About Renee
Hi, I’m Renee Callahan. The first summer we owned a pool, I shocked it on a Friday night and walked outside Saturday morning to water that looked like skim milk. I panicked, drove to the pool store, came home with three more bottles of something, and made it worse.
That weekend taught me the lesson this whole site is built on: test first, add chemicals second. Pool & Tub Fix is where I share what I’ve learned since, in plain English, for people who own a pool or hot tub and want to understand what’s going on instead of guessing.
My backyard
We live in the Arizona desert, where the pool season is long, the sun is relentless and evaporation is a daily fact of life. I take care of our in-ground plaster pool with a sand filter and a variable-speed pump, plus a hot tub that gets more use in winter than you’d expect. Add a dog who thinks the pool is his, summer monsoon storms that dump dust and debris overnight, and a waterfall I love that keeps pushing my pH up, and there’s always something to figure out.
I’ve cleared green pools, fought cloudy water for a week straight, replaced a pump seal on a Saturday afternoon and learned more than I ever wanted to about cyanuric acid. I’m not a certified pool operator. I’m a homeowner who reads the labels, keeps a test log and has made most of the mistakes so you don’t have to.
What you’ll find here
- Water chemistry: pH, alkalinity, chlorine, stabilizer, calcium and salt, explained without the jargon.
- Green and cloudy water: the order of steps that actually clears a pool.
- Pumps and filters: humming pumps, lost prime, bubbles and filters that won’t behave.
- Hot tubs and spas: heating problems, foam, smells and error codes.
- Seasonal care: opening, closing, storms, heat waves and vacations.
How I approach every fix
- Test before you treat. Every guide starts with what to measure and what the numbers mean.
- Least chemicals first. Circulation, filtration and brushing solve more problems than people expect.
- One change at a time. Adjust, wait, retest. Chasing numbers is how pools go sideways.
- Safety, always. Pool chemicals are strong. I’ll tell you how to handle them and when a job belongs with a pro, especially anything electrical, gas-related or structural.
Product directions, local codes and your equipment manuals always come first. Pools differ, and the right target for a saltwater plaster pool isn’t the same as for a vinyl above-ground pool. When it matters, I’ll say so. You can read more about how guides are made on our How We Write page.
Get in touch
Got a water problem you’d like covered, or spotted something I should fix? Send me a note. Plenty of the guides here started as a reader’s question.