Marcite Acid Washing

[klarrivee]

Hello all, hope I'm in the right place. None of the categories seemed to fit. Anyway 17yr AFO, recently CPO. Started with a new organization that has a routine of draining all their (indoor/marcite) pools and acid washing them every year. I was brought up in the school of don't drain your pool unless you have to. There are other issues with how they do it, but just curious about others' thoughts as even our outside vendor has no idea why we do it. Thoughts?

 

[Bperry]

Hello all, hope I'm in the right place. None of the categories seemed to fit. Anyway 17yr AFO, recently CPO. Started with a new organization that has a routine of draining all their (indoor/marcite) pools and acid washing them every year. I was brought up in the school of don't drain your pool unless you have to. There are other issues with how they do it, but just curious about others' thoughts as even our outside vendor has no idea why we do it. Thoughts?

There’s no logical reason to do that unless the pool owner is also a dealer/installer of new plaster. Cause acid washing just degrades the life of the plaster and they make money when the plaster fails.

It could also be that there’s no financial interest in prolonging the plaster (someone else pays for that) and so poor maintenance and bad chemistry over the long term can also be covered up each year by just draining and acid washing.

 

[Dirk]

Just a little extra ammo... Acid washing doesn't magically attack and remove just "the bad stuff" stuck to your pool finish. Nope. It burns off everything, including some amount of the finish itself. Think of your pool's finish like painted wood, where the wood is the plaster finish and the paint is the stuff you no longer want. Acid washing is not like paint remover, that dissolves the paint and leaves the bare wood alone. It's more like a belt sander, that grinds off the paint and some of the wood with it. Your pool's finish is like the thin layer of actual wood laminate glued to the ugly particle board underneath. If you keep using that belt sander every time you want to remove the paint, eventually you'll just grind off all the wood and be left with just the ugly particle board!

Acid washing removes plaster/marcite. IMO, a pool should NEVER be acid washed, but rather be maintained with good chemical balancing techniques (like we teach here). If it absolutely must be done, perhaps to extend the appearance of near-end-of-life plaster for another season, you might get away with it once or maybe twice. Acid washing every year as a matter of routine maintenance is completely ridiculous, and is just reducing the days until you'll need a complete plaster replacement.

 

[ajw22]

Started with a new organization that has a routine of draining all their (indoor/marcite) pools and acid washing them every year. I was brought up in the school of don't drain your pool unless you have to.

Clarify that this is specific to indoor pools and they don't drain all outdoor pools?

There are other issues with how they do it, but just curious about others' thoughts as even our outside vendor has no idea why we do it. Thoughts?

You have two separate questions:

1. draining an indoor pool
2. acid washing a pool

There are more challenges to keeping good water chemistry with an indoor pool. If water chemistry is good then no reason to drain. If the indoor pool has water chemistry issues like high CYA or CC and water is cheap then a drain and refill may be the quickest and lowest cost solution.

Using the correct pool care methods should minimize the needs to drain a pool.

Acid washing should never be a routine maintenance procedure. As others have said every acid wash reduces the life of the plaster. The customer may not realize their pool plaster only lasted 10 years or less instead of 20+ years due to all the acid washes done. Especially if the pool has had multiple owners during the period.

I would fire or not hire any pool service company who said their annual routine was acid washing.

 

[klarrivee]

There’s no logical reason to do that unless the pool owner is also a dealer/installer of new plaster. Cause acid washing just degrades the life of the plaster and they make money when the plaster fails.

It could also be that there’s no financial interest in prolonging the plaster (someone else pays for that) and so poor maintenance and bad chemistry over the long term can also be covered up each year by just draining and acid washing.

That's been my take too.

 

[klarrivee]

Clarify that this is specific to indoor pools and they don't drain all outdoor pools?



You have two separate questions:

1. draining an indoor pool
2. acid washing a pool

There are more challenges to keeping good water chemistry with an indoor pool. If water chemistry is good then no reason to drain. If the indoor pool has water chemistry issues like high CYA or CC and water is cheap then a drain and refill may be the quickest and lowest cost solution.

Using the correct pool care methods should minimize the needs to drain a pool.

Acid washing should never be a routine maintenance procedure. As others have said every acid wash reduces the life of the plaster. The customer may not realize their pool palster only lasted 10 years or less instead of 20+ tears due to all the acid washes done. Especially if the pool has had multiple owners during the period.

I would fire or not hire any pool service company who said their annual routine was acid washing.

You can't use stabilizer (at least in the states I've been in) in indoor pools. Agree with you on everything else.

 

[klarrivee]

Just a little extra ammo... Acid washing doesn't magically attack and remove just "the bad stuff" stuck to your pool finish. Nope. It burns off everything, including some amount of the finish itself. Think of your pool's finish like painted wood, where the wood is the plaster finish and the paint is the stuff you no longer want. Acid washing is not like paint remover, that dissolves the paint and leaves the bare wood alone. It's more like a belt sander, that grinds off the paint and some of the wood with it. Your pool's finish is like the thin layer of actual wood laminate glued to the ugly particle board underneath. If you keep using that belt sander every time you want to remove the paint, eventually you'll just grind off all the wood and be left with just the ugly particle board!

Acid washing removes plaster/marcite. IMO, a pool should NEVER be acid washed, but rather be maintained with good chemical balancing techniques (like we teach here). If it absolutely must be done, perhaps to extend the appearance of near-end-of-life plaster for another season, you might get away with it once or maybe twice. Acid washing every year as a matter of routine maintenance is completely ridiculous, and is just advancing the day you''ll need a complete plaster replacement.

1000% agree.

 

[ajw22]

You can't use stabilizer (at least in the states I've been in) in indoor pools.

We talking residential pools or public pools?

There are no state regulations on the chemistry for private residential pools.

There are various regulations for commercial and public pools.

This Forum and site is focused on private residential pool care and my comments were based on that.