Each year, thousands of Arizona residents email or call Rosie Romero’s radio show with questions about everything from preventing fires in their chimneys to getting rid of tree roots invading their sewer systems. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona.
QUESTION: How can you keep your swimming pool clean during the summer in Arizona?
ANSWER: When summer arrives, most homeowners have their pools cleaned weekly by a pool service. But that’s not enough when the temperature is 105-plus and we have a monsoon storm and heavy winds. A pool becomes a giant magnet for dirt, and the rainwater brings in organic material that can change your pool’s pH. So, the day after a big storm, brush the walls of your pool to loosen the dirt, back-flush your pool and apply a chemical liquid “shock” of chlorine. The chlorine will quickly zero out after a rainstorm, and it won’t hurt the plaster in the pool. Keep testing the pH; if it gets out of hand, the pool is more susceptible to staining. The pH measures how acidic or alkaline a solution may be. You may need to adjust chemical levels with muriatic acid.
Q: Over the long term, which is a better choice for treating the water in a swimming pool: a chlorine system or a salt system?
A: Our pool experts tell us that over the long term, salt systems are not a good choice though people generally like them because they’re gentler on skin and hair. But salt systems leave waterline stains on tiles and can also damage pool decking. A salt system can have a short lifespan and may have to be replaced after two or three years, or you may have to start supplementing the salt system with chlorine. Salt systems do produce some chlorine, but not enough to get rid of algae in summer.
Q: I have a solar electric system that’s working out pretty well, and I would really like to go off the grid completely and not return electricity to my electric power company anymore. I’d buy storage batteries where I can store the excess power that I produce. Then when I don’t produce enough power with my solar system, I’d use a transfer switch to start using power stored in the batteries. It would be just like using a transfer switch when the power in the house goes out and you switch to using a generator. Can I do that?
A: You may have to work with the power company on that question so that you can get completely separated from the electric meter on your house. I’m also not sure that those storage batteries for solar power have been completely perfected yet for what you want to do.
Special note: Some Arizona homeowners have had extensive monsoon-related damage recently to trees and then discovered that their home insurance policy doesn’t cover the entire bill for cleaning up a tree.
In one case, a homeowner incurred a $10,000 bill for removing a fallen tree from his yard with use of a crane and then could only recover $1,000 from insurance. Policies can limit coverage for removal when there isn’t damage done to the house or other property like a deck or fence as well. Insurance agencies advise that everyone should read their policies carefully to find out exactly what’s covered. If you have large trees in your yard, you may want to buy better coverage.
