Post Mistakes You Made Before TFPC

[mickey4paws]

When we bought our house, we knew we needed a new vinyl liner but because it was still winter, we couldn't have the equipment tested. However, we did have a pool escrow put into the purchase agreement, where the sellers made an escrow account for a certain dollar amount for any needed pool repairs other than the vinyl liner. We did end up getting a couple thousand for some needed repairs.

Oh wait, this is a thread about mistakes! Ok, well the biggest mistake we made was using Baquacil instead of chlorine. The first year the pool looked good (or what we thought looked good), but by the second year we started developed clarity problems and algae growth. I remember swimming and not being able to see where I was going. The pool store kept telling us we needed this, we needed that, while our pockets were bleeding money.

Then, I found TFP and with this great site's help, we converted from Baquacil to chlorine and also got a SWG. The best part was being able to see where I was going when I swim, plus feeling in control and not depending on pool stores.

 

[jasonknox]

My biggest mistake was using copper and silver ions to treat my pool. It may work for some one out there but it did not work for me. Since I went with BBB my pool has been perfect. Unfortunately I have only been able to convince one person that this site is better than the pool store. Whatever, they still have pool problems and I am just rockin along with a big grin.

 

[wayner]

Before a few months ago my pool maintenance method was to use test strips a couple of times per week to monitor pH and Cl supplemented by the occasional test at the pool store. My pool never went green and I did catch a few instances where my SWCG stopped working as the Cl strip never turned purple. My pool shop never tried to push a lot of chemicals on me other than saying you need to more CYA or pH- or whatever of your basic chemicals or your Chlorine is too low.

This year I am having issues with the SWCG again and I also had troubles getting CYA up to the correct levels so I bought a Taylor test kit so that I could do my own tests. I am grateful for the help that I receive on these forums but I do think that other methods can work and, especially if you have a properly functioning SWCG, you can get by without spending too much time on your pool testing with expensive test kits (at least for Canadians). Maybe this is partially because I live in a cooler climate zone and it is a different story if you live in FL, CA, AZ, etc.

 

[jasont47]

I'll start with how I found this site. Last fall, I closed the automatic cover (aquamatic hydrolic cover) as some leaves were starting to fall. I attempted to open it a few days later to close the pool for the season, but the cover locked up with about 3 feet uncovered. We live about 75 miles from a metro area, so it was very hard to find someone who knew how to work on aquamatic hydrolic covers. By the time I finally got a tech from a pool/repair store to come to town, LOTS of leaves from a some large oaks had found their way into the pool. We managed to manually force the cover closed as we waited on a new motor and conversion to a Cover-Pools system. In January, the parts arrived and installation was scheduled. The pool guy made the haul to my house again and when he finished he advised me to dump a dozen bottles of bleach in to get a head-start on the cleaning process. He said, "if you were in range to be a regular customer of mine, I'd try to sell you my chems or get you on my route, but due to distance, I'll let you in on a secret. Bleach can do the same job as pool store chems." I had to fact check before I dumped in the bleach and that's what led me here.

My mistake was that I only considered bleach to be a shock and not part of regular maintenance. I opened the pool in the spring without a good test kit (I used strips) and continued using pucks. Went on vacation in June and came home to a green pool. Remembered this forum and wanted to know how much bleach to "Shock" my pool. This time, I read more, ordered a TF-100 test kit, and took control of my pool. Still trying to get my Ch and TA down, but my other readings have been good and my pool is clear. Things are good!

 

[glewis29]

I moved into my house 12 years ago and have used pucks with floaters the whole time. Basically as the CYA went up (when I finally got the nice test kit, it was around 400 or so I think), I had to put in more and more pucks. Also, I was using the cheap tester kits, so 5 ppm of chlorine is good, right? I mean it's at the top of the test. The pool also has really bad plaster, so I also have an extensive black algae problem, and I threw so much copper algaecide at it the walls turned blue... fortunately not too many blonde people swim in my pool, so I didn't turn anyone's hair green.

Basically things got so bad with the algae that I stopped using the pool for the last couple of years. I was looking for something and found PoolSolutions.com and TroubleFreePool.com, did some testing and realized just how out of whack my pool was. My readings were something like CYA of around 400, CH of around 1000 and I'm sure TA was too high. I dumped half the pool and filled it. Dumped 3/4 the pool and filled it. Got CYA down to 40, CH to 250, and have been working on getting TA under 100 so I can add borates. Have been using liquid chlorine and just moved to the Liquidator. The pools plaster and tile are still horrible and I've got black algae in the cracks, but the pool water is crystal clear I'm working on the black algae with PolyQuat, hopefully I can nip it in the bud next year.

So in short, pucks and copper algaecide due to lack of knowledge.

 

[Kiss4aFrog]

Pool Store , , , Following expert advise like "try this". Need I say more

 

[Xexys]

I really didn't do anything "wrong", I was just tired of the pool store method of adding pucks and shocking every other week. Even in the pool manual it said to shock every other week that we received with the pool when my current wife bought the house 11 years ago.

I found the site after the SWG quit working and I was also having other mechanical issues with the pop-ups and the pumps. From January of this year to April I was running the pool with just the main pump as I was working to find out what our issues were and fixing those issues. Pool was green and looked to google to find this site. Since then, I've repaired ALL mechanical issues with the pool. Replaced our SWG, fixed the valves and valve tops. Replaced the cartridges and the pressure relief valve and gauge. Repaired a leaky pipe, fixed one of the leaky pumps. Put in a new pool light, and also repaired the main drain without dumping the water (that was a tough one there).

Since getting all my chemicals in order, I've added boric acid and my wife is shocked on how clear the water is. It truly is a new pool! I rarely have to add anything but muriatic acid and I really only add that once every 5 or so days and when I do add that, it's only 30-40 ounces to get it down from 7.8 to 7.5. I love my new pool that is 17 years old.

 

[markuszoom5]

Bought house with 10 year old pool, poured 10 gal liquid shock, 1 bottle of super algaecide and 1 bottle of clarifier. Pool was cloudy and dumped more powder shock without dissolving, dumped a bunch of hardness plus and stabilizer, started using pucks. Hen found this web page and now laughing at how stupid I was. Got pool-Stored for a month but not anymore. Now was even able to fix leaky pump thanks to this forum!

 

[mas956]

I, too, fell "victim" to the pool store "free" testing and e-mail coupons for stuff I didn't need. Biggest mistake, though, was probably putting a few hundred dollars into rebuilding a years-old Polaris 360 only to still have mediocre results. recently replaced that dinosaur with a robot and am happy as can be.

 

[Wwiggins]

I would go to pool store once or twice a week to get the weekly bags of shock and the pucks to float, they would test the water and then the computer print out would recommend pool products. Then they would ask me how the water looks, if I said cloudy they would add another product to the list. After filling my arms with products they would see me to the counter. After a couple of light jokes and several dollars later I was out the door. I'd go home and float this chemical, broadcast that chemical watch and wait, the water might clear up or it might not. If it didn't then it was back to pool store to buy more chemicals. They blamed the cloudiness on chemical bought elsewhere (walmart) because theirs had no "fillers".
More bags of shock. I have two places where my liner faded. One was when my floater came apart and pucks fell to the bottom and the other was when I was shocking the pool. I put the bag of shock in the bucket and tried to dissolve it. I thought it was dissolved but when I poured it in the granules sank to the bottom and faded my liner. Ahhhh!

I know the convention here is "shock" is something you do to your pool by raising the chlorine level, but in my previous pool life, shock was in a bag at the pool store. And it was expensive. And I did it weekly!

I'm in my first few months here at TCP, and I still can't believe I'm just adding bleach. Yes at first I had to add acid, baking soda, and shock the pool using my recommended chlorine levels according to cya chart, but now I'm just adding bleach. And my pool sparkles clearer than it ever did before. Simple and a lot less expensive. I'm confident I've already recouped the money I've spent on the testing kit. The rest is just saved money, time and frustration. And my family is in the pool a lot more!

Thanks TFP
I'm telling everyone I know with a pool to come here!

Wade

 

[bdex]

Really probably 2 mistakes. One was buying a SWG that was just big enough. Should have went one size bigger. And the other was not buying my test kit until we had the pool for 2 years. Had a pool store guy we trusted and he did not really steer us wrong, but he retired. Next time into the pool store I walked out with the $35 quart of phosphate remover for the fourth time in 2 years. When looking for a "preventative" solution found the forum. Now have a K2006, Taylor salt water test (k1766) and the Taylor phosphate kit k-1106. Test fully once a week and add about 2qt acid to keep ph down and some liquid chlorine so I can run my SWG at 70% and keep numbers in line. Our phosphates would creep up consistently and I travel a fair amount for work so I do use a maintenance dose of phosfree weekly and they stay at 0.

What we did right was going SWG immediately, against our installers recommendation. He did not understand them and there fore they were bad. And installing an APC automatic pool cover immediately. No trees, but keeps heater use to a minimum and keeps chlorine in the pool when our 100% exposure tries to cook it out.