Maintaining Pool Dilemma

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nitz369

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Mar 22, 2008
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Backstory:
Bought house in Las Vegas with Pool 6 years ago, immediately started using BBB and learned as I go. Did that for about 3 years and what was happening is I would always have pool issues, no algae that you could see but tests would show issues with the water. I would shock with tons of bleach and it would fix. I had issues using BBB because I after awhile I got tired of maintaining the pol on a daily basis and would slack. About 2 years ago I drained the pool to do a full acid wash. Refilled and continued BBB. The end of that summer and all last summer I decided to go the more conventional method of maintaining the pool with "Shock" and "Tablets". My thought process was "Well since nobody that I have ever talked to locally knows anything about using bleach and their pools are perfect why should I go through this much work to maintain my pool?" So I switched to Acid, "Shock" and "Tablets"

Fast Forward:
End of summer last year I started getting yellow Algae on the walls, tried to fix, pool temp dropped for winter and they were gone. Maintaining the pool this year and no signs of it until today. Bottom line is I got lazy again and missed my weekly "shock" treatment and didn;t even test my levels. Since my test chemicals are getting old I brought the water to the pool store to check the levels. And this what the guy says "Can I take your picture and put it on the wall? I have never seen water with this much CH EVER" He said you gotta do a full drain and refill.

Dilemma:
I am trying to understand how my CH levels have gone so crazy and why I need to drain and refill again. My first thought is I maintained the pool just fine for 3 years with Bleach and then I switched could that be the issue? Like I said before my issue with the Bleach is the DAILY maintenance. My 2nd issue is cost, I was going through 3-4 bottles of bleach per week, this was even wity upping my CYA to account for the extreme temps here in Las Vegas and the bleach burning off.

Should I go back to Bleach after the refill?

When I wasn't using bleach I kind of did my own thing, I didn't get advice from pool store. I would walk in and buy my bags of "shock" and acid and be on my way. I would measure levels and always keep then decent but I was never SUPER accurate with acid measuring, it just got to the point where I would know ABOUT what I needed to lower the pH to the level I needed after testing.

Should I just straight listen to the pool store advice to maintain in the future? They are not the kind of pool store that recommends crazy amounts of other chemicals, in fact they don't recommend all that other stuff like algaecide.

Last refill I did the Borax because I LOVE the way it looks and all of its other benefits, can I do this and use "shock"?

What should I do?
 
There's a good chance the shock you were using was Calcium Hypochlorite, which adds about 7 CH for every 10 FC.

Assuming its the 73% stuff, every one pound bag will add abpout 5 ppm CH. There's 260/ year. If you toss in two bags, that's 520 PPM/year. The fill water is probably 300ish to start, and if it's like my pool, figure another 25/week from evaporation. Suddenly, hitting 4 figures is not so hard to do.

Have you considered a saltwater generator? Overall costs for the life of the setup are about the same as bleach, but it does relieve you of the daily maintenance. You could probably go every 2 or 3 days between testing.
 
nitz369 said:
For a not so going DIY person how tough is a salt water generator to install?
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You either need to go with a SWG or one of those auto liquid chlorine dispensers. What kind of control system do you have for your pump/solar currently?

I have a SWG and once you get it dialed in, meaning it's % run time for however long you run your pump on a daily basis there is basically nothing else to do. I check my chlorine levels daily, cause i like to, and found there really was no need to, i could have done it once during the week, and then FRI and SAT. The only time i've manually added chlorine is after a bunch of people came over and swam, later that night i checked my levels and decided to supplement the SWG with some bleach so i didn't mess with the balance in the SWG and Pump run time i had.

Of course you have to add salt to the pool, i have not had any complaints about the salt in the pool.

I've thought about adding Borax to the mix, but have yet to be convinced that it will make a huge difference.
 
nitz369 said:
For a not so going DIY person how tough is a salt water generator to install?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't know. A lot depends on how tight your plumbing is configured. If you have long stretches of exposed pipe, it's probably really easy. I'm constantly draining and refilling my water to lower the CH, so I see no point in spending money on salt I will just pump out onto the lawn. But you can be sure if I wasn't dealing with that, I'd have a SWG.
 
Should I go back to Bleach after the refill?
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IMHO, BBB is more about understanding the chemical balance requirements of your pool and avoiding the unintended consequences you just experienced by throwing in shock without regard to the amount of calcium you were adding.

Whether you go back to liquid chlorine or install a saltwater generator really doesn't matter -- at the end of the day heading off problems, whether from cya build up of tablets, or from high calcium due to reliance on cal hypo shock, or whether from uncontrolled ph rise from untested/unattended swg -- will require a basic commitment to some kind of monitoring of your pool parameters.

It's a habit that in the end will save you time ;) For me, i go out with a coffee in the morning, listen to the birds, do a little measue, doe, and done -- and i am the type of person that normally resists committed maintenance, so i do understand where youre coming from ;)

That said, swg sounds like it may be more convenient for you, provided you keep an eye on the ph. For me, I didn't go salt because I don't really trust myself not to get lax about monitoring and I didn't want to have to maintain or fiddle with another device :) in a way, for me, it's easier to habituate to the monitoring if I have to do it consistently. I know that sounds strange.

With respect to the pool store's recommendation to drain and refill, what were you levels when they suggested this?
 
Swampwoman said:
Should I go back to Bleach after the refill?
Click to expand...

IMHO, BBB is more about understanding the chemical balance requirements of your pool and avoiding the unintended consequences you just experienced by throwing in shock without regard to the amount of calcium you were adding.

Whether you go back to liquid chlorine or install a saltwater generator really doesn't matter -- at the end of the day heading off problems, whether from cya build up of tablets, or from high calcium due to reliance on cal hypo shock, or whether from uncontrolled ph rise from untested/unattended swg -- will require a basic commitment to some kind of monitoring of your pool parameters.

It's a habit that in the end will save you time ;) For me, i go out with a coffee in the morning, listen to the birds, do a little measue, doe, and done -- and i am the type of person that normally resists committed maintenance, so i do understand where youre coming from ;)

That said, swg sounds like it may be more convenient for you, provided you keep an eye on the ph. For me, I didn't go salt because I don't really trust myself not to get lax about monitoring and I didn't want to have to maintain or fiddle with another device :) in a way, for me, it's easier to habituate to the monitoring if I have to do it consistently. I know that sounds strange.

With respect to the pool store's recommendation to drain and refill, what were you levels when they suggested this?
Click to expand...

Stenner pump is the other option. The fixed rate pump costs about $220, you will need a timer (I bought a cheap$20 home depot one) and a bleach container (I think I paid around $20 from the brewers warehouse mentioned in the liquidator forum). The pump comes with all the fittings you need to tap into your plumbing. You will need to make the correct size hole. My plumbing came with a screw in attachment point already so I didnt have to drill at all.

I use about .6 gallons per day in texas, the tank holds about 15 gallons. I refill every 2-3 weeks. I dont think the pump can get the last few inches of bleach on the bottom.
 
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