Hear from Our Customers
You’ve been staring at test strips for ten minutes trying to match colors that all look the same. Then you’re standing in the pool aisle wondering if you need more chlorine, less pH down, or something else entirely. Most pool owners in Ambrose are spending too much on chemicals because they’re guessing—not testing accurately.
Professional water testing removes that guesswork completely. We test for everything your home kit misses: calcium hardness, total alkalinity, cyanuric acid, phosphates, and more. You get a full printout in under three minutes showing exactly where your water stands and what it needs.
Balanced water means your chlorine works efficiently, your equipment lasts longer, and you’re not throwing money at problems that don’t exist. It also means no more eye irritation, no algae blooms after a rainstorm, and no etching on your pool finish because the pH has been off for weeks.
We’ve been building and maintaining custom inground pools across Douglas County since before most pool companies in the area existed. We’re fully licensed, insured, and we know Georgia pool water inside and out.
That matters because water chemistry in Ambrose isn’t the same as it is in other parts of the country. Heavy summer rains dilute your chemicals. High heat accelerates chlorine loss. Red clay and pollen create their own issues. We account for all of it when we analyze your water and make recommendations.
We offer this service for free because we’d rather you spend your money on the right chemicals in the right amounts than waste it fixing problems that could’ve been prevented. You’re not walking into a sales pitch. You’re getting real answers from people who’ve seen every water issue a Georgia pool can throw at you.
Grab a clean plastic bottle or use one of ours. Fill it with water from elbow-deep in your pool—not from the surface, not from the skimmer. Bring it to us in Ambrose.
We run it through our testing equipment, which reads chemical and mineral levels far more accurately than any home kit. The whole process takes two to three minutes. You’ll get a printed report showing your current levels for pH, free chlorine, total chlorine, alkalinity, calcium hardness, cyanuric acid, and more.
Then we walk through it with you. If your pH is low, we’ll tell you how much pH increaser to add. If your calcium hardness is causing scaling, we’ll explain why and what to do. If everything looks good, we’ll tell you that too. You leave knowing exactly what your pool needs and how much of it to add. No guessing, no trial and error.
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We test for the levels that actually affect your pool’s health and your family’s safety. pH and chlorine are the basics, but they’re not the full picture. Low calcium hardness makes your water corrosive—it’ll eat away at your pool finish, your heater, and any metal fittings. High cyanuric acid makes your chlorine lazy, so you’re adding more and more without getting the sanitation you need.
Georgia pools deal with specific challenges. Summer storms dump gallons of rainwater into your pool overnight, throwing off your balance. Pollen season coats the surface and introduces organic material that feeds algae. Heat accelerates chemical breakdown, especially chlorine. If you’re testing at home with strips, you’re missing half of these issues because most strips don’t measure calcium, cyanuric acid, or phosphates.
Our water quality testing catches what you can’t see. We’ll tell you if your water is aggressive or scaling, if your sanitizer is being blocked by stabilizer buildup, or if you’re about to have an algae problem before it turns your pool green. And because this is Ambrose, we know what “normal” looks like for pools in this area. Your water doesn’t need to match a national chart—it needs to match what works here.
At minimum, once a week during swim season. That’s the baseline for any residential pool that’s being used regularly. If you’ve had heavy rain, a pool party, or you’ve added a large amount of any chemical, test again within a day or two.
Georgia weather makes weekly testing even more important. A summer thunderstorm can drop an inch of rain in your pool, which dilutes everything—chlorine, pH, alkalinity. If you don’t rebalance after that, you’re swimming in water that’s not properly sanitized. Same goes for heat. When it’s 95 degrees for a week straight, your chlorine burns off faster. You might think you’re maintaining your levels, but unless you’re testing, you’re guessing.
If your pool is sitting unused for long stretches, you can test less frequently, but you still need to monitor it. Algae doesn’t care if you’re swimming or not. Bring in a sample whenever you’re unsure, and definitely before you open your pool for the season or close it for the winter.
Test strips are convenient, but they’re not accurate. The color matching is subjective—what looks like 7.4 to you might look like 7.6 to someone else. They also degrade over time, especially in Georgia’s humidity. If your bottle has been sitting in the garage since last summer, those strips are probably giving you bad readings.
More importantly, most test strips only measure pH and chlorine. They don’t test calcium hardness, cyanuric acid, phosphates, or total alkalinity with any real precision. Those levels directly affect whether your water is corrosive, whether your chlorine is working, and whether you’re about to have an expensive equipment problem. Our testing equipment measures all of that in exact numbers, not color ranges.
You’ll also get a printed report you can reference later and recommendations based on your pool’s actual volume and current conditions. That’s not something a test strip can do. If you want to maintain your pool correctly and avoid costly mistakes, professional testing is the way to go.
We’ll tell you exactly what’s off and walk you through how to fix it. If it’s a minor imbalance—pH a little high, chlorine a little low—you’ll add the recommended chemicals and retest in a day or two. If it’s more severe, we’ll give you a step-by-step plan so you’re not dumping everything in at once and making it worse.
Severely imbalanced water usually means your pH is below 7.0 or above 8.0, your chlorine is nonexistent, or your calcium hardness is so low that your water is aggressive. Aggressive water will etch your plaster, corrode your heater, and damage your pump. It needs to be corrected quickly, but carefully. We’ll prioritize what to fix first and in what order.
The good news is that almost any water issue can be corrected. It might take a few days and a few rounds of adjustments, but it’s fixable. The key is testing frequently during the correction process so you know when you’ve hit the right levels. That’s why we offer free testing—you can come back as many times as you need until your water is where it should be.
Any clean plastic container works. A water bottle, a mason jar, a clean chemical bottle—just make sure it’s been rinsed out and doesn’t have soap or residue in it. If you’ve used it for pool chemicals before, rinse it thoroughly. Leftover chlorine or pH down will throw off your test results.
When you collect the sample, don’t skim it off the surface. Reach down about elbow-deep and fill the container there. Surface water can have debris, sunscreen, pollen, and other contaminants that aren’t representative of your pool’s actual chemistry. You want a sample from the middle of the water column where the circulation has mixed everything evenly.
Bring it in as soon as you can. Water chemistry can shift if the sample sits in a hot car for hours, especially chlorine levels. If you can’t get it to us right away, keep it in a cool, dark place. But ideally, collect it and bring it in the same day for the most accurate results.
Wait at least four to six hours after adding chemicals before you test. Your pool needs time to circulate and mix everything evenly. If you add chlorine and test thirty minutes later, you’re going to get a reading from the area where the chemical is concentrated, not from the pool as a whole.
Run your pump during that time so the water circulates. If you’ve added a large amount of anything—shock, pH adjuster, calcium—wait even longer, maybe eight to twelve hours. You want the water fully blended before you pull a sample. Otherwise, you’ll get a false reading and end up adding more chemicals than you actually need.
If you’ve just shocked your pool, wait until the chlorine level drops back below 5 ppm before you test for a regular maintenance reading. Shock pushes chlorine way up temporarily, and that’s expected. You’re not trying to balance around shock levels—you’re trying to balance around your everyday target, which is 1 to 3 ppm of free chlorine.
It’s completely free. No purchase required, no obligation, no catch. You bring in a sample, we test it, we print your results, and we explain what they mean. That’s it.
We offer this because we’d rather see pool owners in Ambrose maintaining their water correctly than dealing with algae blooms, equipment damage, and wasted money on chemicals they don’t need. Balanced water protects your investment and keeps your pool usable. If you’re guessing at your chemistry, you’re going to have problems eventually—and those problems cost a lot more to fix than a bottle of pH increaser.
We’ve been doing this for 30 years. We’re not trying to upsell you on services you don’t need. If your water is fine, we’ll tell you. If it needs adjustment, we’ll tell you what to buy and how much to add. You’re free to get those chemicals wherever you want. We’re here to give you accurate information so you can make good decisions about your pool.
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