Hi,
Purchased a home with nice pool ~8 yrs ago. Have a pool maintenance person (PM) maintaining pool however lately he has allegedly been experiencing quite a bit of trouble with the pool Seeking expertise of this board. HELP! Thanks.
For the last year my pool matainenance person has been complaining that there is zero chlorine in the pool when he checks it nearly each week. He has no answers to provide. Just repeating that someone must be peeing in the pool - "Does the gardener bring his children to swim and pee in the pool?" ,"Are my neighbors jumping the fence and .......", well you get the idea.
I have a wife and son (15 yr old...the son, not the wife). Extremely rarely do either of them swim. I swim 1-2 per week. I asked PM about sweat, fertilizer runoff from potted pants, etc.... Same answer - "gotta shock it with granular". Dumps it in and then see him next week only to say the same thing. Chose to do some research and found this site.
Thought for sure I'd SLAM the pool to ensure we kill anything and get a good amount of FC in there for a sustained period of time. Per my signature, have a ~18,000 gal pool. Threw in 2 gallons of 8.25 bleach on Thursday afternoon. Water got a little cloudy and tiny bit yellow/brown. (Only have a very old Taylor (10yr+) kit I found from previous home owner. Basically brand new. He never used it.) I "inherited" the PM. Went online per good advise here and ordered a K-2006 FAS/DPD). Meantime tested FC w/ old kit and it must have read about a 15ppm (kit doesn't go that high). Stayed that way all day. Next morning it looked just a shade lighter. Still high. Threw in another 1/2 gal early in the morning. Stayed relatively dark on the scale all weekend long. Added no more bleach.
Today, Monday my new kit arrived. Test revealed ~9ppm FC and 0.5ppm CC. Also indicated a high calcium level (quite cloudy test sample during FC test - learned this on youtube video). Figured the FC is still too high to test for any other parameters so stopped there. Need it to come down naturally first.
So why does the PM maintain that the pool registers zero FC nearly every week, even after shocking it, when clearly the FC seems to have some good staying power during my SLAM? Overnight seems good. Daytime seems good. Maybe the only thing that he is shocking is me with his bi-weekly shocking charge? What is the proper range for FC in my size pool? 1-3? or 3-7? Pool is a bit shallow and weather is quite hot here so pool temp remains rather high year round.
So, am I on the right path to solving this dilemma? Perhaps I should be doing this myself if once it is set, it is easy to maintain. Don't think he's ever changed or drained any water from the pool in the 8 years I've lived here now. Does it need to be refreshed periodically? It certainly evaporates a lot. may the cause for the high calcium levels?? Pool had a black bottom at one time but now is mostly mottled with very little black. Don't know if that is due to Calcium or other things.
Thanks for your time.
Ray
Purchased a home with nice pool ~8 yrs ago. Have a pool maintenance person (PM) maintaining pool however lately he has allegedly been experiencing quite a bit of trouble with the pool Seeking expertise of this board. HELP! Thanks.
For the last year my pool matainenance person has been complaining that there is zero chlorine in the pool when he checks it nearly each week. He has no answers to provide. Just repeating that someone must be peeing in the pool - "Does the gardener bring his children to swim and pee in the pool?" ,"Are my neighbors jumping the fence and .......", well you get the idea.
I have a wife and son (15 yr old...the son, not the wife). Extremely rarely do either of them swim. I swim 1-2 per week. I asked PM about sweat, fertilizer runoff from potted pants, etc.... Same answer - "gotta shock it with granular". Dumps it in and then see him next week only to say the same thing. Chose to do some research and found this site.
Thought for sure I'd SLAM the pool to ensure we kill anything and get a good amount of FC in there for a sustained period of time. Per my signature, have a ~18,000 gal pool. Threw in 2 gallons of 8.25 bleach on Thursday afternoon. Water got a little cloudy and tiny bit yellow/brown. (Only have a very old Taylor (10yr+) kit I found from previous home owner. Basically brand new. He never used it.) I "inherited" the PM. Went online per good advise here and ordered a K-2006 FAS/DPD). Meantime tested FC w/ old kit and it must have read about a 15ppm (kit doesn't go that high). Stayed that way all day. Next morning it looked just a shade lighter. Still high. Threw in another 1/2 gal early in the morning. Stayed relatively dark on the scale all weekend long. Added no more bleach.
Today, Monday my new kit arrived. Test revealed ~9ppm FC and 0.5ppm CC. Also indicated a high calcium level (quite cloudy test sample during FC test - learned this on youtube video). Figured the FC is still too high to test for any other parameters so stopped there. Need it to come down naturally first.
So why does the PM maintain that the pool registers zero FC nearly every week, even after shocking it, when clearly the FC seems to have some good staying power during my SLAM? Overnight seems good. Daytime seems good. Maybe the only thing that he is shocking is me with his bi-weekly shocking charge? What is the proper range for FC in my size pool? 1-3? or 3-7? Pool is a bit shallow and weather is quite hot here so pool temp remains rather high year round.
So, am I on the right path to solving this dilemma? Perhaps I should be doing this myself if once it is set, it is easy to maintain. Don't think he's ever changed or drained any water from the pool in the 8 years I've lived here now. Does it need to be refreshed periodically? It certainly evaporates a lot. may the cause for the high calcium levels?? Pool had a black bottom at one time but now is mostly mottled with very little black. Don't know if that is due to Calcium or other things.
Thanks for your time.
Ray