Pool has been unused at least 2 years....

Jump to latest Follow Reply
armsdealer said:




So 6 cracks, some staining, lots of staining and one pin hole. The A/C guys where arguing over if it was 10 feet or 12 feet deep. Either way, its deep.

1 snake and 1 bullfrog managed their way back in or never left.

Pool light is toast, all jets are toast.

It is filling up now, it holds water, I think I am going to start using it since it has been difficult to get someone to want to quote a quality pool repair. If there is a PB in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana area, feel free to contact me.

I will hit it with a manual vac tomorrow, might pump some water out from the deep end, couldn't get every leaf and bit of dirt out. Of course the storms added more leaves to the pool. Towards the end we started using dilution to clean the pool. We would fill up/pump out/fill up/pump out to get the decomposed crud out.
Click to expand...

Wow! This will be interesting to follow. Good luck in your journey to cleanup and repair.
 
They are cracked and crumbly, just need to unscrew and put on new jets.

Went to take apart the filter to see what is inside... it is an ant farm... Going to probably just pick up a new filter, possibly a new pump. Any recommendations. Currently it has a 48sf DE filter with a 1hp pentair pump. I am guessing early 2000's models. The cartridge filter intrigues me...

Going to either pick up local or amazon prime it so I can get it going for this weekend. I have an aquabot I am going to set to work when the pool is full, it will give me some circulation.
 
I have only ever had DE ... which is fine. Not sure I would have a problem switching to the others though. When pulling apart and cleaning the DE grids and dealing the DE powder I often wish I had a sand filter. If I ever have to replace my filter for some reason, I think I may go to sand.
 
Hey, Arms, great job on the clean up!

FWIW, I have a sand filter and love the simplicity in terms of maintenance (virtually none required.) Like the article says, the difference in micron-filtering size isn't really that noticeable by day.

My water looks crystal during the day time, but at night with the light on before I bought my Dolphin M4, not quite as clear. But the robot filters to a smaller micron than the sand filter (2 microns...about the same as DE), and as a result, it now seems much clearer at night.

In my setting, with abundant trees, pollen, petals, etc., I run the bot almost daily, so I get the hassle-free benefit of the sand filter but highly filtered water at the same time. In my case, that equals happy camper ;)

I don't know how finely the aquabot filters or how often you will need to run it, but I thought it was worth mentioning for your consideration.

On another note, if you don't really want to buy a new filter yet before you decide on your rehab, you can likely just clean out the DE filter, add fresh DE, and give it a whirl for the season.

DE kills ants, so once its filled, I expect the colony will die off. (DE is actually used as a natural form of pest control)

Either way, kudos on your hard work to date!
 
There is the issue of the ants, but also the issue of a colony in the filters. I know it is not worth my time and skin to clean out the DE grids. I am at peace replacing the filter. I found a 24" hayward sand filter for under $300 with a multi valve. Now just to see how much pool sand is going to cost.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
For less than $100 you can just replace the entire grid pack in your current DE filter. You will also probably need to replace all the O-rings in the control valve, but they are cheap.
 
Picked up a Hayward 31" sand filter and 500 pounds of sand from a local place for $700, they are delivering it tomorrow. Picked up a Pentair superflo 1.5hp pump, it was the same price as the 1hp and the pool place I got the sand filter from wanted to sell me a 1.5hp pump with the filter. They want to put a bag of pea gravel in the bottom, but I haven't read of anybody doing that. I am going to search now. Foreclosure's are a ton of work, but it is look MUCH better.

- - - Updated - - -

Chief, the filter is pretty bad. The pressure relief valve doesn't work, the pressure gauge is unreadable, the plastic is brittle. Mostly, there are probably a million fire ants I don't want to deal with... I am hoping the termite treatment from today gets into their network and knocks em down.
 
We finally got the sand filter hooked up, all 550lbs of sand... It is a 30/31" pro series with the valve on top. Went in easy enough, and starting pressure was around 9.

There are a few reasons I didn't hook up the new pump, one I want to make sure the wiring can handle the larger pump, probably will, just need to check the wire gauge. It was also threatening to storm, but never did, while we were hooking things up. The new pump and old pump use the exact same fittings, so that's easy. Last, I just wanted something to filter the water.

One HUGE bummer is the who knows how much dirt I pumped into the pool once I got all the leaves out of the lines and got the pool pump going. I guess it had to happen, but man it looks like I took a few steps backwards.

So, I know have this new dirt in the pool, but can see to the bottom. Well what should I do, break out the robot, it can get the leaves on the bottom and kick up the dirt so it will make its way through filtration. I unpack everything, get my aquabot down in the shallow end, plug in the controller and nothing. I go through the trouble shoot. I went as far to plug it into a GFI outlet instead of just a circuit protected by one and still no dice. So I have an expensive robot that does nothing... and of course they close at 4pm. Luckily I bought it through Amazon, so if I can't get help from Aquabot, I have an easy return. Maybe I can get one of the 3 pool stores on the same block to get me a prices on a Dolphin m5, or I will just jump on a Z5. It boggles my mind that the dolphin dealers don't want to sell the flagship model...
 
Kudos on the new filter. Too bad about the bot but hopefully it will work out. Dolphin's zillion-model-strategy drives me crazy but I suspect they do it to be able to sell online yet still support their resellers, so I can forgive some of the crazy, only because I truly love my M4 ;)

Are you all good on the regular maintenance now (eg read up in pool school, using liquid chlorine, testing-balancing, etc.)? Due to the mechanical quest, think I missed the fill so am unclear if you're fully functional and at normal sanitized conditions or not ;)

If everything's sorted but you introduced new gunk into the pool, it wouldn't hurt to ride at slam levels for a day or two until you get the new **** out to avoid any outbreaks or going backwards ;) Let us know how you're doing on that front.

If a regular pool vac came with the house, you could likely just use that while you're getting a new bot to get the crud off the bottom.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply