new member and Pool from Southeast Louisiana

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Me too. I can't wait to see what the results REALLY are.

I can tell you this. The pool is so clear right now. I mean, I can see the hair on my toe knuckles in in 5.5ft of water. It's incredible. In fact, I can see that one of the LED light rings is corroding and rusted. This is the one they left in the deep end untreated water for 5 months. Will be telling the builder about that to. Hope to get it replaced under warranty.
 
Got the results. The only thing really out of whack was the TA at 30. Everything else was on point.

Here are the K-2006C test results. Buh-bye test strips!

CH = 350
CC = 0.0
FC = 7.0
pH = 7.4
TA = 30 (Boosted with 13.5 lbs of baking soda to get to 80ppm)
CYA = 50 (A little higher than I would like)

Also added 24 oz. of bleach to boost the FC a bit to do my OCLT. FC right after sunset was 7.5ppm. We'll see what it is in the morning just before sunrise. If all is well, tomorrow I will be adding my borates.

I truly can't thank you all enough. Earlier this week I was in panic mode. I was struggling so much to get by with the test strips and was right in the middle of a guess SLAM when I first posted. Without your guidance, I would not have known if I was on the right track or not. Thanks a bunch. I promise, as soon as I get my life in order, donation is on the way. Plus, I will hang around and keep learning and help others. It's not as hard as I thought owning a pool would be. I got this now thanks to all of you and the fantastic amount of well written and archived material on this site. This is probalby the most useful forum I have ever been on. It's nice to know that there are still good people out there.
 
Two of our top pool build experts have chipped in suggesting sand-blasting for the slippery honed/polished coping. They could go over the decking at the same time, and they suggested that it's possible to control the work to get a very consistent look as well.
 
Awesome thanks. I spoke to the owner of the company that lays the decking for my PB. He stated that they hardly ever install honed and filled travertine for pool decks because of the slickness. He wanted to know if I ordered it like that. Of course, I did not. The PB told us it was going to be tumbled travertine. Well, it isn't. We can't have them flip the deck because the unfilled side has saw blade striations in it. The owner of the deck company said that I could try to etch it with muriatic acid and see how that works. Uh, no thanks. I'm not touching it. If I destroy it, it then becomes my problem.

I sent an e-mail to the PB yesterday imploring him to please fix the issue. I haven't heard a peep back and would be quite surprised if I do. It's like pulling teeth to get them to cooperate. Funny how they don't value money when it's yours, but by God they won't spend a dime of what you paid them to fix a problem they themselves created when the money becomes theirs to manage. People like that don't deserve to be in business. I guess most people don't put up a fight and they get away with it.

You would think that when one of your customers contacts you with an issue like this, the PBs would be concerned. Not my PB. He thinks I'm being less than honest about the severity of the slipping. He would be wrong.
 
Well, I added the correct amount of baking soda last night to get my TA up from 30 to 80. Testing today indicates it shot up to 130. According to the Poolmath, my pool would have to be 10,000 gallons to go from 30 to 130 adding 216 oz. of baking soda. I checked the TA twice last night and both times the result came back as 30. I tested twice tonight and both times it came back 130. Everything else is perfect.

Was looking forward to adding borates tomorrow. I have to put it off now until I get my TA down to about 80. The good news is that I have mega-aeration capability with the bubblers and three sprinklers. Should be able to get the pH up pretty quickly during corrections.

I'm not going to make any adjustments tonight and retest again tomorrow morning. Would TA of 80 and pH of 7.4 be good to achieve before adding borates?
 
Weird TA rise. I should have written an extra line back up there ^^^. Sometimes it's good to add half and then test, and if I had suggested that maybe it would be OK. In the meantime, don't sweat it, acid additions will bring it down.
 
Been working one getting the TA in line. Added approximately 0.5 gallons of MA yesterday and brought TA down to 110 and pH down to 7.0. Good news is after leaving my bubblers and sprinklers on overnight my pH is back up to 7.9 this morning. Just added another 0.5 gallons of MA to drop it again. Hoping that will bring my TA down to within range. Will be letting the FC drift down to a target of 5.0. Been keeping it above 6.0 the last few days.

Here are the results: You guys and gals rock!

Pool8151.jpg


pool8152.jpg
 

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Thought I'd share the measurements I've been recording on my spreadhseet since the pool was opened. You can see in the trending charts where I had to blindly SLAM the pool using test strips and then where I switched over to the TFPC method. Seeing is believing. You can see where I pegged out on FC using the test strips when I SLAMMED the pool. I lucked out and got it right using the strips.

It is worth noting that the "Chlorine Added" column early on indicated the dial setting for the Rainbow 320 in-line auto chlorinator I was using at the time before I switched over to bleach. I was instructed by the PB to keep the FC levels between 0.5ppm - 1.0ppm. As you can see, it just could not keep up with FC demand even on the max setting of 5.

According to TFPC recommendations at CYA level:

Yellow = Low
Green = In Range
Red = High

measurements.jpg


FC.jpg



CC.jpg


pH.jpg


TA.jpg


CYA.jpg


CH.jpg
 
On the topic of the honed and filled coping, another member here had a similar incident with polished decking being installed by mistake instead of tumbled, I think the solution they ended up going with was media blasting. This was a build in east Texas last year (I think Houston, but may have been DFW), as I recall the PB asked to try this first before replacing the pavers. I tried searching for the build thread, but can't seem to find it at the moment.

ps here is one thread on the topic
Builder Installed Wrong Finish Travertine - Demand Replacement?
 
Thanks, Isaac. I've subscribed to that thread in hopes the OP will post an explanation of the remedy he was satisfied with. Not sure he will as he hasn't replied since Jannuary.

My PB is not a very honest guy as we're finding out. He installed two led spa lights in our pool instead of pool lights. The contract says, "Two LED Lights" and not two LED pool lights. Being a first time pool owner, we had no clue until I was researching the parts to keep a list of what was installed. That's when I found out they were spa lights. They work ok, but sure would like to have had bigger lights if we would have known ahead of time. He did the same with the decking upgrade. It states " Travertine" and not the tumbled travertine he told us he was going to install.
 
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