clean baseline plus 8 to 10 psi.	Ch. 21, 22
Summer electric bill	A pump run at full speed. A setting change routinely takes three to six hundred dollars a year off the bill.	Ch. 31
“You need $200 of chemicals”	Free store testing is a sales funnel with a countertop machine attached. Chapter 32 is how to buy without getting sold.	Ch. 32

Seven of the thirty-three chapters, compressed to one line each. Every target range, every dose per 10,000 gallons, and the whole troubleshooting index are printed in the four appendices at the back — the pages readers say they end up taping inside the shed door.

Section III · What's Inside

33 Chapters, Grouped By The Kind Of Trouble You Are Having

If your water is green today, go to the green pool chapter today. Nobody is grading you. The chemistry section is the foundation for everything after it, so come back to it when the emergency is over.

Openingp. 3–9

Before You Begin
How To Use This Book
The First Weekend — three things, about two hours, under a hundred dollars

The Basicsp. 10–24

01How A Swimming Pool Actually Works
02The Fifteen Minute Week
03The Only Gear You Actually Need
04What A Pool Really Costs To Run

The Waterp. 25–52

05Chlorine, Explained Properly
06pH And Total Alkalinity
07Cyanuric Acid: The Trap Nobody Warns You About
08Calcium, Hardness, And Whether Your Water Is Eating The Pool
09Shocking, Done Right
10Testing: Getting Numbers You Can Trust
11Salt Pools, Honestly

Problem Waterp. 53–82

12The Green Pool: Back To Clear In Two To Four Days
13Cloudy Water And Its Six Causes
14Mustard, Black, And Pink: The Stubborn Ones
15Stains: Telling Metal From Organic
16Well Water, Iron, And The Fill You Cannot Control
17Water That Will Not Hold Chlorine
18Burning Eyes And The Chlorine Smell
19Foam, Oil Film, Pollen, And Everything Else On The Surface

The Equipmentp. 83–113

20The Pump: Priming, Air Leaks, And Seals
21Filters: Sand, Cartridge, And DE
22The Pressure Gauge Is Your Dashboard
23Skimmers, Returns, And Making Water Move Right
24Heating: Gas, Heat Pump, Solar, And The Cover That Beats Them All
25Cleaners And Robots: What To Buy And What To Skip
26Surfaces: Liner, Plaster, Fiberglass, And Tile
27Finding A Leak Without Paying For A Leak Detection

The Seasonsp. 114–125

28Opening The Pool Without A Green Mess
29Closing: The Two Hours That Decide Next Spring
30Heat Waves, Storms, And Parties

The Money And The Riskp. 126–138

31Cutting The Running Cost In Half
32The Pool Store: How To Buy Without Getting Sold
33Safety: The Rules That Are Not Optional

The Cards At The Backp. 139–148

Appendix A — The Numbers: target ranges, and free chlorine by stabilizer level
Appendix B — Dosage Chart: every dose to raise or lower, per 10,000 gallons
Appendix C — Troubleshooting Index: what you see, and the chapter that fixes it
Appendix D — The Weekly Log, and a page for your own pool's facts
A Last Word From Sal

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Section IV · Reader Results

What Readers Have Been Writing In

★★★★★

“Green on the Friday, swimmable by Monday afternoon. I had been buying algaecide every summer for six years. It was never the algaecide. Chapter 12 and the chlorine table at the back were the whole fix.”

Ron D. · Arizona

★★★★★

“The stabilizer chapter explained four seasons of my life. My CYA was over 100 and no amount of chlorine was ever going to work. Nobody at the store ever mentioned it — they just kept selling me shock.”

Denise M. · Florida

★★★★★

“I bought a house with a pool and had no idea what any of it did. I read the first weekend pages, changed the pump schedule, and my July bill dropped by fifty-odd dollars. It has already paid for itself several times.”

Curtis A. · Texas

Section V · About

Sal, The Pool Guy

I have been taking care of other people's pools since I was nineteen years old. It is not a glamorous trade. It is skimmers and seals and standing in the sun with a test kit, and after enough years of it you stop seeing a mystery in a backyard and start seeing about a dozen recurring problems wearing different hats.

I started posting videos because the same questions kept coming from the same kind of person: an owner who has been told their water is complicated, who has a garage full of product that did not work, and who is starting to think the pool was a mistake. It usually is not. It is usually a stabilizer number nobody ever tested.

This book is for the owner who wants to run their own pool and stop paying a service two thousand dollars a season to dump a jug of chlorine in and drive off. It is for the owner who already has a service but is tired of being sold things. And it is for the person who just bought a house with a pool in the backyard and has no idea what any of the equipment does.

What it will not do is teach you to rewire a panel, replumb a pad from scratch, or resurface plaster. Those are real trades. What it will do is teach you to know when you are looking at a twenty dollar fix and when you are looking at a job worth paying for — which is exactly the knowledge the industry counts on you not having.

If a chapter in here sends you wrong, tell me through the channel. There will be another edition.

Sal

The Pool Guy · First Edition, 2026

Section VI · Order

The Pool Care Bible

Every water problem and the cheapest way to fix it — 33 chapters, 148 pages, with a real number in every one.

You already own the hard part. The pool is in the ground, the equipment is on the pad, and the water is doing whatever it is doing. What you do not have is the order to check it in, and that is the entire difference between a chore that takes fifteen minutes and a summer of guessing.

148 pages, illustrated, built to be worked with rather than read through. The chemistry section is the foundation. The problem-water section is what you reach for when something has already gone wrong. The equipment section is how you tell a twenty dollar fix from a real repair. And the four appendices at the back — the target ranges, the dosage chart, the troubleshooting index, and the weekly log — are the pages most readers end up printing.

$27 until the launch promo ends at midnight. After that it is $47.

First Edition · 2026 The Pool Care Bible

The complete 148-page illustrated manual — emailed to you within about a minute
All 33 chapters: the basics, the water, problem water, the equipment, the seasons, the money
The First Weekend — three things, about two hours, that fix most of it before you start
Appendix A: target ranges, and the free-chlorine-by-stabilizer table
Appendix B: every dose to raise or lower anything, per 10,000 gallons
Appendix C: the troubleshooting index — what you see, and the chapter that fixes it
Appendix D: the printable weekly log and your own pool's facts page

$47 $27

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Section VII · Questions

Questions I Get Asked

Is this really going to work on my pool? Mine is different.

A swimming pool is a tank of water, a pump, a filter, and a chemical that kills things. The shapes change and the surfaces change, and the book covers those differences where they matter — liner, plaster, fiberglass and tile each get their own treatment in Chapter 26, salt pools get Chapter 11 with their own target ranges, and well water gets Chapter 16 because iron in the fill is its own problem. What does not change is the chemistry. Every dose is written per 10,000 gallons so it scales to any pool, above ground or in ground, 7,000 gallons or 40,000.

Your videos are free. Why would I buy the book?

Because a video is one problem at a time, and you cannot lay a video on the equipment pad and read it while the pump is running. The book is every problem in one place, in the order you would actually work, with the dose, the range and the price on the page instead of in a comment section. The appendices are the part readers use most — target ranges, the dosage chart, and a troubleshooting index that sends you straight to the right chapter — and they would make for a terrible video.

Why is it only $27?

Because the people I wrote it for are the ones already paying two thousand dollars a season for a service, or four hundred dollars a summer for products that do not work. A hundred dollar reference book would be one more thing sold to them. It costs me nothing to send a file. $47 is what it goes to when the launch promo ends; $27 is the launch number.

What format is it, and can I print it?

It is a PDF — 148 pages, First Edition 2026, designed and illustrated. It opens on a phone, a tablet, a laptop or an e-reader, and it prints cleanly on ordinary paper if you would rather keep it in a binder by the pad. The appendices were laid out to be printed: Appendix A is meant to be taped inside the shed door, and Appendix D is a weekly log you copy. Delivery is instant, it arrives by email within about a minute, and the file is yours to keep.

Do I need to be handy, or buy a lot of equipment?

You need to be able to read a test result and turn a valve. That is the whole skill set. The one purchase I insist on is a drop-based FAS-DPD test kit — a Taylor K-2006C or a TF-100 style kit, $95 to $130, good for a couple of seasons on refills. It is the single highest-return purchase in the book, because everything else depends on knowing four numbers accurately. Chapter 3 covers the rest of the gear, and most of that chapter is about what not to buy.

I already pay a service. Is this still for me?

Yes, and those readers tend to get the most out of Chapters 31 and 32. Knowing your own four numbers changes what happens on a service visit: you can tell whether a recommendation is a real fix or an upsell, and you can decide which parts of the job are worth paying somebody to do. Plenty of owners keep the service and simply stop buying what they do not need.

My pool is green right now. Where do I start?

Chapter 12, today. It takes you from green to clear in two to four days — chlorine held at the right level against your stabilizer, brushing, and running the filter — and it tells you what it will cost before you start. Then come back and read Chapters 5 and 7 afterwards, because those two explain why the green happened in the first place and how to keep it from happening again.

Wait — one thing

Less Than One Service Visit.

The whole book is $27 until midnight. That is less than a single visit from a pool service — for the manual that tells you what they were going to do, and what it should have cost.

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