New Homeowner, first opening, BROWN pool [pictures!]
- Thread starter RockstarSD
- Start date
These pictures are from last night around 7PM, looks about the same today if not a little more clear. There is still a bunch of nast down there, way more than I was expecting. But - at least I can see what I'm doing now. And yes, that is snow/sleet/hail. We never froze last night, but we got about 3 inches. In May. Crazy weather in Nebraska!
FPM - it looks as if there was no freeze damage. The water level is holding as well as it did last year - I lose some to evaporation, or perhaps to a slow leak somewhere - but it's not dropping any faster than it did before so it looks like I closed properly last year. I'm really glad that it's still so cold, it's letting me a get a jump on the algae even though I'm not able to maintain a proper shock process yet.
Oh, my skimmer net just broke too, so it looks like my first trip to the supply store will include a 12.5% chlorine, a vacuum (mine broke last season), a new pole skimmer.
Cost/Chemicals to Date:
$160
2 visits from the pool people to get a bunch of leaves out (obviously not all, but they couldn't see, so...)
20 lbs cal-hypo
2 32oz bottles of REVIVE!
2 return "eyeballs" that I've since removed. Both of my returns are on the same side of the pool, so the eyeballs more direct jets were creating some dead spots that I didn't have before.
$8
This was spent last season - I still had 2 gallons of 12.5% laying around which were both added to the pool to help maintain SOME chlorine until I get out and pick up the rest for a proper shock process.
The REVIVE! helped, i think, but not enough to warrant using it again or recommending it. POP and BBB would have returned the same results, but I wanted to give it a try since the pool guys said they'd seen really good results with it.
Next steps:
1) Procure pole skimmer, vacuum, chlorine.
2) Skim as much of the nast out as possible, let settle, vacuum everything else to waste.
3) Continue with the Shock Process until everything is kosher again.
4) Read up on how to, and then reduce the CH.
5) May also reduce TA w/ the acid/aeration process, but we'll see on that one.
FPM - it looks as if there was no freeze damage. The water level is holding as well as it did last year - I lose some to evaporation, or perhaps to a slow leak somewhere - but it's not dropping any faster than it did before so it looks like I closed properly last year. I'm really glad that it's still so cold, it's letting me a get a jump on the algae even though I'm not able to maintain a proper shock process yet.
Oh, my skimmer net just broke too, so it looks like my first trip to the supply store will include a 12.5% chlorine, a vacuum (mine broke last season), a new pole skimmer.
Cost/Chemicals to Date:
$160
2 visits from the pool people to get a bunch of leaves out (obviously not all, but they couldn't see, so...)
20 lbs cal-hypo
2 32oz bottles of REVIVE!
2 return "eyeballs" that I've since removed. Both of my returns are on the same side of the pool, so the eyeballs more direct jets were creating some dead spots that I didn't have before.
$8
This was spent last season - I still had 2 gallons of 12.5% laying around which were both added to the pool to help maintain SOME chlorine until I get out and pick up the rest for a proper shock process.
The REVIVE! helped, i think, but not enough to warrant using it again or recommending it. POP and BBB would have returned the same results, but I wanted to give it a try since the pool guys said they'd seen really good results with it.
Next steps:
1) Procure pole skimmer, vacuum, chlorine.
2) Skim as much of the nast out as possible, let settle, vacuum everything else to waste.
3) Continue with the Shock Process until everything is kosher again.
4) Read up on how to, and then reduce the CH.
5) May also reduce TA w/ the acid/aeration process, but we'll see on that one.
Based on the pool calc using levels from my last test:
TA: 250
CH: 420
CYA: 45
pH: 7.5
Temp: 75 (not now, but what it normally stays at)
My CSI is .52 - High, but still within the limits. If I lower my TA to 80, my CSI drops to -.01, so I think I'll work on reducing the TA since it doesn't involve draining and refilling. This is after I'm sparkly clear, btw.
TA: 250
CH: 420
CYA: 45
pH: 7.5
Temp: 75 (not now, but what it normally stays at)
My CSI is .52 - High, but still within the limits. If I lower my TA to 80, my CSI drops to -.01, so I think I'll work on reducing the TA since it doesn't involve draining and refilling. This is after I'm sparkly clear, btw.
You really don't need to worry too much about CSI since you have a vinyl pool. The TA is high but it will drop over time as your PH drifts up and you add acid to lower the PH. The only way to lower CH is replace water or Reverse Osmosis. 420 is high but not unmanageable - just keep the ph in check and it shouldn't be an issue. Don't use any cal-hypo though.
New cost update: Vacuum Head & Skimmer Net ~ $95
Today I went out and picked up this vacuum:
And this skimmer head:
Skimmed the leaves that I could get off the bottom and then spent about 3" of water vacuuming to waste. Pool now looks like this:
I wish that I had taken a before picture. The last pictures kind of show what was down there, but they're blurry and the water wasn't completely clear yet. In this one, the water is just about normal clear levels with some cloudy that the skimmer kicked up from the dead algae beasties that were left in the leaf piles. I'm refilling right now and waiting for everything to settle again, and then I'll hit it with the vacuum and the skimmer again.
Note, I'm aware that technically the vacuum I got is for a plaster/concrete pool and that it could cause my trouble with vinyl rips an etc - but I have used a couple different vinyl vacuums (with the brush dealies) and they just don't work as well. This vacuum is a freeking champ, it's worth every penny I spent on it, and I'll just be very careful in the corners and etc. It also doesn't really have sharp ends and it's some kind of rubber, so I'm not super concerned about it.
Pool Service Update:
The jerks sent me a bill for $411. They charged me $250 for the "green clean service" which was supposed to be $80 a visit times 2, and they charged me for all the chemicals - which they led me to believe were included in the green clean service. I'm going to call them and refuse to pay anything above and beyond the $80x2 that I agreed to. Jerks. That'll teach the women in my house to "just call the pool people to get it done."
Today I went out and picked up this vacuum:
And this skimmer head:
Skimmed the leaves that I could get off the bottom and then spent about 3" of water vacuuming to waste. Pool now looks like this:
I wish that I had taken a before picture. The last pictures kind of show what was down there, but they're blurry and the water wasn't completely clear yet. In this one, the water is just about normal clear levels with some cloudy that the skimmer kicked up from the dead algae beasties that were left in the leaf piles. I'm refilling right now and waiting for everything to settle again, and then I'll hit it with the vacuum and the skimmer again.
Note, I'm aware that technically the vacuum I got is for a plaster/concrete pool and that it could cause my trouble with vinyl rips an etc - but I have used a couple different vinyl vacuums (with the brush dealies) and they just don't work as well. This vacuum is a freeking champ, it's worth every penny I spent on it, and I'll just be very careful in the corners and etc. It also doesn't really have sharp ends and it's some kind of rubber, so I'm not super concerned about it.
Pool Service Update:
The jerks sent me a bill for $411. They charged me $250 for the "green clean service" which was supposed to be $80 a visit times 2, and they charged me for all the chemicals - which they led me to believe were included in the green clean service. I'm going to call them and refuse to pay anything above and beyond the $80x2 that I agreed to. Jerks. That'll teach the women in my house to "just call the pool people to get it done."
REVIVE! is a combination product that contains a phosphate remover, metal sequestrant, and an alum floc. Since chlorine can kill algae, there's no need for the phosphate remover, and since you probably didn't have metals in your pool, there's no need for the metal sequestrant. The floc is the only thing that could have had material drop to the floor for easier vacuuming but it sounds like that didn't happen very effectively, probably in part because the product isn't focussed on just being a floc and partly because floc works better at lower pH (closer to 7.0). As you point out, using the techniques we describe on this forum of physically removing as much material as possible, shocking the pool to kill the algae, filtering 24/7 and with sand filters using DE if the clearing is slow would have been reasonably effective.
Did another round of vacuuming after the last image, and this is what we look like now:
I've finally grabbed our barracuda mx8 auto vac out of storage and have it hooked up, it's cleaning the rest of the settled stuff off the bottom as I type this. We also still haven't decided if we're going to go with manual dosing or a SWCG so I haven't put any chlorine in since the 20 lbs of cal-hypo that the pool service put in. The water is still well below 50 degrees, but I'm a bit worried about not having chlorine in, so I put a couple of my last remaining tri-chlor pucks in the skimmer basket as an interim measure until I'm able to get a household decision on the SWCG.
I am NOT going to continue to use tri-chlor pucks, but I needed to get something into the pool and I already had them around - so yeah. I'm a little low on CYA and am going to eventually going to want to reduce my TA, so the minute amounts of CYA and the pH drop from the trichlor is going to be a good thing for now. Like how I justify the non-BBB method to myself?
I'll post a picture of the barracuda doing its thing in a bit.
I've finally grabbed our barracuda mx8 auto vac out of storage and have it hooked up, it's cleaning the rest of the settled stuff off the bottom as I type this. We also still haven't decided if we're going to go with manual dosing or a SWCG so I haven't put any chlorine in since the 20 lbs of cal-hypo that the pool service put in. The water is still well below 50 degrees, but I'm a bit worried about not having chlorine in, so I put a couple of my last remaining tri-chlor pucks in the skimmer basket as an interim measure until I'm able to get a household decision on the SWCG.
I am NOT going to continue to use tri-chlor pucks, but I needed to get something into the pool and I already had them around - so yeah. I'm a little low on CYA and am going to eventually going to want to reduce my TA, so the minute amounts of CYA and the pH drop from the trichlor is going to be a good thing for now. Like how I justify the non-BBB method to myself?
I'll post a picture of the barracuda doing its thing in a bit.
So just use bleach to maintain the FC ... you can always maintain using the "normal" BBB method with bleach until you decide to switch to a SWG.
All that would need to be done to switch is add some salt, add some CYA, and turn it on ... all other parameters are basically similar either route.
All that would need to be done to switch is add some salt, add some CYA, and turn it on ... all other parameters are basically similar either route.
That new vac head you got, i think those are not intended for vinyl pools, at least that is what i was told when i asked about them last summer. I forget the reasoning, something about damaging my liner....
jb, cash flow issues. I haven't run chlorine demand tests yet, but it looks like I'm going to spending ~5 a day in bleach to maintain an adequate fc level. if it takes 2 weeks to get the SWCG approved and installed, that's 70 bucks I've spent in bleach when I have trichlor laying around.
as for the vac head, it's not for vinyl pools, pretty sure I stated that. Just have to be careful about not dragging the corners of the head on the liner.
as for the vac head, it's not for vinyl pools, pretty sure I stated that. Just have to be careful about not dragging the corners of the head on the liner.
Rockstar, in terms of cash flow, maybe now that its clean you'd want to switch vacuum heads...a new liner is pretty expensive...and using that head might present an unnecessary risk.