We are remodeling our pool and installing a pebble finish, we will need too choose a color in the next 2 days. Our PB uses stone scapes and we have been leaning towards Midnight Blue. We look at pools over and over and always seem to come back to this same color. But, we are concerned it may be too dark - our pool only gets sun from about 10am to 3pm other than that it is in the shade and we have a screen - none of the pictures online have a screens over the pools. We have tried to find a pool in the area that we can visit in person but have not been able to.

What we are looking for is a deep rich blue, and we plan to add dark and light blue glass beads to any finish we go with. What we don't want: any green or teal int he water, light blues, Bahama looking water blues, strong blues that are electric and look fake as a result i.e. a bottle of Windex or Dawn. We would like the blue to be deep in color but don't want the pool to be so dark that it looks dim, dimness is our biggest concern with this color.

Midnight blue pool -


Midnight blue pebble Dry -


Midnight blue pebble wet with glass beads-


Our options are
1. Go ahead with the Midnight Blue and err on the side that we may end up with a darker pool than we wanted
2. Err on the side of tropics blue and that we may end up with a pool that is lighter than we wanted - the tropics pebbles seems very grey and the water can look quite light in some pictures. As you can see in the pictures below the 2nd example is much lighter than the first, and would be lighter than we wanted

Tropics pool 1 -


Tropics pool 2 -


Tropics blue pebble dry -


Tropics blue pebble wet -


3. Or go ahead with the Midnight blue but modify the pebble colors in the finish. We are thinking that if we go with this option we could replace 50% or the black with grey plus add the blue glass to the midnight blue and that may help ensure we don't end up with a dim look. The major disadvantage with this being that we have no ability to preview the color at all

We also liked the Stonescapes Exotic Series Bimini and thought that may look good, but after scouring the web I can find no examples where anyone has ever put this in their pool.


Bimini -


Advice from anyone with experience with any of these colors, choosing custom colors or the over all color choosing process would be much appreciated.

Hey Everybody! Worst opening season in 10 years for me, the rain has just been ridiculous.

Anyway, I have accepted a new client and their Hayward offline chlorinator has a really gummy resident of lube built up that makes the lid impossible to open and close.

Anyone have any tricks or can recommend a product to remove all the old residue so I can start fresh? Otherwise it seams fine so I hate to tell them to buy a new one.

Thanks!

So easy! Post ONE pic related to the theme title above. I bet you have a good pic saved somewhere. See the contest rules below to enter.

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Here’s a question for you—what’s one thing about pool maintenance that most people don’t realize, but really should? Let’s all share and discuss!

New here,
I'm in AZ, so it has some of it's own unique challenges, and trying to sift my way thru a new pool build. We've met with 2 pool builders, and gotten 2 renderings so far, and meeting with a 3rd builder this week.
Some of my questions.
We were going to for sure go salt water pool, but one of the builders recommended a traditional chlorinated pool due to cost, ease of maint on the system, and says if the pool is done well, we won't have an overly chlorinated pool. I'm stumped on this one.
Tile color, we wanted a mexican themed pool, with pool/spa tile, and a stamped terra cotta tile decking, Same pool builder as above warned us the tiles will need quite a bit more up keep and cleaning, and are prone to cracking. He also warned against the decking we wanted due to heat, slipperyness, and calcium staining from pool water being splashed on it. Our area of AZ has very hard water, and it's hot as balls in the summer. His recommendation, and what he prefers is Kool Deck, and a light tan pool tile color, and we should "highlight" our pool with Terra Cotta and cobalts, and mexican tiles, and to just keep them out of the water.

Whats the verdict on Kool Deck, I've read other places people don't like it, and to stay away from it.
Also, anyone in AZ have issues with dark, or bright colors on their pool tiles?

Here are couple of our first renderings, since most people like pictures in forums.

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Hi Newbie here.... I have a new 9K gal, 12 x 26 fiberglass pool with all Jandy equipment. Everything is working great but I've run into an issue that I'm working with my PB with. I upgraded from a 2 speed pump to a variable speed pump during construction because I wanted to run the pump on a lower speed over a longer period of time for a more quiet operation (equipment is near my neighbors house...and I like them! ) I also wanted to reap the benefit of a lower electrical bill by running on a lower speed. The problem I'm having is the I need the RPMs to be at 2500 rpms (run 5 hrs a day right now 8am to 1pm) in order for the water to cascade over the spillway and not fall directly onto the stone below the spillway. I started at 1750 RPMs and increased gradually until I got to 2500 RPMs and clearing the stones. What is the average RPMs needed to get the water from the spa over the spillway without hitting the stones. Is 2500 RPMs considered high?? If you need more details so you can better answer please ask...I'm new at this (my 1st post...Lol)
Thank You in Advance.

I installed the 3 HP Calimar VSP pool pump (this pump) this weekend on my small pool. The old single speed pump was pretty loud and started leaking. I mostly installed to save money (the cheap price of the pump was a selling point) and had no desire/need for a full automation system. I just hand dump liquid chlorine and have been able to keep my levels pretty good with this method. I am debating getting a SWG, but just not sure if the cost savings are there, but I guess liquid chlorine prices have gone up and for a while, had trouble sourcing it.

Install was pretty straight-forward, should have went ahead and ordered unions to put on the pump, but ended up just re-using the old piping. I haven't bolted down the pump or filter housing yet, as I may reposition everything.

The pump primed super fast, and I've been running it at 1,000 rpm the overnight, and may just keep it there 24/7, definitely don't need to though. To me, it is a little noisier compared to other VSPs I've heard at this RPM, but its not loud at all, get what you pay for. Will have to see how long it lasts, hopefully get 3+ years (low expectations, hopefully lol).

Reason I posted, is there were some discussions about this pump on the forum, but didn't really see any about how it installed and quality of it. Figure I'll update whenever the pump decides to grenade itself, lol.

Hi all!

My mom is an avid swimmer in summer, but she's been complaining about the constant pool maintenance. I'm considering getting her a robotic pool cleaner as a Christmas gift, but I'm unsure if it's a worthwhile investment. Has anyone had experience with these? Are they effective at keeping pools clean? Do they save a significant amount of time and effort? Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I was at the local Leslie’s Pro to pick up some 12.5% LC. I saw a new pallet of still wrapped 4 pack boxes. Next to it was a half pallet so I grabbed a 4 pk box and looked for the date code. Top, all 4 sides, even tilted it a little to look on the bottom. No date code.

I looked at the new unwrapped pallet couldn’t find a date code on that either.

I thought, oh well, I need chlorine. The pool water has dropped into the upper 50’s so I had turned off the SWG. The counter person was a young lady and I decided not to ask her about the dates.

Well, I got home and opened the 4 pk. Couldn’t find a date code on any of the individual gallon jugs. So dummy me, I used a half a gallon, then measured a couple of hours later. Expecting to see at least a 2 ppm rise, I got the same reading as before the addition.

Although, I was still at 8 ppm the next day, I added a full gallon. Tested a couple of hours later and it only raised FC to 10ppm. Pool Math indicates the rise should/could have been 4.8 ppm for 26k gallon pool. So I should/could have seen 12.5 ppm and only got to 10 ppm.

I figured I can’t return it after using a gallon and a half from the 4 pk. I learned my lesson, no date code… no purchase.

I searched the forum and google scholar and couldn't find an answer to this. Is anyone aware of a study or personal experiment with data that shows the chlorine usage rate per day in ppm (or percentage) as a function of different CYA levels? For example, at 10ppm CYA you lose 2ppm FC per day, at 30ppm CYA you lose 1ppm FC per day, at 50ppm you lose .75ppm per day, at 100ppm CYA you lose .5ppm FC per day. Just making those numbers up of course. In Bob Lowry's writing he suggests that you lose around 1ppm per day at 30ppm CYA, but I can't find him talking about how that chlorine loss rate changes with different levels of CYA.

I know the decay rate changes with other factors besides CYA (temp, Crud in the pool, etc), but all else being equal, am trying to find data showing the relationship between CYA level and chlorine loss rate, before I go and try to do my own experiments.

EDIT: just realized I put this under the water chemistry forum, if it could be moved to the appropriate one would appreciate that!

Hey all!

New pool owner here, trying to get a handle on everything and get the pool balanced in a position to maintain.

Location: Bay Area, CA
Pool: 20k gallons
Spillover Spa: 700 gallons

From what I can tell, I have the following equipment:

• Controller: Easytouch with Screenlogic
• Pump: Intelliflo VS Pump 354605.E
• Booster/Cleaner Pump: Pentair Boost-Rite LA-MS05
• Filter: Sta-Rite PLM300
• Heater: Pentair SR400NA
• Air Blower: Air Supply 23E1
• SWG: Intellichlor IC40
• Valves:
  • Return: Jandy valve that looks to control return from pool/spa
  • Supply: Jandy valve that looks to control supply to pool/spa
• Auto filler: Looks like the tank on a toilet but in ground, just fills up and connects to some jets housings when the float gets low

Here is a picture of the pool (sorry for the really bad photo lol):


Here is a picture of the whole setup:



Now a whole bunch of questions:
1. Right now the pool/spa are unheated, I was reading that the heater should not be run for water temperatures less than 68F, but that it is ok on startup. If I am able to isolate the spa, is it ok to run the heater occasionally to get the Spa up to temp (100 something)?


2. Looks like I have a few leaks. Attaching pictures here for reference.
This is on the output from the filter housing as it goes towards to heater. It looks like it is leaking from the actual filter housing, but it could be leaking from the connection with the pvc pipe, I just couldn't get around it to tell.


And then this is on the heater, maybe a simpler fix than the filter leak above?



3. It seems like when I run the Pool and Spa functions on ScreenLogic I still get the spillover from the Spa. When I run the cleaner it doesn't look like I get any spillover though.

Looking in SLConfig, it looks like my valves are unassigned? I'm assuming I need to assign each of them? I'm not really sure how to assign them to a circuit though, as it looks like they would only isolate return/supply from the pool/spa?

Any advice on how to configure this so I can isolate the spa, etc...

Here are some of my configs:

I’ll admit I tend to be an overthinker. The toilet paper has to go over the top. Only distilled water in my radiator and battery. Hot tub water chemistry must be perfect.
I still haven’t come to a conclusion concerning bromine vs chlorine but I’ll continue that journey in the months ahead. Right now I’m using liquid chlorine with CYA 30. I have watched 100’s of YouTube’s concerning chlorine vs non/chlorine shock. I’ve been falling asleep at 11:30 with my phone on my chest watching and trying to determine which is the better hot tub shock. MPS will mess up your chlorine readings. MPS doesn’t kill anything. Brian, the Atlanta hot guy, says he throws in a couple tsp after every soak.

I am slightly confused. Well, honestly, I am very confused. I don’t know my head from my…

My thinking is to add chlorine every time after we get out. Then I’m thinking of doing 2 oz MPS once a week as a shock.

Should I just scrap MPS? Why do some people hate it and some people love it? I honestly don’t understand why “I” can’t find a consensus.

I wish I could get this settled.

Hey TFPers,

I haven't seen many reviews for this anywhere apart so I thought I'd put in my 2 cents on this new skimmer robot. Paid for it with real money from Amazon and i'm definitely not a 'free product' marketing shill.

My situation:
Neigbour's 80+ year old maple tree looms over the fenceline so it's a source of branches, leaves, caterpillars, even poor squirrels into our pool. So I've been looking at skimmer bots for a while now to take care of the various waves of detritus that get into pool over the course of the summer. We get direct blazing sun on the pool only for about 4-5 hours per day, so solar-only models didn't really fit my situation. The Aiper Surfer was chargeable via DC *and* solar panels, so i thought I'd be the guinea pig for this thing since Amazon Prime's return policy gives me an out if it's terrible.

The good:
- DC charging! It charges from zero-ish to 100 in roughly 3 hours.
- Solar charging seems efficient. It charges while running, and I noticed that the battery % indicator in the app was going up even while it was doing laps around the pool
- The app-- great to have. Shows battery life, temperature of the water, and offers full manual controls. But it *could* be better. (see below)
- Connects to your wifi and bluetooth so you could theoretically control it from the comfort of your home while looking out the window
- Build of the robot seems pretty solid. The body is obviously plastic, but feels comparable to the plastic used on Maytronic robots.

Ok, could be better:
- The app! Wish it had start/stop scheduling (that would be easy to program in the existing app), or could be integrated into a smart home ecosystem like Alexa or Google home. It already has the wifi connection so this should be a no brainer.
- Object avoidance-- works for the most part. For the first few minutes it crashes into everything but the sensors eventually find their bearings and avoids most things. Gets caught on the ladder but eventually bumps itself free. Gets caught in the skimmer so I've created those pool noodle bars for its sensors to detect.
- When stopped, small bits of junk tend to float back out of the basket... But i understand that's a common problem across all skimmer bot.

The not so good:
- Unsure about the potential lifespan of this machine. Already experiencing a weird bug where I turn off the robot and it randomly turns itself back on to standby mode. Sent a note to Aiper and they think it's a circuit problem and will send a replacement. Great, but reduces the confidence on the longevity of the electronics beyond 1 season and the 1 yr warranty.

Am I keeping it? Not sure. I'm hoping there's a software update with basic scheduling at the very least. It does what it's supposed to do pretty well, but I also don't want to own a brick within a season's time if the electronics / non-replaceable battery are flakey.

Can anyone speak to the longevity of Aiper products?

(*AFAIK S1 and M1 models are different only by their colour. I have the S1.)

Here's a thing I did that I hadn't seen anyone else do, so I thought I'd share it. With an autofill, it's hard to know if something goes wrong causing a leak until it's a bigger problem because the autofill will mask it.

So I put a GPH flowmeter on it so I can see how much it's using and notice if something changes.

I've been using a traditional chlorine pool for over 4 years. With calcium hypochlorite powder and a pool robot, it’s super easy to maintain. However, I've noticed a trend toward saltwater pools lately. Is it a wise move to join this trend and convert my pool to a saltwater system?

A "Low Salt" error causes Intex SWGs to shut down, and refuse to make chlorine.
Mine gave me 3 such errors on successive nights.
There are multiple videos purporting to "fix" the issue, by hot-wiring the metal-plate cell directly to the transformer, and bypassing the timer and all the "intelligence" of the device.
But I like the idea of the timer and the water-flow detector, and the other controls and features.

So, what about actually diagnosing and fixing the issue? Assuming that one has already inspected and cleaned the cell if required, one can easily notice that initially, the clear piping allows one to see the bubbles of gas being created by the cell in the initial period before the "Low Salt" alarm, so the cell is plainly "working".

So, what's wrong? The alarm is due to a decreased conductivity (increased resistance) in the water between the plates of the cell. Its just an ohm-meter.

[EDIT 8/14/2021]
I was sloppy in the original post about salt and conductivity/resistance, speculating that perhaps excessive backwashing might result in a physical "low salt" condition. WRONG!
My little 4545 gallon pool is supposed to need 117 lbs of salt, and salt comes in 40-lb bags, so I had a few extra pounds of salt to toss in, and if this guess is wrong, the equipment will be just as happy with 120lbs as with 117lbs, only 2% difference. But that didn't fix the issue, and the idea is a somewhat silly one to begin with, as fresh water by its nature has very few ions. De-ionized water as a conductivity of about 5.5μS/m.
Sea water has Sodium and Chloride ions and has a conductivity of around 5S/m, as compared with the 5.5μS/m for fresh. So sea water is roughly one million times more conductive than fresh water.
One is going to be hard pressed to screw up the salt if one simply puts in the suggested number of pounds of salt for the gallons of water in the pool, and accounts for only a MAJOR draining of the pool for repairs (like more than 20% of total water volume). I can't see mere backwashing bringing the salt level down significantly, and the "test strips for salt" are an ABSOLUTE JOKE AND ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED FOR ANY PURPOSE. If you worry about salt, go to a pool store with a real test set for salt in water.
[END EDIT]

So, the obvious answer is corrosion on the electrical connections, and sure enough, I found corrosion everywhere in this circuit.
The connector to the cell was corroded inside the connector, and on one of the posts on the cell itself, so emery paper time.
Here is a very good set of photos on doing this:

But wait, there's more... inside the case.
Unscrewing the two screws that hold all the plumbing in place, removing the electronics unit from the pipes, and opening it up, there was also quite a bit of corrosion on the terminal block and wires that (no surprise) go to the cell.
I replaced the screws, crimped and soldered on new wire lugs onto the wires, and replaced the corroded metal plates on the two wires with parts salvaged from another terminal strip in my junkbox of salvageable parts, but you can easily buy these. One can sand off the lugs and metal plates, and match the screws at the hardware store. You want stainless steel screws.

The comical thing is that the various YouTube videos documenting the "hot-wiring" bypass of all the electronics show the corrosion very clearly, for example this screenshot:


Note that ALL the terminals are corroded pretty seriously here, but the two "CL -" and "CL+" terminals, from which wires have been removed in the screenshot above, are the exact cause of the error.
Note that other connections in the system (for example, the push-on terminals at bottom right) are NOT corroded in the least, so the problem is simply that a terminal block made of pure Chineseum, (i.e. crappy Zinc metal alloy) is not a good match for electrical connections involving salt water and electricity. As a general rule, you will see white residue if only a zinc coating is being corroded, and red when the underlying steel is corroded. Good-quality stainless steel will resist corrosion, as the chromium added to the steel forms a "passive oxide layer" on the surface of the steel, and if the steel is scratched, more oxide quickly forms in or over the scratch.

So, my $100 SWG (bought on sale as an "open box return") is back to quietly making all the chlorine my little pool needs, without any complaints.

Came out to do some maintenance today and noticed my EasyTouch panel covered in black soot. Upon closer inspection, it seems the wiring from the panel to the IC40 had caught fire/melted. I was able to find one other thread on this forum where the same thing occurred. In talks with Pentair support at the moment. Hoping that they will make it right.

Meanwhile, I removed the melted internal wiring that connects the IC40 to the SCG circuit board. Now, it seems my pump won't run without that connection. As I would like to still circulate my pool while adding chlorine manually meanwhile, is there a way I can still get my pump to run? Thanks in advance!

We bought some Klean Strip Green Muriatic Acid at Lowe's. It did not have the acid % listed on the bottle. We came home and looked it up and it is 20% acid....but I do not see that as an option on PoolMath so not sure how much we need to add? Should I just pick the 14.5% and then add about 5% more than what PoolMath says?

For all the people who ask about the saltron mini for their hot tub, here is my experience. We bought ours in August of 2019. Set it all up and worked great. We have the setting at 7 and for our tub it maintains the chlorine levels perfectly. About once a month we add muriatic acid to lower the PH. Other than that we change the water about 3 times per year. The cell finally gave up the ghost on Dec 26. Ordered a replacement and 2 days later we were back up and running. Original cost was $400. Replacement cell was $200 and it lasted a total of 16 months. Very inexpensive especially considering I don't have to even think about maintenance on the water levels.
At first I checked the levels almost daily until I knew it was working well and my settings were correct. After that i tested once a week. Now I test about every 2 weeks and every single time my readings are the same. If you are tired of hauling bleach everyday, I highly recommend you make the switch. We did get a bit of rust on 1 stainless steel ring but that's all and I contribute that to simply bad stainless in that 1 section.

So easy! Post ONE pic related to the theme title above. I bet you have a good pic saved somewhere. See the contest rules below to enter.

PLEASE READ OUR (UPDATED) RULES BEFORE POSTING! ----> TFP Pool of the Month Contest Rules



Photo contests are announced on the first of each month. There is a 5-day submission phase. Days 6 & 7 are for voting. Winner announced on day 8. Winner eligible for a $50 prize.



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So, like many others on this site, I was tired of the short life of my pentair LED lights and made the switchover to PoolTone. I got the NICHELESS 1 1/2 INCH (SMALL FACE) POOL OR SPA LIGHT and installed them about 18 months ago. The spa light stopped working about 2 months ago and then two of the pool lights went out.

I went back to Florida SunSeeker and they offered me a discount on the replacements, so I said OK and ordered them up. I was out today pulling the old lights out and to my shock and dismay, they lights have basically disintegrated!!!!! It smells like built plastic and the spa one just came apart while trying to remove it. Here are some photos (first two are the larger pool light and the next one is what's left of the SPA light and the hole it came out of). WHAT A MESS!!!!



How is this possible and am I the only one experiencing this problem? It would seem this would be a huge issue for the community if it was happening to everyone, which leads me to the question of "what did I do wrong here?" If I decide to replace the lights with the same brand instead of returning them, what can I do to prevent this from happening again? Wrap the lights in better insulation tape? Use a silicone caulk on it?
Should I go back to Pentair? Their lights generally suck, but they don't explode or melt . . . .

When logging small additions they are rounded up or down in the timeline.
For instance 0.5 oz by weight or volume becomes 1 oz
& 0.4 oz by weight or volume becomes 0 oz., 1.5 oz becomes 2oz etc.
You must click on the individual log (as if you were going to edit it) to see the actual amount.
For pools this isn’t an issue usually but for small spas it can be for multiple reasons including interpretation of other’s logs.
It seems to be calculating the true amounts in the summary page.
I initially thought it just wasn’t logging my additions and zeroing everything out.
It didn’t used to operate this way. I really hope there’s a fix.

A little history, Robotina was bought 3 years ago from a seller on Ebay. He listed it as a Refurbished unit and got about 200 bucks savings from a new one. At first few months Robotina would live 1-3 days underwater. I got lazy and let her live 24/7/365 except for few minutes while wash down and to clean basket once a week. Also during the first few months the Belgian Waffle "Mona" got into a relationship with Robotina's Cable and chewed it up several times. Which i had to repair and the cable grew shorter every time. Now is about half length from original. After reading some post by @JoyfulNoise Matt robot rusting useless about a year in, it had me worried about mine. So this weekend got to work and found it interesting, so here we go:

This is what it looks like before dis-assembly



Took the plug apart and no water intrusion detected, so Robotina 1-0.
This part was relubed with Magic Lube2 1.5 years ago, so it held up.



Opened the big box and BINGO! No water intrusion either, Robotina 2-0
The O-ring seal was in As New condition but with a lot of emulsified Silicone around it. Cleand it all up!





Electronics look in great shape, Robotina 3-0



Time to open up the Tracks/Roller motor, the O-ring looked great but with a lot less silicone than the box O-ring. Still no water intrusion. Robotina 4-0.





Now time to re-assemble and lube the O-rings with Magic Lube2. I went ballistic with this, didnt want to come back to bite me. I applied a wdge of silicone where the o-ring would seat and on the o-ring itself.

I just replaced my ancient HASA Liquidator with the new HASA Liquid Feeder.

After installing the unit and starting things up, I noticed that both floats would stick in place as the water level went up and down and then "pop" loose. The result was that the flow on the out/suction side would start and stop.

After a lot of difficulty I finally reached a human at HASA who took a message. I was contacted by a consultant that works on the Liquid Feeder product. Apparently this is a known problem, because he immediately offered to send replacements for the purple "saddles" that the float hinge pins snap into. He said that the holes that the hinge pins go into needed to be very slightly expanded. He recommended that I not try to expand the holes myself. The new saddles seem to have fixed the issue.

I had to load up the threads on one of the new saddles with lots of Teflon tape in order to get it to stay in the proper position.

This next issue is probably unique to my installation, but the information might be of use to somebody else.

My pump is 3 feet above my pool and has very little head left. It can barely prime.

The Liquid Feeder has a larger footprint than the Liquidator, so I had to move it to a different location on my equipment pad. Using tie wraps I ran the out/suction line very neatly up to and along the piping coming out of my sand filter and over to the pump basket. Unfortunately that routed the out/suction tubing higher than the water level in the Liquid Feeder and the pump was unable to establish any flow. As soon as I re-routed the tubing down to ground level, below the level of the water in the Liquid Feeder, the system worked fine.

Notes - I moved the old flowmeter from the Liquidator to the Liquid Feeder. I plumbed in a tee, a short length of tubing and a valve between the outlet from the Liquid Feeder and the spinner. This will let me suck a dilute (5:1, always add acid to water when diluting) acid mixture out of a jug in order to periodically clean out the tubing and flowmeter. (I learned several years ago that this is the cleaning method used by a HASA technician.)

Do they make a special tool for opening this plug (other than pair of pliers)? What a pain. Mine is tough to get to based off how they ran the piping and where they positioned the drain plug in relation to that. With a pair of pliers a complete nightmare. When I clean the filter I typically just shop vac out everything at the bottom and don’t mess with this pain in the rear drain plug but since I needed to drain everything quick due to the freeze I unscrewed it. Getting back on was a pain as well. I’m thinking at this point unless it’s another apocalypse down here that plug is NEVER coming off again.

Friday evening we went to heat the spa, only to find that the temp did not rise after 15 minutes. So I went to the Pentair MasterTemp 400 and saw that the red Service System light was on, and read that it is a pressure/flow issue. I intended to clean the filter soon since it had been awhile, so early the next day I took it apart. It was in need of a cleaning, but nowhere as bad as the first time the builder cleaned it out. And at that time there was no issue with the heater.

I should mention after by previous cleaning, the pressure gage on the filter read 11psi. It never has gone any higher, giving me the impression that it was not very dirty. Now I wonder if there might be a problem with it.

I also checked the skimmer and pumps baskets, they are empty.

After the pump was put together, I moved on the salt cell. It’s less than a year old and been unplugged since Oct/Nov, but still wanted to see if anything was in there. There was very small thin spidery type leaves, but again, I’ve seen larger obstructions in there before, and the heater was working. Rinsed them out with the hose

To date I have only rinsed the cell with pressured water, the extremely small amount of calcium buildup that in the past was removed from the hoses water pressure.

Should I preform an acid wash anyway just because it’s almost a year?

The pool is still under warranty with the pool builder for another month or two, and 2+ years with Pentair’s warranty. If I admit that I have never acid washed it, could they say that I’ve voided the warranty?

I reset the breakers at the sub and main, still no difference.

So back to the Service System light … it still remains on after all of the above.

In looking at pg 40 of the manual, it suggests to:

1 - Verify that pump is on, filter is not blocked, and the water flow is above the minimum requirement. (( I do not have a flow meter, so how can I check the water flow?))

2 - With pump running, adjust Water Pressure Switch to lower pressure until ‘SERVICE SYSTEM” LED goes out. Then verify that “SERVICE SYSTEM” LED goes on with pump off. (( I’m assuming that since this is under warranty I should not mess with this… right?))

Any suggestions before I call the PB or Pentair’s local service rep?

Thanks in advance,
York

I am taking my HAM test tomorrow. I just started the whole thing on 10/16. When I checked into exams though if I don't take it tomorrow, the next test is like middle of November. I am consistently getting 90%-100% on the practice exams so I think I will pass.

Any HAMs?

Hey Everyone! Back from winter hibernation! I opened this past Saturday to clear water with 4.5 ppm FC. TFP baby.

I had a few leaves fall in removing the cover but overall it went smoothly. The cover was almost completely dry.

Shocked the pool ran the filter. My numbers all looked good! Tested with my TFP kit refills.

Already dealing with debris from neighbors cherry tree lol. Don’t ever plant one near a pool.







Hope everyone is doing well!!

I have almost pulled the trigger and bought a heater for my Intex pool about twenty times in the last four months. I always chicken out because I am not very mechanically-inclined and have worried about fittings to get it onto the Intex. Well, I finally decided to shop around and found a Pool Store guy willing, it seemed, to think a bit outside the box. I showed him some of the threads on TFP about people adding skimmers, and hard-plumbing an Intex, etc.

Ultimately he told me the following, making me again chicken out and not buy my much wanted heater:

1. Says I would NEED a thru-wall skimmer to use a heater. Says just using the hose won't work. I guess I could toughen up and force myself to cut the liner and add a skimmer the way many of you have, so maybe that is not the end of the discussion. But . . . does anyone believe I could run the heater through the hose without having a skimmer?

2. He then said even if I put in the thru-wall skimmer, it would not work because the heater I said I want to buy is 400,000 btu and he says that is only for in-ground pools. Something about below or above the water line and that it would be extremely dangerous to put an "in-ground pool heater" on an above-ground pool. So then I asked if he sold "above ground pool heaters" and he said there is only one he knows of that is approved for above ground pool use and that it is a RayPak and is 100,000 btu. Does anyone agree or disagree with his assertion that it would be dangerous to use a 400,000 btu heater on an above ground pool (Intex or otherwise)? I thought many of you on this forum had above ground pools and larger than 100,000 btu, special "above-ground pool heaters" but maybe I have glanced over that detail for two years.

3. He says that even if I put in a thru-wall skimmer and buy a special "above-ground pool heater" that I am ill-advised to try it on an Intex. I showed him how you guys put in the skimmers and that they work, etc. He said his guess is that none of you take your Intex down seasonally and that is why they are working and the skimmer is not ruining the liner. So . . . Do any of you with a thru-wall skimmer on your Intex take your Intex down seasonally? Do you store it with the skimmer on, or do you unscrew it and then re-install it the following year?

4. I really just want a heated pool that I can use for four months and re-claim my yard the other eight months of the year. Hoping it is still do-able and that this guy is wrong. But, I have several thousand into the site prep, etc (gas; electric; moving sprinklers, etc) and I don't want to throw another $3000 for heater, filter, pump down the drain if it is not feasible to "pimp my Intex" the point of having a heater.

Thanks for reading a long post and for any insight offered.

How to do you guys go about measuring Muriatic Acid for your spas? Being that my spa is 330 gallons, in doing the math it looks like I'll be looking at about 2 tps to drop from 8 to 7.2 pH. I haven't filled up the tub yet — more or less just getting prepared with what I'll need. Acid comes in 1 gallon jugs and we're working with such small amounts that it's a little tricky. Do you have some kind of special device you like to use? I did some searching, but the only thing I came up with lead to a dead link for a product. Also, do you folks use some kind of respirator mask when working with this?