As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout Florida, the government has extended the power of closure to the county level. Several counties have responded by issuing executive orders essentially closing some or all pools as non-essential businesses; depending on the county, for the sake of accelerating the social distancing and lessening the severity of the pandemic. PB County was one of the latest to comply with Executive Order #3, essentially closing mostly all pools in the county. Contact us for the latest list of executive orders in your county.

At the same time, the Florida Department of Health issued a ‘Best Practice Guidance” for closing pools. While they mentioned that there is “no required amount of public pool maintenance that a facility must comply with,” they went on to offer best practice recommendations.

In order to close the pool by choice, they must:

• Notify the local DOH, and post “CLOSED” signage on site,
• Prevent any sanitary nuisances, and keep the pool fence and gates in a safe condition,
• Keep a daily log when pool is open to ensure water quality compliance. If the pool is CLOSED, they must mark the log sheets accordingly and record the chemistry on the log.

The following recommendations were made:

• Use a pump timer to cycle the pool pump hours, or a variable speed pump to idle the pool to a lower GPM (per earlier CES blog posts),
• Suggest that the filter be operated at a minimum of 4-6 hours per day (at full speed),
• Chlorine and bromine residuals should be raised to 5.0 PPM to keep pool water safely clear by preventing green algae growth and hatching mosquitos
• Advise that the pool be checked at least once per day, because it will cause some professional time to turn the water from green to clear.  More importantly, there are public health and safety issues.
• The CES office and field staff remain at your service during this pandemic, as some facilities are utilizing our remote monitoring service to help limit exposure on their faciities, while others are using the time to catch up on upcoming preventive maintenance. A growing number of customers are using online ordering to assure timely deliveries of needed supplies to better comply with DOH requirements listed above.

The CES team stands ready to help. Please let us know what we can do to make your life easier.

Stay Safe.