With the summer season approaching, many home owners are thinking to escape the intolerable heat and humidity while relaxing in their personal swimming pools. Keeping the pool clean is a chore that must be done. One feature of most pools is the pool skimmer. The skimmer, when operated properly, can greatly reduce debris in the pool, making cleaning a much simpler process. There are three essential things to understand how a skimmer works: The weir, skimmer basket and the water level.

What exactly does a pool skimmer do? It's function is removing debris floating on the pool surface such as leaves, small insects, and dust. Most pools have at least one skimmer. Some pools can have too or more. Simply stated removing debris from the surface keeps the pool cleaner. The skimmer consists of two parts the skimmer door called a weir and the skimmer basket. In order for the skimmer to work properly, the water level of the pool must be maintained at the middle of the skimmer opening. Try to adjust the pool returns, in such a manner that water circulates toward the skimmer.

The skimmer basket has an important role, namely keeping the large debris from getting to the pump and reducing the pool pumps ability to pump water. Cracked baskets should be replaced.

The weir acts as a small waterfall. When the pump is on, the weir door is pulled back slightly towards the basket, causing the surface water to be pulled into the skimmer by cascading over the top of the weir, removing surface debris.

Recently, solar powered pool skimmers have appeared in the market. Conceptually they work the same as a normal skimmer. For pools that do not have a built in skimmer this might be a solution.

No matter what kind of swimming pool you have the proper use of the skimmer weir and a functioning skimmer basket is essential in keeping your pool clean. At MyPool we have a large selection of skimmer baskets and skimmer weirs. As the swimming pool owner, water safety of everybody using your swimming pool is your responsibility.