1st time pool owner.

Jump to latest Follow Reply
F

funkpolice

0
Jul 30, 2016
15
Orand Park IL
Hello. Two weeks ago my wife and I bought a new home, complete with a 22000 gal inground pool. I've never had even a kiddie pool before, so it's all new to me. I had a short meeting with the previous owner, and he basically told me he does whatever the pool store tells him to, which turns out to be pretty expensive. The pool is pristine, and has been a great for the family so far. It has a chlorinator that uses a plastic jug of pellets, I shut if off today as the chlorine levels are super high (15ppm). I was told to dump in a 2lb jug of Bioguard Shock and 4 oz of the bioguard algecide every thurs. I took a water sample in today and was told I need to add 22 lbs of balance pack 100 and 2 lbs or Low and Slow. I'm apprehensive about ditching the pool store chems as I have zero experience with swimming pools, but I don't want foolishly waste money on fancy names and additives. So, I guess I'll read up on the site and re evaluate what I should do with a little more understanding of the water chemistry. I had a pretty elaborate reef aquarium at the old house, so I'm no stranger to testing water. That being said, I don't miss 10-15 titrations every week, so maybe I'll just use the pool store for the testing, and dose the water on my own? Anyway, hello to all, I'm looking forwards to learning how to take care of my new pool.

bill
 
Welcome to TFP!

Your story is not much different from many members. You believe the pool store employees are experts and will keep your pool pristine. I also have an aquarium background and I can tell you, the employees at most fish stores can put pool store employees to shame. As a rule we will not accept pool store testing here to give you advice, it generally that bad. Most (I admit there a few good ones out there) pool stores exist for one reason, to separate you from your money.

Read through a few posts and you will find horror stories on end of what they have done to folks and how much mine people spend with them.
 
I could tell from the way they answered my questions that they didn't have a solid understanding of water chemistry. I'm going to order a test kit tonight, so I'll get some results by next week. Like I said, the water seems to be fine. No bad smells or colors. It doesn't burn our eyes. We have had a ton of rain in the last week and I've had to pump a bunch of water out of the pool, so I was worried that the chemistry would be off. I put some weir door in the skimmers and they have made a big difference as far as how far out they "reach" The pool came with a prowler 7xx pool vaccum and it in one cycle it cleans up the bottom very well. For what it's worth, the pool store test results were,
pH 7.4
FC 15
TC 15
TA 86
Total Hardness 107
CYA 150
TDS 900
Saturation index Low
Optimizer Plus 8

they recomended that I raise the TA and turn off the chlorinator to lower the FC. CYA is within their parameters. My results to come soon.

I am having the liner replaced in the fall and probably getting an auto cover installed as well.

bill
 
Well, IF those numbers are close to correct your CYA is WAY too high. This is explained by the "pellets" of chlorine. Solid forms of chlorine (Trichlor and DiChlor) are almost half CYA by weight. You will need to get away from that chlorinator and move to liquid chlorine.

When you think about test kits the only ones to consider use a FAS-DPD chlorine test (not to be confused with a DPD test), so that means you want aTaylor K-2006-C or a TF-100. The "C" in the model number of the Taylor kit designates the size of the reagent bottles (larger), but I would recomend the TF-100 from tftestkits.net for two reasons.

While ordering, I would,say pick up a Speedstir and Sample sizer as they help speed testing and increase accuracy on a couple of the tests.

- the TF-100 has been designed with residential pool owners in mind. It has more of what we need and less of what we don't use vs the K-2006 which is designed for commercial pools. I bought a K-2006 before I found TFP and there are bottles in my kit I have never opened.

- tftestkits.net supports this site. When we run out of donation money they pay the bills to keep the lights on. As all of us are volunteers that means a lot.

I took over my pool much like you. It was clear and we had a blast swimming. But, when I started testing I discovered my CYA was in the 250 range. As of this week I'm adding because it's too low now..... But, now that it's under control its testing 3 times a week for FC, 3 times for pH and the other tests are done every few weeks or even longer. It is no where near the testing for an aquarium.
 
I had mostly SPS (small polyp stony) coral, and the fish store guys didn't know much about keeping them alive. They would sell coral as fast as possible before their tanks all but killed them. I bought lots of brown colonies at a huge discount that would color up into bright purples and blues after a few months in my tanks. the water had to be very stable and void of nutrients. I had two tiny fish in a huge aquarium because I didn't want to introduce the food into the system. I did have a bunch of other cool animals though.

If you spend enough time in fish stores, you will see way more bad than good. And the bad ones have lots of dead fish.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply