Hi all, I'm a new pool owner and have been lurking on TFP.com for a couple months now. I figured I should go ahead and sign up and show some pictures of the progress of my work and to ask some questions.
Our newly purchased house sat vacant for almost a year before we bought it. We bought in January of this year, but were scouting this house all the way back into May 2014.
Here are some pictures from back then to give you an idea of what I was starting with a couple months ago.
I battled the pool for a couple months before discovering the amazing advice here on TFP.com. Since reading up and doing my homework I think I've made a lot of ground.
Here are two pictures sometime in April I think. It's still really bad.
But then I started making progress by brushing, scooping with a net, cleaning the filter, and repeating as often as I could. This was beginning of May I think. I could see hints of blue!!
And this is from last week, when I could finally start to see the bottom regularly. I can now see then lights as well.
Now, the downside to that little bit of clarity is the unfortunate staining you see in that last picture. I have quite a few areas where there appears to be staining. Is that algea or just some type of stain? I think there are going to be some rust stains no matter what. The roofers apparently felt the need to use the pool as their trash heap because I found whole sheets of shingles and roofing nails in the pool when I began to clean it out.
I've had the Taylor K-2006 test kit for 2 days now and could use some input and a sanity check from the friendly folks here. I had been using the local P-A-Penny but became dubious after they kept pushing all sorts of chemicals on me that weren't making sense.
So my first test yesterday by myself with the K-2006 yielded the following results:
FC - 0
CC -
pH - 7.0
TA - 50
CH - 350
CYA - 0
That was alarming to say the least. From my homework here I knew that FC being zero was a no-no. And I knew I needed to work that pH up towards 7.6-7.8. But that CYA being zero? Is that right??
So after that test I immediately put in 2.5 gallons of 10% liquid chlorine and took another reading an hour or so later of the FC and CC. It yielded the following:
FC - 15.2
CC - 0.8
I was anxious to see how things stood today when I got home from work and was able to take another reading. Without doing anything between that last test and this one, I came up with:
FC - 3.6
CC - 0.4
pH - 7.0
TA - 50
CH - 350
CYA - 0
From the beginning I've been keeping trichlor tabs in both skimmers and the floater as well as shocking it pretty aggressively with the 10% liquid chlorine.
I'm stumped on why CYA would be zero. My pool gets daylight pretty much most of the day. I'd say it gets a solid 9-10 hours of sunlight.
I stopped on my way home from work and grabbed 7 boxes of baking soda to raise the TA and a box of borax for the pH. I followed the PoolMath guidelines as to what amounts of each to add.
What do you guys make of my numbers so far and what advice would you give to keep dialing them in?
Our newly purchased house sat vacant for almost a year before we bought it. We bought in January of this year, but were scouting this house all the way back into May 2014.
Here are some pictures from back then to give you an idea of what I was starting with a couple months ago.
I battled the pool for a couple months before discovering the amazing advice here on TFP.com. Since reading up and doing my homework I think I've made a lot of ground.
Here are two pictures sometime in April I think. It's still really bad.
But then I started making progress by brushing, scooping with a net, cleaning the filter, and repeating as often as I could. This was beginning of May I think. I could see hints of blue!!
And this is from last week, when I could finally start to see the bottom regularly. I can now see then lights as well.
Now, the downside to that little bit of clarity is the unfortunate staining you see in that last picture. I have quite a few areas where there appears to be staining. Is that algea or just some type of stain? I think there are going to be some rust stains no matter what. The roofers apparently felt the need to use the pool as their trash heap because I found whole sheets of shingles and roofing nails in the pool when I began to clean it out.
I've had the Taylor K-2006 test kit for 2 days now and could use some input and a sanity check from the friendly folks here. I had been using the local P-A-Penny but became dubious after they kept pushing all sorts of chemicals on me that weren't making sense.
So my first test yesterday by myself with the K-2006 yielded the following results:
FC - 0
CC -
pH - 7.0
TA - 50
CH - 350
CYA - 0
That was alarming to say the least. From my homework here I knew that FC being zero was a no-no. And I knew I needed to work that pH up towards 7.6-7.8. But that CYA being zero? Is that right??
So after that test I immediately put in 2.5 gallons of 10% liquid chlorine and took another reading an hour or so later of the FC and CC. It yielded the following:
FC - 15.2
CC - 0.8
I was anxious to see how things stood today when I got home from work and was able to take another reading. Without doing anything between that last test and this one, I came up with:
FC - 3.6
CC - 0.4
pH - 7.0
TA - 50
CH - 350
CYA - 0
From the beginning I've been keeping trichlor tabs in both skimmers and the floater as well as shocking it pretty aggressively with the 10% liquid chlorine.
I'm stumped on why CYA would be zero. My pool gets daylight pretty much most of the day. I'd say it gets a solid 9-10 hours of sunlight.
I stopped on my way home from work and grabbed 7 boxes of baking soda to raise the TA and a box of borax for the pH. I followed the PoolMath guidelines as to what amounts of each to add.
What do you guys make of my numbers so far and what advice would you give to keep dialing them in?