Various Stains - Dirt, metal, bleach?

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C

cymachine

0
May 18, 2016
7
Plano, TX
Hello Everyone,

Recently purchased my first house with a pool, and been using this site a ton trying to learn as much as I can. So far so good in keeping up with general maintenance, but there are a few things on the walls/floor that I'm unsure how to remedy.

Pool is appx 16,500 gallon gunite. Has raised spa with waterfall. I run a Polaris 280 for a few hours daily to clean the gunk off of the pool floor. I'm probably at least a season or 3 away from having to re-do the plaster as there are some areas of pitting where dirt likes to rest inside of. Mainly in the spa, but also on the steps into the pool.

My issue is there are some stains that I'm not able to identify. First, a dark ring about around the entire pool. Not at the waterline, but closer to the ground of the pool. Brushing does not remove this (with regular or metal bristles). From my reading that should indicate that it isn't algae. I've found that one of those pumice stones does seem to be kind of effective, but I'd probably have to go through 10 of them for how quickly they dissolve! I'm not sure how/why any kind of dirt would be 2-4 ft below the water line and get so stuck to the wall...

Next are some small orangish stains that look almost like you dropped quite a few rusty nails on the floor. Never more than an inch long. Sometimes grouped in clusters.

Finally, what looks to be some kind of bleach-like stain. Almost like some liquid got poured into the pool and kinda sat at the bottom. This one I'm sure if I can clean/remove, as it seems like it's actually ate away at the surface of the floor. Sometimes when a decent amount of dirt/sand has gotten into the pool, it'll actually hold the dirt.

Attached pictures of all. Would welcome any recommendations! Or if there are any other questions about the pool I can answer.

Thanks in advance!20160516_112105.jpg20160516_112114.jpg20160516_112134.jpg20160516_112254.jpg
 
Welcome to TFP!

Tell us more about your pool by updating your signature as shown here, Pool School - Read This Before You Post

Read this, Diagnosing Pool Plaster Problems

How old is the plaster?
Put a trichlor puck on the stain and see what it does.
Put a Vit C tablet on the stain and see what it does.
Do any of the stains feel rough like sandpaper?
 
So I put a rubber band around a tri chlor puck tied to a string and laid it out on all the stains. The dark ones where the floor meets the wall, the small orangish ones, and even some other random ones in the spa that were yellow-ish or a darker gray/black. Not sure exactly how long I was supposed to leave it on there, but did 1-10 minutes on each. Then used a metal brush. No change.

The only stain I could reach with my hands to use the vitamin c tablet was one of the small orange ones on a step. That seemed to clear up after letting it sit for 5 minutes then scraping it back and forth a couple times. Tomorrow I'll try some of the other stains in the spa with another tablet to see if that works..

Plaster is unknown age.. Pool built in 1990, and assuming it could be original plaster, or at least several years old.. Seller didn't tell me about refinishing it.

The only stains I can reach are the ones in the spa. All the dark areas in the picture above are actually where the smooth part of the plaster is. The rough, kinda pitted areas are w/o stain unless you count where the dirt/silt can settle if I haven't vacuumed recently.

I'm waiting on my FAS-DPD chlorine test, so can only guess my FC is about 10 right now. Was sitting at 3, used the pool calc to get it to 10. The Taylor kit I had bought from Leslie's only goes up to 5. Although when I was sitting between 2-5 FC, my CC was always 0.

pH right now is high at over 8.2 because I added a lot of bleach the other day to bring my FC up to the number it should be (after seeing the chart based on CYA levels)
TA is 110
CH is 290
CYA is 100+ as the previous owner used nothing but tri chlor. As soon as I figure out the plumbing in this system, I'll be doing a drain of at least 75% of the pool to lower this down to acceptable levels.

Yes, use a Polaris 280 for cleaning.
 
Welcome to the forum. :wave:

To get your pool in better shape, you first need to get your water balanced and crystal clear and then address the stains. It is a natural tendency to jump on the stains but it is very difficult to proceed intelligently until your water is where it needs to be.

Your first order of business is you must reduce your high pH.....the FC didn't affect it. (read "The ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry" up in Pool School) Get your pH down into the 7's. TA, CH is OK but your CYA must come down to around 50 ppm.

Once the pool is nicely balanced, we can take your stains one at a time and either remove or reduce them.
 
duraleigh said:
Welcome to the forum. :wave:

To get your pool in better shape, you first need to get your water balanced and crystal clear and then address the stains. It is a natural tendency to jump on the stains but it is very difficult to proceed intelligently until your water is where it needs to be.

Your first order of business is you must reduce your high pH.....the FC didn't affect it. (read "The ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry" up in Pool School) Get your pH down into the 7's. TA, CH is OK but your CYA must come down to around 50 ppm.

Once the pool is nicely balanced, we can take your stains one at a time and either remove or reduce them.
Click to expand...

So the water has always been crystal clear. Never had any issue with that. A quarter jug of acid brought the pH down to normal levels. Always seems to be a battle for FC and pH due to also having a spa waterfall down into the pool. If I have enough time, I'll adjust chlorine and pH on the same day. But if I do one or the other in the evening, I'll wait until the following morning/afternoon to do the other.

I know the CYA is high and I need to do a partial drain and refill, but I wouldn't imagine high CYA would have anything to do with plaster stains. Unless I'm missing something huge in my research..
 
CYA has no impact on stains. Yours should be 50 to 60.

Trichlor pucks not impacting the stains means they are not organic, like leaf stains. Vit C clearing a stain means that it is metal, either copper or iron. Very unlikely that you have iron, city water here doesn't contain iron. That leaves copper, which also is not present in the city water, with likely sources being algaecide or mineral sanitizer systems that utilize copper.

More here, Pool School - Metals in the Water and Metal Stains

Metal stains can be lifter using an ascorbic acid treatment, Ascorbic Treatment to rid Pool of metal stains
 

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Thanks for that, I think the # of small metal stains are so few that doing the sock method on each stain will probably be easier than treating the entire pool with ascorbic acid.

For the dirt looking stains ringing around the base of the wall, is pumice stone safe for scraping all of that off on the plaster? Don't want to cause more problems trying to fix aesthetics..

Any idea on the 3rd image in my first post? Looking almost like some kind of liquid had floated down and stayed at the bottom of the pool. Almost teardrop shaped flowing towards the deep end drain. That one I'm clueless about.
 
Treating them individually sounds like a good idea. Yes, a pumice stone is fine, it drops a lot of debris in the water. Maybe try some wet/dry sandpaper first. No idea on stain #3. If it is rough it could be scale.
 
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