I have to share this story about my pool opening experience thus far. When we bought our house, which was seriously neglected, it came with a 15,000 in-ground gunite pool. The equipment consisted of a rusted out heater, a Pac-Fab sand filter (TA-50 I believe) and no motor or pump. The local pool store came over and helped with our very first opening. I have been handling since then (3 or 4 years).
So....last year, I removed the heater as it wasn't working anyways and just taking up space. I did a quick re-routing of the plumbing with the intention to really clean it up this year.
Here we are summer 2016. I have cleaned up the plumbing around my equipment making it a little easier to get around everything and bought 175 lbs of new sand for the filter. Once I turned on the filter, it cracked spraying water all over the place. I ran to the pool store on Friday and purchased a new filter. I decided to go with a cartridge filter. We had one when I was a kid and I remembered it being pretty easy to maintain etc. I was a kid though, so I am sure I didn't get the full experience. I reworked all the plumbing again to accommodate the new filter. This filter just wasn't working out. I made the huge mistake of vacuuming the pool into the cartridge basically ruining it. After about 8 hours or so with the cartridge filter, and trying to spray it off several times, buying a new cartridge for after the pool was "open" I had enough. Luckily the pool store let me return the filter and exchange it for a sand filter.
I went with a larger sized sand filter this time around (Hayward S220T)...and yes, re-did the plumbing for a third time. At this point I am happy the water is clearing up nicely and we should be good to go in the next day or so. I forgot to add, my wife is pregnant until August...so the pool has to be perfect this year
. It was a heck of a weekend. Hoping to vacuum to waste all the dead algae tonight
View attachment 49148View attachment 49149
So....last year, I removed the heater as it wasn't working anyways and just taking up space. I did a quick re-routing of the plumbing with the intention to really clean it up this year.
Here we are summer 2016. I have cleaned up the plumbing around my equipment making it a little easier to get around everything and bought 175 lbs of new sand for the filter. Once I turned on the filter, it cracked spraying water all over the place. I ran to the pool store on Friday and purchased a new filter. I decided to go with a cartridge filter. We had one when I was a kid and I remembered it being pretty easy to maintain etc. I was a kid though, so I am sure I didn't get the full experience. I reworked all the plumbing again to accommodate the new filter. This filter just wasn't working out. I made the huge mistake of vacuuming the pool into the cartridge basically ruining it. After about 8 hours or so with the cartridge filter, and trying to spray it off several times, buying a new cartridge for after the pool was "open" I had enough. Luckily the pool store let me return the filter and exchange it for a sand filter.
I went with a larger sized sand filter this time around (Hayward S220T)...and yes, re-did the plumbing for a third time. At this point I am happy the water is clearing up nicely and we should be good to go in the next day or so. I forgot to add, my wife is pregnant until August...so the pool has to be perfect this year
. It was a heck of a weekend. Hoping to vacuum to waste all the dead algae tonight View attachment 49148View attachment 49149