How To Clean Pool Floats

Before summer kicks off, you need to make sure that your pool is spick, span, and ready for the long swimming season ahead. At the same time, you need to check that your poolside accessories are equally as clean, namely, your pool floats.

Have you ever taken your pool floats out of storage and noticed mold, mildew, or other dirt on the surface of your pool toys? Don’t throw them away! You could easily make your favorite pool floats last for several seasons if you learn how to clean them effectively. But how do you do it?

In this article, we’ll provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to clean pool floats and discuss how often it needs to be done.

How Often Should You Clean Your Pool Floats?

Ideally, you should clean your pool float after every use. Just as you should set up a cleaning schedule for your pool, you should also aim to clean your pool accessories regularly. The more frequently you clean your pool floats, the easier it becomes, as a serious build-up of mold can be difficult to remove.

Pool floats, especially complicated shaped ones like floating unicorns, have plenty of nooks and crannies where water can become trapped, causing mold to form. Cleaning pool floats daily removes the chance of mold and mildew from forming in the first place and can extend the product’s lifetime significantly.

How to Clean Pool Floats: A Step-By-Step Guide

Whether you’re cleaning your float at the end of a long day relaxing in your pool, or if you’re setting up your pool accessories for the season ahead, follow these steps to make your float pool-ready:

Step 1 – Deflate the float

Always deflate the float before attempting to clean it. While inflated, it’s basically impossible to reach and clean all the tight corners of your toy. Once deflated, you can lay the float out flat and easily clean all the curves and folds.

Step 2 – Remove excess water

As you deflate, make sure to rinse off all excess water that may be stuck in the curves of the float. It could be a good idea to give the float an initial rinse with a garden hose to remove the water from the pool.

Step 3 – Clean the float with a cleaning agent

When picking a cleaning agent, avoid using bleach or anything that contains harsh chemicals. Although some would suggest using a disinfecting all-purpose spray, this should only be used for extremely stubborn mildew or mold

Generally, the best and only cleaning agents you should use are baking soda and water, vinegar and water, or soap and water.

Baking soda

Baking soda and water is a great cleaning solution for pool floats as it can effectively dissolve dirt and algae, being a mild alkali. For this method, simply add a 1/4 cup of baking soda to a bucket with a quart of warm water and mix the solution. Once dissolved, dip a sponge into the solution and scrub this into the surface of your pool float.

If you’re cleaning a small float, you could alternatively dip the entire deflated float into the warm water to ensure a more thorough clean. Once submerged, scrub the float with your sponge. After you’ve cleaned all areas of the float, give it a hose down or use a fresh bucket of water to clean the baking soda solution off.

Vinegar

White vinegar has a good reputation for cleaning, which extends to keeping your pool accessories clean. To use vinegar to get the dirt and bacteria off your float, we’d recommend filling a spray bottle with 1/3 white vinegar and 2/3 water.

Spray your vinegar solution evenly over your float and scrub it in using a clean sponge. Once you’re sure you’ve covered all areas of the float, hose it down with fresh water.

Alternatively, you could fill up a small bucket 1/3 with vinegar and the rest with water and submerge your float in the bucket. For best results, we’d recommend leaving the submerged float for one hour before taking it out and hosing it down.

Soap

Standard dishwashing soap will be enough to make an effective soap solution for cleaning your float. Simply take a bucket and fill it with 1/4 soap and 3/4 warm water. Mix this together until the solution is bubbly. Next, use a clean, dry sponge to absorb some of the soap bubbles and start scrubbing your float.

Like all of the other cleaning methods, make sure to hose off the solution once you’ve thoroughly cleaned all corners of it.

Step 4 – Dry the float

Once you’ve cleared all the dirt from the float using one of the cleaning methods above, we’d recommend leaving the float out to dry in the hot summer sun. If possible, keep the float raised and level so that no dirt can get stuck to it as it dries.

FAQs

How do you clean a sticky float?

If you’ve spilled something sticky on your pool float, or if it generally feels grubby and dirty, we’d recommend using vinegar and water to clean it. Vinegar is acidic and works very well in removing sticky residue, as well as grease and grime. Add vinegar and water to a spray bottle for easy cleaning.

Should you leave floats in the pool?

Pool floats should not be left in the pool, as it’s bad for both the float and your pool. The plastic found in floats breaks down if left out in the elements for too long, which can cause problems for your pool system. You should always clean and store pool floats indoors.

How do you preserve pool floats?

How to clean big joe pool float?

Follow steps outlined in blog post.
1. Deflate Float
2. Drain excess water
3. Clean float with cleaning agent (baking soda, vinegar, dishwashing soap)
4. Dry the float

Final Verdict

To keep your pool floats in tip-top shape, make you rinse all the excess water from the pool of them before cleaning. When cleaning, use a natural cleaning agent to combat the pesky dirt stains that appear on inflatable floats. After you’ve cleaned, make sure that they’re completely dry and kept in an adequate storage space when not in use.

For more how-to guides, and other interesting reads check out the rest of our site

Enjoy your pool party!

Herbert

Herbert is a swimming enthusiast. Started career working as a lifeguard, and in pool maintenance. He loves to share his experience and recommendation on this blog.