Proud owner of a glorious swamp!

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I see no reason that you need to do a full drain on this pool, I would suggest starting with vacuuming to waste, getting as much of the debris out as possible that way, draining maybe 25% of the water in the process, You can be refilling while vacuuming. Refill and repeat, after 2 or 3 20-25% drains your CYA should be in a sane ballpark, assuming it is as high as you think it is now. Sump pumps are often needed for draining pools where the skimmer and drain can not be isolated from each other. Also many typical inground pool pumps can only lift water to prime on their suction side by 3-4 feet, which can limit ones ability to use them to fully drain a pool.


Ike

p.s. that superpump with no filter resistance can probably pump in the ballpark range of 75-80 gallons per minute
 
I would NOT take the chance of messing up your shell. I would NOT drain the whole pool at one time.

I WOULD drain and fill, drain and fill, repeat until you get your numbers down. There is even a way of using plastic sheeting to "divide" the water so you are adding water while draining. You can look of it.

Good luck!
 
I should have mentioned that I don't plan to drain the whole pool. I think I need to replace 30-40% of the water to get to my SWCG target of 70-80. Thank you for the explanation of the sump pump and advice on drain and fill. I did see the "tarp method" on another thread and it makes more sense now. Without knowing one's water table, is 25% a completely safe amount to drain, or are there still risks?
 
First day at the new house! Movers deliver our stuff tomorrow. It was a hot day, and the dog shocked the <fecal matter synonym> out of me by diving into the algae-covered pool. Note that we've never owned a pool before, so I wasn't expecting this would happen the second my back was turned. I was relieved when his head popped above the surface and he paddled over to the stairs when called. Hope he doesn't get sick from the swamp crud. :(

pool-wetdog1.jpg


I'm going to retest the pool results tomorrow when I have a moment. It's possible the CYA measurement was off, since I didn't do the prior test under optimal conditions. It's likely I'll still need to drain a good chunk of the pool. My prior question still stands: Without knowing one's water table, is 25% a safe amount to drain at once?
 
The dog is fine! I can tell he's going to love his new pool and home! :mrgreen:

(My dog gets into the neighbor's yard when I leave her out supervised and I won't even tell you what she gets into over there!!!) :pukel: :rant:
 
Congrats on the new pool. Time to shock and awe. It'll be clear in no time.

If the Polaris/booster pump is broke, I'd consider getting a robotic. I really like using mine to clean and vacuum while I'm cleaning my DE filter on start up of a really dirty pool.. It can really help speed up the time to turning a green pool to blue.
 
My lab (Casey RIP) never used the pool when no one was out there. She always waited for me to give the green light which was usually a ball thrown in! Once she saw me in my bikini though... that was that, she started howling in excitement because she knew was going swimming! :mrgreen:
 

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I'm making progress. Today I figured out the leaf eater and blind scooped a lot of pool crud. The loud noises I heard last night were two frogs that moved in. I evicted one this morning, the other is going to pack up and go or will discover a new interpretation of an old adage. I also replaced the pressure valve on the sand filter today. After backwashing it reads about 12 PSI running, and 0 stopped. Feels like a nice, solid gauge. Thanks, Dave S.!

pool-gauge4.jpg


This is in stark comparison to my old flimsy gauge, which reads around 60 PSI pretty much all the time.

pool-gauge3.jpg


I think I've figured out how the Jandy valve works now: the skimmer flows in from the right, the main drain from below, and the outlet to the pump above. The stop indicates where the plate will slide, prohibiting flow to/from that direction. But I'm curious as to why it is "stopped" the way it is. It seems like Jandy valves were really intended for two outlets and one inlet, and clearly pool owners are using them the other way. On my valve, the stop will slide to block the main drain and do skimmer only (DOWN), open both inlets (LEFT), or dead head the pump (UP). It will not block the skimmer and do main drain only, which garners from me an expletive worth deleting.

Can I open the valve and change it so it stops to prevent the UP setting only?

pool-jandy3.jpg


I also got the pump to run for a few hours, although it sputtered for a while. I took some test readings, entered them into Simple Pool Professional on my phone, and while I was looking for the thermometer gun managed to press the back button and lose all my results. To the best of my recollection, I got pH:~8.5, TA:160, CYA:55, CH: 260, and Salt:2800. As I recently suspected, my CYA reading was much lower than my original reading, this time I did it in full sunlight with the sun to my back and the tube at waist level. I'm going to test again tomorrow to be sure (and I'm happy I bought extra CYA reagent!). I'm also pleased that this means I won't have to drain the pool any.

I'm stocking up on pool chemicals, getting ready to SLAM. This shelf looks a lot different than the shelf from the previous owner. :)

pool-chemicals-4.jpg


Should I bother trying to do a comprehensive estimate of the pool volume, or is the pool inspector's "analysis" of 15k gallons good enough?

mac4lyfe said:
If the Polaris/booster pump is broke, I'd consider getting a robotic. I really like using mine to clean and vacuum while I'm cleaning my DE filter on start up of a really dirty pool.. It can really help speed up the time to turning a green pool to blue.
Click to expand...

I would love that, but we're pretty strapped right now after the move to the new house. It's going to have to be "The Human Brushmaster" for the time being!

Casey said:
My lab (Casey RIP) never used the pool when no one was out there. She always waited for me to give the green light which was usually a ball thrown in! Once she saw me in my bikini though... that was that, she started howling in excitement because she knew was going swimming! :mrgreen:
Click to expand...

That's adorable!
 
I got a late start on the pool, so I started filling the pool a bit (the water was barely clearing the skimmer), did another CYA reading (55 again) and another pH (>8, maybe 8.5). I picked up a couple gallons of what I think is 20 degree muriatic acid. PoolMath said I only needed to add 40 oz., so I measured it out and added it slowly in front of what I think is a return jet (but I've yet to see it). After an hour of running the pump another pH test revealed it was still >8, the color looked an unchanged from before. This time I used the acid demand reagent and it needed 12 drops to get it to 7.3 - the book in the kit goes only up to 10 drops and for that it said a 20k gal pool needed 1.43 gallons. My pool is (theoretically) 15k, so I winged it and add what was probably around 1.3 gallons. This was obviously too much as the yellow sample is now reading <7. The base demand test needed four drops to get it above 7.2, which the book says needs almost 2 lbs of soda ash. PoolMath is not that helpful until I can get a more precise sample in the 7-8 range.

I also measured TA at this point and it was 90. I'm disinclined to add soda ash or borax (which I bought a box of) since the TA is already higher than recommended. Thoughts? Are there any forms of aeration that don't require me to attach anything to the return jets which are deep beloew the dark and murky surface... <shudder>

Can I start the SLAM tomorrow even though the pH is low?

If the pool isn't actually 15k gallons, this might account for some of my issues.
 
You should have just kept using PoolMath and kept targeting a reasonable pH range and done it in steps instead of trying to do it all at once and not stuck in a roller-coaster.

You need to get the pH up to around 7.2 since we do not know how low it really is, and then SLAM.
 
jblizzle said:
You should have just kept using PoolMath and kept targeting a reasonable pH range and done it in steps instead of trying to do it all at once and not stuck in a roller-coaster.

You need to get the pH up to around 7.2 since we do not know how low it really is, and then SLAM.
Click to expand...

What's the matter? You don't like roller coasters? :D

Yeah, I didn't anticipate overshooting like this. I initially used PoolMath when I was >8 and it resulted in still being >8. I took this to mean that estimates of an out-of-range pH color are unreliable, and that an acid demand test would be more accurate. It didn't occur to me that I should add all chemicals in increments, I thought it would get me close and I could adjust from there. Guess not. Are the demand tests in a Taylor K2006 unusable, or is pH sensitive to small errors in measurements?

So let's say your pH test is a delightful yellow and below 7-8 range of the color comparator. How would you address it? How do you use PoolMath to target a reasonable pH range in steps when you don't know the exact pH? And once you have a result in range, how much of PoolMath's recommendation would you make at a time? 50%? 25%?

Thanks for the help! Trying to learn.
 
scriptorum said:
What's the matter? You don't like roller coasters? :D

Yeah, I didn't anticipate overshooting like this. I initially used PoolMath when I was >8 and it resulted in still being >8. I took this to mean that estimates of an out-of-range pH color are unreliable, and that an acid demand test would be more accurate. It didn't occur to me that I should add all chemicals in increments, I thought it would get me close and I could adjust from there. Guess not. Are the demand tests in a Taylor K2006 unusable, or is pH sensitive to small errors in measurements?

So let's say your pH test is a delightful yellow and below 7-8 range of the color comparator. How would you address it? How do you use PoolMath to target a reasonable pH range in steps when you don't know the exact pH? And once you have a result in range, how much of PoolMath's recommendation would you make at a time? 50%? 25%?

Thanks for the help! Trying to learn.
Click to expand...
I'd plug in what I had and dose it. Brush it, let it circulate 30--60 minutes, repeat the test and do it again and again. Note that TA goes down with each acid addition, and as TA goes down, so does the acid required to lower pH. Experiment. Prove it to yourself. Plug some numbers into poolmath. See how much acid it takes to go from 8.2 to 7.5 with TA at 200, then again at 100TA, and again at 50TA.
 
Like Richard said, make sure you pool volume and TA are correct. Now you would put a NOW of say 6.8 and a TARGET of 7.4ish. Add that amount of borax or soda ash. Test again in an hour and do it again if needed.
 
Alright, I'm certain now that I failed to set the correct TA before looking up the muriatic acid adjustment.

So it's okay for me to make a guess and say, "Hrm, this yellow looks like a 6.7?" Or should I say something more like "Well, it's below 7.0, so let's try 6.9?"

UPDATE:
Thanks jb, that's exactly the information what I was looking for!
 
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