The First Thing You Should Do When You Uncover Your Pool This Spring

Every spring it goes the same way. You pull back the cover, toss it to the side, look at the water, and immediately start thinking about chemicals. Is it green? Cloudy? What does the pH look like? What do I add first?

And all of that matters. But there's something most homeowners skip entirely before any of that, and it's the thing that ends up costing them the most money when they miss it.

Walk around the pool first.

I mean a real walk. Slow. Eyes on the tile, the coping, the deck, the equipment pad, the returns, the skimmer. Not a glance. A look.

What Winter Does to a Pool in Placer County

People think of this area as mild. And compared to the Midwest or the Northeast, sure, it is. But Rocklin, Lincoln, and Roseville still see hard freezes. They still see temperature swings that go from 28 degrees at night to 65 degrees in the afternoon. And they still have water sitting in pipes and equipment for months while nobody is paying close attention.

That combination does things. Tile grout cracks. Coping shifts. Plaster surfaces absorb moisture and develop small fissures. Fittings that were already a little worn get a little more worn. None of it announces itself loudly. You have to look for it.

What the Walk-Around Is Actually Looking For

Start at the water line. Run your eye along the tile. What you're looking for is anything that wasn't there last fall — cracked grout between tiles, tiles that have popped or shifted even slightly, calcium buildup that looks heavier on one section than another. That last one can indicate a spot where water has been sitting against the surface differently than it should.

Move to the coping, the stone or concrete edge that runs around the top of the pool. Coping absorbs water, and when it freezes and thaws, it can crack. Small cracks look cosmetic. They often aren't. Water that gets behind coping can work its way into the bond beam — the structural concrete that holds everything together — and cause problems that get significantly more expensive over time.

Check the deck. Look for new cracks, especially ones running toward the pool. Look for sections that feel soft or have shifted relative to the surrounding concrete. Deck movement near the pool edge can indicate soil settling or, in some cases, water migration from the pool itself.

Now look at the equipment. The pump, filter, heater if you have one. Look for mineral deposits around fittings and unions. Look for any evidence of cracking in PVC connections, which can happen when water freezes inside them. Look at the area around the base of the pump and filter for staining or residue that might suggest a slow drip that happened over winter. If anything looks off, it's worth getting it checked out before you're running the system daily — our pool repair team handles exactly this kind of early-season diagnosis.

Finally, look in the skimmer. Not just at the water level — look at the skimmer body itself. Concrete skimmers in older pools can crack during freezes, and a cracked skimmer will lose water slowly and steadily in a way that's easy to blame on evaporation all summer long.

Why This Matters Before You Turn Anything On

The reason to do this before you start equipment, before you balance water, before you do anything, is simple: if something is wrong, you want to know about it before you complicate the picture.

A pump that runs fine but is leaking at a union is easier to diagnose before the water is circulating. A plaster crack is easier to assess when the pool is still. A skimmer issue is a lot less ambiguous before you've added three weeks of chemicals and adjusted the water level twice.

The walk-around is also what separates homeowners who catch problems in April from homeowners who call us in July because something went wrong and they can't figure out when it started. In almost every case, there were signs. They were just there before anyone was looking.

If you've got a spa attached to the pool, don't skip it during the walk-around either. The same winter wear applies, and spas tend to get overlooked once pool season kicks in. Our spa repair and spa service pages cover what we look for on that side of things.

When to Call Instead of Guess

Some things you can assess yourself. A cracked tile you can see clearly. A fitting that's visibly weeping. A deck crack that goes straight through.

But plaster issues, suspected skimmer cracks, anything involving the bond beam or the equipment pad — those are worth having someone look at before you decide they're minor. A few hundred dollars in early-season diagnosis almost always beats a few thousand in midsummer repairs.

If your spring walk-around turns up anything you're not sure about, or if you'd rather have a trained set of eyes go through everything before you open the pool for the season, that's exactly what we're here for. Our pool service covers routine maintenance and inspections, and we work with homeowners across the area year-round.

American Dream Pool and Spa Service provides pool maintenance, repairs, and inspections for homeowners in Rocklin, Roseville, Lincoln, Granite Bay, Loomis, Penryn, and Sheridan. Get in touch with us to schedule your spring pool inspection before the season gets away from you.