My water is crystal clear, numbers look great and no algae all summer. But you can see stains that look like dirt or sand or pollen on the bottom of the deep end. The shallow end looks perfect and honestly I’m the only one who probably notices the stains since I take care of the pool. It’s a subtle all over the floor thing, not dark obvious stains. All I can think of is leftover organic (pollen) stains from spring.

Well, I have the salt water testing kit from tftest kits. We got water in the pool today. PC put in sequestrant and some liquid chlorine, 3/4 of a standard jug. The pump has been running for several hours. I did a FAS/DPD test (twice) and the water never changed, indicating zero chlorine. I did a CL/PH test and got like .5 on CL and a 7.6 on my PH. I tried doing a CYA test and the dot never disappears. The pool guys took a sample to the store, but it was late and I never heard back from them as they are now closed. Lol, HELP. Brand new, and trying to see what I need to do since we just put in the water. Obviously we are not a salt pool yet...30 days to go

Hi everyone! My buddy in Michigan recommended this forum. I just took over pool maintenance from the company we'd been using, and I'm having some issues keeping the dang thing chlorinated. (The pool's also been a relationship sore spot and I'm gonna try not to TMI y'all, but I'd be trying different things if it were just me, so I'm gonna need to reference that a little. Okay, a medium amount... maybe a lot?)

Our CYA is over 100 ppm. I can't be more exact than that because the test I used, the kind where you check the level once the black dot stops being visible, doesn't label the beaker far down enough. It's off the charts high. I suspect this is because before I took over, nobody remotely cared about our CYA levels; the pool company was using chlorine tabs and I suspect dichlor shock.

When I first took over and started testing, there was consistently almost no free chlorine, even with several trichlor tabs in the floatie. The pool looked fine and we weren't having algae problems (yet), but I wanted to get the chlorine levels up before we got a nasty bacterial surprise, so I started doing some research, which led me to start troubleshooting it as a CYA issue.

I pulled the trichlor floatie and picked up some cal hypo and liquid chlorine. The cal hypo gets the chlorine levels up pretty consistently, the liquid chlorine has been harder to deal with in regard to figuring out what dosage is gonna move the needle. I've dumped in four gallons trying to hyperchlorinate and successfully gotten the levels above 10 ppm, I've also dumped in four gallons and been at .5 ppm eight hours later.

In any case, the chlorine level will only stay in the swimmable range for one day before dropping back down to barely chlorinated, then if I don't put in more chlorine that night, we get algae. I'm spending mad bank at the WalMart outdoor department like it's a strip club in Vegas.

As for trying to get the CYA down, we're in Phoenix valley summer temperatures at the moment, so we can't do a full drain & refill. We've got a (not super powerful) pool pump that we've used for a few hours at a time over two or three nights, and it did get the CYA down some, in that it went from being way off the charts to only substantially off the charts. Our auto-refiller is too loud to run at night, so if we use the pump, someone has to stay up until 2-4 AM to shut off the refill hose. (It's me, I'm someone.)

I need my partner's buy-in to run the pump, and he's more concerned about our plaster and our water bill than he is about our cyanuric acid. Honestly it's turned into a weird thing where he thinks I'm hyperfixated on the CYA to the exclusion of anything else that might be causing a chlorine problem, and I'm trying to explain that from what I've read, we haven't even done the pool equivalent of turning it off and back on again.

Well, today he said he wants to hire a new pool company, because it'd be cheaper than what I'm spending on chlorine anyway (can't argue) and he doesn't want to think about it anymore. I said okay, but could we look for a company that would actually work with us about the cyanuric acid levels instead of showing up, throwing the floatie back in, and busting out more dichlor shock? He said sure, as long as I was willing to call around and find a company that would do that. (Most of the reason the pool has been a contentious issue is he's stretched thin & we agreed I'd take care of it myself.)

I started researching pool companies today (figured I'd call Monday since many are closed on Saturday) & got more and more depressed every time I'd read the list of services & it just said "chlorine tabs." I really don't have any faith that if we hire a new company, we won't wind up back in a situation where we have a nice-looking pool with barely any chlorine. I'm also pretty sure I could stay on top of this by myself if the CYA levels were lower and I wasn't buying & adding chlorine every other day.

So tl;dr: here are my questions, troublefreepool forum:

Am I hyperfixating on CYA?
Is there something else that might be causing the high requirements for external chlorine? (It's definitely gotten hotter, and we get a ton of sun.)
Is there some noob thing I'm just doing fundamentally wrong here?
It is true that I'm supposed to have to add way less chlorine than this, right? (I'm at like 8 gallons a week.)
What might be causing the inconsistent results I'm getting with liquid chlorine dosage?
Is it actually okay to have a nice-looking pool with barely any chlorine and I should just calm down and accept the trichlor floatie back into my life?
If I'm not wrong about assuming I should troubleshoot this as a CYA issue, can anybody who actually knows about this stuff back me up with an authoritative statement?

Thanks in advance!

Hello again. Sorry if this has been asked before. I did search through the forums, but didn't see anything. I recently switched from trichlor tabs to cal-hypo tabs and on the advice of this forum I bought a chlorine floater instead of using my inline feeder. The question / problem I have is when the pump turns off at 8 PM the water circulation basically stops and the floater will park itself on the stairs or up against a wall. Will the concentrated chlorine at that spot damage my stairs or liner? Question 2 - when I went out and moved the floater this morning a ton of chlorine particle started falling out of the bottom. I'm guessing since it doesn't really move overnight, that's all of the dissolved chlorine in on shot. So do all feeders behave this way or did I buy a cheap dud?


Thanks in advance.

Looking to install or have my Glacier GPC 210 installed next week. I've searched through all of the threads and could not find the answer I was after. I have a Pentair Prowler cleaner but we ran a 1.5" line in case we ever need to install a cleaner with a booster bump. Would this be sufficient to use as the dedicated return line for the chiller or does it need to be tied into the pool return to be dispersed across the pool?

This is an intex 48” pool and I have no idea how to secure the ladder. It wobbles from side to side a bit. Drilling into the frame isn’t something I want to do at all. Thanks!

Ok, so I can’t see how this can make sense. My pool heater is only 2 years old, still under warrantee. This season each time I put the heater on it would ignite but then after 10 minutes or so the service heater light would go on, igniter off but unit frozen only way to turn off the unit was to cut the breaker.
Pool company comes out and they guy is telling me they had to replace a sensor that broke that has been going bad on a lot of the heaters they have been seeing. Then he tries to blame the fact that I run my vs pump at 2000 when I’m using the heater. He says it’s too low of a speed and what’s happening is the water is going into the system too slow to cool the coil causing it to burn up the sensor. He insists I need my vs pump set at 2900 in order for my heater to not get damaged.
The heater says the flow rate min is 30 /max 120 pm I think. What does that correspond to in terms of vs pump settings. The only issue I ever had with the flow not working was when I was testing the min. which was 1400 for it to go on. And even then it was a different light that went in it said service system instead of the service heater light.
I’m trying not to run my pump at 2900 to run my heater, but I also don’t want to kill my heater again. Does what he is saying make sense? The sensor was like a Y shaped metal wire piece. Is this an actual issue anyone has heard of with the pentair mastertemp 300? My model was made in 2020. Thanks for your help.

I've done SLAM and passed the OCLT a few times now. I've even done the OCLT an extra day and passed. I have another algae bloom, and I've started SLAM again. My FC was around 20 for SLAM and dropped to 7 at the lowest with a CYA of 50, so I have a few ideas where this algae is coming from.

1) I have a large sakura shrub with a branch of leaves that has grown and has a few leaves touching the water, I didn't really pay much attention to this but if this is the algae source you guys can shame me now

2) There were small lines of green on the skimmer doors, I brushed those down until the lines were gone. I don't think this is a source of algae, maybe dirt? But I just brushed it down now

3) I have not checked behind the light fixtures, actually one of my fixtures the plastic holder to screw in the light is broken I think, I need to get into the water with goggles and take a look. When the light popped out the light didnt have any algae, and the liner behind the light is ripped. If I'm supposed to clean behind the light, do I just stick the brush in there and brush the back?

4) Maybe im not running the pump long enough? The sun is hitting the pool early around 9AM and I have the pump starting at 10AM running until 6PM at night, sunset is around 8:30

Not sure if allowed - please delete if not. But if you use an R-0014 compatible comparator and could use a fresh 22 mL bottle (exp 07/24) or R-0014 phenol red - let me know, can ship it to you at cost. I bought the wrong ph indicator as part of a refill set so can't really return, but would rather have it used then throw it away.

Hi all,
Purchased a couple of these valves on Amazon from what seemed to be a pool store, but they don't feel new/genuine so wanted to get your thoughts.

Are they made in Mexico now?
On the inside at top and bottom pivots of the gate it seems like there's a heavy coating of lube.

Thanks for everyone's help!

Hi, I just replaced the old single-speed pump to a new Pentair Superflo VS

My Pentair Easytouch was from 2004 so I can't have the Superflo setting through the panel (I won't have a Superflo item on the meanu) which means I can't control the speed from the panel.

My current setting is letting the panel control the on/off of the pump, I use "Egg Timer - Don't Stop" for 24-hour running.

I use the pump panel to set the Speed 1 speed to 1000RPM.

It works fine.

However, when it is running, the pump will be:

1. blinking the speed 1 LED light;
2. showing on the screen - Auto / 1000
3. showing the Exe. Control ONLY light is off

I can't do 3 things:

1. I can't press the Quick Clean button
2. I can't manual switch to the other 2 speeds
3. Even I set the Speed 1 Starting Time / Duration, Speed 2 Duration, Speed 3 Duration, it doesn't go to the other two speeds as I planned

The question is, is there way to bypass the Auto mode, so that I can quickly switch to other 3 models (Speed 2, Speed 3, Quick Clean) for different RPMs?

Thank you!

We are planning to sign a contract soon with an experienced pool company and I need to give some specifics about the build for them. The pool will be 10 X 16 fiberglass with salt generator, gas heater, and a few spa jets in a bench area for 1 person. No deck jets or other water features installed. The equipment pad will not be easily accessible from the pool deck area.

I want to have automation with my phone to control heating, spa function, SWG, lights and of course the pump. I have been reading about Pentair and Jandy but not sure which is the best?

Hi All,
My name is Amy and I’m here because I’m assuming I should stop everything I’m doing, drain my pool and start with a new tanker delivery of pool water. This is summer 3 for my family with this pool. We have used it about half the time we have owned it due to the following problem.

We were told by a store at the end of last year that our pool was in chlorine lock and had high phosphates. The pool was crystal clear and didn’t smell like chlorine. They told us to drain 12” off the pool. We did and filled with water from our garden hose (city water). It was still high so we didn’t swim in the pool the rest of the season.
We went to a different place to close the pool they told us to add some chlorine reducer and not to worry about the phosphates and winterize the pool. Fast forward this year. Same deal. High chlorine, high phosphates. Husband had the water checked and a different pool place said don’t worry about it. Don’t add any chlorine it will go down. That was the solution. Too high to swim so wait it out. A month later still the chlorine is 6.9 and the phosphates are 1330.
I read the test paper this time and it recommended phos out. We decided to use it. The pool within an hour was cloudy white. We ran the filter for hours and still white. We read on another site that if it wasn’t filtering out to add flocculant. Which we did.
Well now I’m reading that was probably the worst thing we could have done. Am I best to just get a pump and drain the pool? Seriously I’m worried I put this in and it is going to ruin our filter even after we vacuum it out. We didn’t know about waste so we are trying to figure out how to use the pool pump directly and just disconnect the filter and attach a drain line to run it away from the house and pool. Someone else I saw mentioned siphoning. Not sure on that.
If anyone could give me their opinion on this I would welcome it. We are lost and are just feeling like we are making one mistake after another.

Last reading numbers before we started this:
Total Chlorine 6.9
Free Chlorine 6.9
pH 7.5
Alkalinity 91
Hardness 240
Stabilizer 130
Copper .3
Iron 0
Phosphate 1330

We use the Frog bac pac system for chlorine and have had it at 0 with no pac just a mineralizer cartridge and we did a non-chlorine shock 4 days before this. We have only been doing this once a month because we can’t swim in it with the high chlorine.

Saltwater pool. These have been here since the start. Some above water and some under water.
Very hard. One seems to have broken though a small crack in the blue tile underwater.


Any idea? Or just calcium. Size is same as 5 years ago, should I take a screw driver to them?

I have studied and followed all guidelines but I cannot get the green out (is not as murky now). Frustrating because one day I need to add pounds of phdown, next day needs chlorine, need to vacuum because all levels are right except low chlorine, another day need to add more pounds of phdown, another time I have to drain and replace water, round and round I go, throwing cash into the water, and I cannot figure out why these changes are happening. It's only a little 16' vinyl circle pool that the family let go until it got algae bloom. I learn languages easily, but chemistry is not a human language! I'm not dumb and I hate to give up. My son suggested draining all 6000 gallons of water and starting over. But then the balancing begins again ... is there any help for me?

Can I use shock to raise CYA level quickly?
Vinyl ABG 30’ pool. Chlorine
I have been dissolving Stabilizer in sock but it takes much longer.
I read you should wait 24 hours after the Stabilizer has dissolved to retest CYA level.
Yes, I do squeeze sock throughout day. It helps.

I test my FC several times a week. I do the full titration test every couple of weeks.
A month ago I had CYA of 50 and 4000 salt.

Today I have 30 cya and 4000 salt. I can't imagine I have a leak (I use a water alarm called flume to alert me for leaks and I have seen nothing that can explain this). Also if I loose water I should loose salt too? I have an autofiller on my pool.

I've noticed in the past few weeks that I have to increase my SWG output to get FC up more than typical. I've been blaming the sun and the hot weather but low cya is a good reason for why I can't keep FC up. The other values look stable and haven't changed over the past month eg TA and CH.

Any ideas? I'm going to add CYA tomorrow after I test again.

So I know this has been talked about 100 times. But, my pool, in Phoenix, AZ has been sitting in the 94 degree range for water temp. I bought a return jet sprayer and I get it down to 88 degrees at night. The pool rises to about 92 during the day again. My question is, will the pool temp ever be able to drop below the outside air temp without a chiller? Recently our low temps have been around 88-90 at night. With that sprayer, technically it won’t get any colder than 88 correct? I also have a sun shade on order I’m gonna put over the pool soon.

I just cleaned it a few weeks ago because I was getting an “inspect cell” error and it was not correctly reading the salt level. Worked fine for a few weeks after the cleaning but then got the “inspect cell” error again. This time I opened it up to find these dark flakes. Can’t tell if they are metal since they crumble fairly easily but a strong magnet did not pick up anything.

Hoping someone can help me out. Background, I’ve had my pool for a year now and have had the same issue occurring since then. There’s been 3 different companies come out to try to fix this problem, all they’ve done is replaced the pump and drive 2 times now. It’s a fiberglass pool, 4 seat jets, 2 deck fountains, all pentair 3hp VSP, intellicor salt cell, intelliconnect, silencer air blower for the seat jets when enabled, a pentair cc 100 cartridge filter, and Hayward electric heater/chiller (installed after pool construction). Here’s my issue, I have it programmed at 1800rpm 24/7 with a day and night clean for an hour each. Even though it’s programmed, it shuts off and then starts right back up sporadically (I was able to catch it in the act on the video). I had to disable the priming function bc every time this happens it shoots the jets on the patio. There’s no bubbles coming out of the returns and it stays primed, yet this still happens. Please flood me with your knowledge explaining it to me like a 5 year old as I’m new at this. Appreciate it in advance!

The above ground pool we have now is the first time we have had multiple holes in the bottom.

We looked for patches that can be applied underwater. Home depot had gorilla and flex tape, makers of flex seal. I was talked into the flex tape.

It did a good job of sticking initially and the tape is clear. The tape is insanely sticky, but you still have to massage it and stand on it for a minute to make sure it sticks well.

The clear tape only stayed clear for a day or so. Now they are all yellow. Plus, about a month later the edges are coming up. Can't say I'm happy with that, but I'm also not unhappy yet because I don't know how other tapes work..

Thoughts??

My pool guy installed the SWG right after the pump before the inlet into the pool filter. Looking at the tech manual for the SWG, it seems the preferred location is after the outlet of the filter. BTW, I do not have a pool water heater so the outlet of the filter currently returns directly to the pool.

In my mind, before the filter, impure water with algae and other debris passes through the SWG thereby making the corrosion of the plates faster. The other problem I see is that as the pool filter gets clogged after a routine clean up, the SWG needs a higher flow in terms of increased RPM of the pool pump to get the SWG activated thereby increasing my electricity bill. I have not even understood if the chlorine generation and salt water content calculations are even accurate in my current scenario.

Pool pump, filter and the SWG are all by Pentair. Pool is rectangular about 32'x15' and 17k gallons.

What are the implications of my current installation? Should I get that moved to after the pool filter? Very curious about anyone's opinion.

I find that the black dot test is extremely subjective and there are so many variables that I really have no idea what my cya reading should be. How invisible should the black dot be? At what distance should I be looking from? I know that in general the Taylor tests are the gold standard, but is there another test that is maybe less subjective with results that are more clear?

Installed a 20x40 vinyl lined in ground pool this spring. Pool company has been doing chemicals until now and have been using dichlor. I started taking it over and have been using 10% liquid chlorine. There is a chloranator installed with dichlor pucks inside. I shut it off. My taylor test kit finally arrived and here are my results
FC .5
CC .5
CH 325
TA 110
CYA 30

I just put 1 and a half gallons 10% chlorine in.
My main concerns are the low PH, and getting the FC up. The water looks clear and I haven't been having any issues.

Anyone have any pointers for me?

Started off with the pump that came in the box. I added a skimmer and noticed that it wasn't doing much, so after looking on Youtube, I saw that people install a flow reducer in the other intake. I dug up the skimmer box, found this part and installed it and the skimmer was working much better. Then, once in the pool, I checked the other intake and saw it was really doing pretty much nothing. I pushed some debris right next it and watch it all just float away. From this, I could see clearly that this pump doesn't have what it takes to effectively run both the skimmer and the other intake. Then, I've added a pool heater, which reduced the output even further.

Given these two elements, I knew I had to level up. Thought about getting a VSP, but it seemed like it was just too much to get into and probably more than I wanted to spend. I found the Intex SF60110-2 for a killer deal, which is supposedly 3000 GPH. Now that it's arrived, I see that it's completely massive. I wonder if it's TOO big and/or if that's a bad thing. I'll welcome any thoughts on it. Thank you!

Hi! We’re in the middle of building a new pool for the first time and currently have NPT mini pebble in contract but after a recently staying somewhere that had a pool with the same finish, I don’t like it. It’s rough and tore up my daughter’s feet. Micro pebble is an additional $3300. We’re debating tiling the Baja bench instead as a compromise. I like the look of the ceramic penny tiles or the glass 1”x1”. Can you put in-Pool loungers on a tiled baja bench? Has anyone had trouble with them cracking or popping off? Thank you in advance!

Over the winter I noticed water all around the ledge. The company who put the pool in has replaced the ledge 3 times and it is still dropping the pool level. I feel it is a leak in one of the hose. I am lost here.

Moved from here.

I haven’t installed it yet (long story) and the instructions say I can either do it so that it only runs when pump is running, or do it separately so I can run the pump 24/7 and the SWG for a few hours a day. How do you all have yours set up, and what are pros and cons of each?

We've bought a home where the prior homeowner somewhat neglected maintenance. The controller is an Aqua Logic where the enclosure is rusted out on the bottom (the ground bar completely fell apart...I replaced the bar but box is toast). Went to replace 120V pool light, fixture rusted out. Spa light is likely the same. This is pool spa combo. Salt cell seems to be working but is likely also pretty dated. I'd like to eventually get control of pool via phone or app, lights working and probably replaced with 12V LED. Thoughts on should I just replace the enclosure (if I can find one), replaced the controller with the same, replace the controller with new (and if so is there any advantage to sticking with Hayward or any individual Hayward model)? I'm pretty handy but just trying to determine what the best options are...

Thanks in advance for any advice.

My pool is about one year old. Recently notice this white film near the waterline on the ceramic tile. I've tried vinegar and a nylon brush, which hasn't worked. I've thought of a pumice stone but worried that may take the finish off. Can anyone recommend a way to get it off? Thanks!