Acid Wash or Tile Cleaning: Which One Does Your Pool Need?

Owners often call and ask for an acid wash when what they're looking at is a white band on the tile. Others have a dull, stained pool floor and ask about tile cleaning. The two services get mixed up a lot, and they're not the same job. We do both, so here's a plain comparison to help you work out which one your pool needs.

What tile cleaning is

Tile calcium removal targets the scale that builds up on tile, grout, spillways, waterfalls, fountains, negative edge walls and similar features, including Pebble Tec and stone. We lower the water 6 to 8 inches, choose media to suit the surface, blast the calcium off, rinse the deck and remove the spent media with our own portable pump and filter. The pool is never drained.

If your complaint is a white or crusty band at the waterline, calcium between the grout lines, or scaled-up water features, this is the service that fits. It leaves your pool full, and you can swim immediately afterward.

What an acid wash is

An acid wash is a full interior treatment. The pool is drained, and the interior surface is cleaned with an acid cleaning solution. Water saturated with hard-water minerals stains interior surfaces over time, and the acid wash deals with that: it removes contaminants, algae and dirt, and it removes most surface staining. The result is a brighter interior. It's a great economical way to renew a pool that has gone dull or stained.

Because it covers the whole interior surface rather than a band at the water level, an acid wash is the right call when the problem is everywhere you look: a dingy floor, blotchy walls, a general tired look that no brush has fixed.

How often an acid wash makes sense in Arizona

The usual interval in Arizona is every two to four years. Three things in our climate drive that. Hard water leaves mineral deposits. Extreme summer temperatures are hard on everything in and around a pool. And high evaporation concentrates minerals in whatever water is left. Put them together and interior surfaces pick up staining faster than they would in a milder place.

That is a range, not a deadline. A pool with good chemistry and light use might be fine toward the long end. A pool that runs hard and gets a lot of sun might want attention toward the short end. Look at your pool rather than the calendar.

Hard-water minerals are the common thread. They show up as scale on tile and as stains on the interior surface, and they're the reason Phoenix pools tend to need one service or the other more often than pools in places with softer water.

Telling them apart in your own backyard

• A white or grey crust in a line at the water level points to tile cleaning.
• White deposits between tiles, on grout lines, point to tile cleaning.
• Scale on a waterfall, spillway or fountain points to tile cleaning.
• A dull, stained or dingy floor and walls point to an acid wash.
• Algae spots or general dirt across the interior surface point to an acid wash.

Plenty of pools have both going on. A pool can have a waterline band and a tired interior at the same time. That's normal for older pools in the valley, and the two services can be done on their own schedules or in the same visit, depending on what your pool needs.

A quick check you can do yourself: stand at the edge in good light and compare the tile band, the walls and the floor. If only the band looks wrong, you're looking at tile cleaning. If the whole shell looks a shade darker or duller than it did a few years ago, that's the conversation to have about an acid wash.

What it costs, and how to find out

For tile cleaning, an average size pool with average staining generally runs $350 to $450. Your number depends on the size of the pool and how heavy the staining is, so the honest way to get it is to ask. Answer a few simple questions, send a few photos, and we can give you a free estimate over the phone.

Our other services follow the same approach: tell us what you're seeing, and we'll tell you what we think your pool needs before anyone spends a dollar. Sometimes that's tile cleaning alone. Sometimes it's an acid wash. Occasionally it's something else entirely, such as tile and grout repair, which we also handle. Calcium on tile and staining on the pool interior are different problems with different fixes, and we'd rather ask you a few questions on the phone than sell you the wrong service.

We serve Anthem, New River, Desert Hills, Peoria, Surprise, Scottsdale, North Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Carefree, Paradise Valley and Phoenix. Call (480) 818-7235 for a free quote.