Greetings all. When it comes to pool maintenance, I have experience but it may not be of any great benefit because I have gotten away with the basics for years. The pool I am presently maintaining was built in the late 1960's and has been re-plastered once over those years. It is in bad need of a new coat of plaster but it's something that won't be done because the pool has significant cracks from geological settling, and really needs to go through major renovation. It will probably be done over the next 2 years or so. My challenge now is to deal with algae that has gotten worse than normal this year. This is almost certainly, at least partially, attributable to the very old plaster, with lots of nook and crannies for algae to make itself at home.
Other crazy issues are that the pool was built with a polished creekstone shallow entrance, which was all the rage at the time. This presents more nooks and crannies, as well as inviting every type of bird and animal to bath, and surely relieve itself, in the shallows. And to make matters worse, the deck and coping is of flagstone, which presents additional places for the algae to cling. The pool has always been a challenge. For now, until the pool renovation starts, my job is to try to keep it decent looking, and perhaps non-threatening, if someone should decide to jump in. Last year I don't think anybody swam in it.
Thanks to the TFP site, I learned about CYA and picked up a kit. The results were quite low at ~25 (whatevers). Last week I put one envelope of chlorine shock in the pool, as well as a gallon of liquid chlorine, on top of the 3" chlorine tablets in the float. And I'll be hogswazzled, virtually all of the chlorine was gone a few days later. I cleaned the filter the hard way last week, as my sewer cleanout is more than 100' away and I hate backwashing down a hill into a neighbors yard. Surely my, or someone's, job will be easier once the pool renovation is complete. Thanks ahead of time for any and all help. Cheers.
