While there are few things that freshen up a vinyl swimming pool more than a brilliant and dynamic new liner, most people want to get as much life out of the liner they have before incurring a liner replacement cost.

Today we’ll share several tips that can help increase the life of your pool vinyl liner.

• Keep pets out of your pool – While swimming dogs and other pets may be cute, fun, or a great bonding moment it’s also a great way to end up with a damaged liner. One swipe of a dogs claws can do serious damage to a pool liner.

• Install it correctly – While you can probably save some money by ordering your own liner and installing it yourself… don’t. More often than not “do it yourself pool liner installers” only manage to end up buying 2 liners (the first one they install, and a second one a few years later to replace the first). There are lots of places in life to save money. Installing a liner isn’t one of them.

• Invest in plastic – If you own a vinyl pool, you should absolutely invest in a good quality set of plastic glasses, silverware and plates. We would also suggest making them dishwasher safe because who wants to clean a dozen plates, glasses and cutlery after a pool party.

• Drinks – When it comes time to have some drinks, always use those dishwasher safe plastic glasses you bought as per point #3. Your second choice will be cans. We suggest implementing a strict “no glass bottles allowed” policy. Glass is the mortal enemy of a vinyl liner. Broken beer bottles have contributed to countless rips, tears and holes in vinyl liners.

• Never empty your pool – Make sure there is always at least 12 inches of water in your shallow end. Vinyl thats exposed to air dries out and cracks.

• Water chemistry – Keep your pool balanced. High calcium levels can allow scale to build up creating brittle liners and excessive alkalinity levels make them less flexible.

• Don’t over chlorinate – Further to our last point, keep chlorine levels between 1.0 and 3.0. This will not only help keep your pool clear and sparkling, but also help increase your liners life.

• Fix fast – if a tear or leak occurs fix it as fast as possible. Small problems with liners have ways of becoming large problems quickly.

There you have it. 8 tips on getting more life out of your swimming pools vinyl liner.