Recent content by Sunny Blues

When I first read Pool School I made sure to follow every link (blue highlighted words) in each article and read those too.

Also, make sure to thoroughly clean every nook and cranny of your skimmer. Scrub it down well. Be sure your vacuum is also thoroughly cleaned so it’s not adding algae back into the pool either. Just a couple things to be certain of.

Yep!!! That expired chlorine probably isn’t even 4% now. The Woodman’s with a best by date of 2025 is fresh!!! It’s good. Usually the best by date is one year after manufacturing so it was probably bottled in Feb or Mar of this year. Mine is best by Feb 2025. I’m planning to use it before...

Using pool math, calculate how much acid you need to reduce your pH to 7.2. Add that. Then let the pH raise naturally, or use a fountain to induce surface bubbles to raise it faster. Let your pH rise to 7.6. Then test alkalinity again. If it’s still not below 100, do that process again. We...

Yes, please don’t forget that this is not representative of what a typical TFP year is like after opening your pool. Don’t judge it by what you have had to go through to fix your water. If you stick with us you will see next spring just how different it really is. My opening last year...

We certainly had a torrential downpour last night, didn’t we? LOL Hopefully nothing on your solar cover is reintroducing anything into your pool? I wonder if that is possible? We stopped using ours when we started TFP. I know they are great and all but we found it a cumbersome headache to use...

Yes but I learned this in our first two years here, when I was just learning too. It served me well. That’s why our 13 year record was achieved. How can a CYA of 50 be a costly mistake?

I live in northern Illinois and anything 40 ppm or less we found more cumbersome to maintain. We stay between 50-70 and have not had a single swampy episode in 13 years, not even a trace of algae. We haven’t had to do any slamming the rest of the season after opening the pool. That’s the only...

See I disagree just because of what we experienced the past 13 years. Our CYA readings increase within hours of doing this. Always by the very next day, but mostly the same day. I don’t have DE in my sand filter though so I wonder if that interferes with some pools? We also backwash right...

Oh for some reason our skimmer sucks water fast so it’s like a little whirlpool in there. 😂

I’ve always wondered this too. If I remember correctly there is only 4ppm difference in each drop. I have sometimes errored on the side of using that next drop to be sure knowing it really is just a difference of 50 ppm vs 54. Or 30 ppm vs 34. But other times I take the one less drop reading...

I’d highly recommend you increasing your CYA though to at least 50ppm. It’s a much more comfortable level for maintenance. And it’s relatively easy. My husband has two tube socks he uses. He places a full one with granular CYA knotted at the top into the skimmer and waits about 15 minutes. Then...

Ammonia was her main villain this year. Always extremely difficult to combat.

Lol yeah. It’s a trade off between water bill and truck fee. It takes about 3 trucks to fill our pool but we only paid for 2. It’s $400-$450 a truckload. But our water bill would have been at least half that total. It’s more of a convenience in time. Our TA is usually high and we struggle to...

We too just replaced our liner after 17 years a few weeks ago. I was also worried that the truck that brought the water (14,000-15,000 gallons of it) would be horrendous to balance. We used tap water to fill the last 6” of the pool. (Its 18,600) I was pleasantly surprised that it was just as...