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 RULES FIRST ----> TFP Pool of the Month Contest Rules



Monthly themed photo contests are announced on the first, with a 10-day submission phase. Days 11-15 are for voting, with the winner announced on the 16th, eligible for a $50 prize.



It's easy! What have you got to lose? You might receive a $50 discount code from TFtestkits.net.

Click Here to See Some Previous TFP Monthly Contest Winners​

Just installed one a few hours ago to replace my Intellichlor IC40. Paid $749 with a 2 year warranty.
First impressions, totally interchangeable and easy to adjust. It plugs in correctly to my Intellitouch and controls the on/off aspects.
All reading and controls are on the unit itself, which is fine with me. Not bad for a much larger unit and less than half the price of Pentair.
Time will tell how long it lasts, but the average is 5 years for Pentair and this has a 2 year warranty. Also have not seen any bad reviews.
I will try and post back in a few weeks for chlorine output. Just shocked the pool, so it will take that long for good results

i have a dolphin pool cleaner (proteus dx4). It’s control panel seems to be be “bubbling”. Literally the flexible plastic button panel seems to be developing bubbles underneath. I’ll be contacting maytronics but curious if anyone else has experienced something like this. I keep it covered most of the time and it’s pretty new.

I have a Hayward Omnilogic pool control. I told Alexa to turn on my waterfall today. She responded "Your controller is offline". She now responds that way to to any "Alexa, ask Hayward..." request. I've never had a problem before today. My Hayward Android app is functioning properly with full control. The Hayward website controller interface is functioning with full control. My other Alexa home automation functions are working too, so I don't think there are any connectivity issues.

I tried rebooting the Alexa speaker and the pool controller. I tried unlinking and relinking the Alexa skill and re-entering the credentials. The process goes smoothly. But she still responds "Your controller is offline" when asked to perform a Hayward function. The Hayward website "Oauth Client List" says the Alexa is linked.

I'm beginning think the problem is either with Hayward's servers or Amazon's servers or their communication with each other. I'm not really sure how the commands work. Do they travel through the internet or does the Alexa speaker communicate directly to the Hayward controller through my network? I do know that Alexa is basically non-functional when my internet goes down but my internet is fine.

Is anyone else having this problem today? Can you please try to see if you use the Alexa Hayward skill? Any ideas to fix this that I haven't tried?

Someone in a different group asked advice about a pool that went from "perfect levels" to very high pH in under two weeks. They claim at its worst the pH was 12. Twelve. Like each and every day of Christmas, their true love gave to them... +1 pH.

I'm not a chemist (English major) but my gut reaction is that's impossible unless they filled their pool with draino. They claim they did not, in fact, fill their pool with draino. I'm willing to take their word for that. They also claim they tested the water with a properly calibrated sensor as well as a pro test kit.

Is there any way this could happen, naturally or accidentally, at all, let alone in under two weeks? I thought pool pH would cap out in the low to mid 8s, or at least take years of some weirdly imbalanced process to gradually rise to a level that absurd. Am I mistaken?

(If so, why don't we hear more stories of people getting turned to skeletons from jumping into untested waters? Do they dissolve completely and vanish unnoticed? Omg, is THAT the true origin of mustard algae?)

These seem to be common power options. Are there advantages or disadvantages for them? (I prefer the 230v option)

115 V / 20 amp, 60 Hz
Includes G.F.C.I. Protected Power Cord

or

230 V / 50 amp, 60 Hz
Includes G.F.C.I. Protected Subpanel

It’s been 5 years in the making and I am FINALLLLLLLYYYYY getting new windows for the house! Of COURSE it means taking down all the curtain rods, blinds, etc.

Don’t you love when the previous owner is dumb and uses dry wall screws for EVERYTHING? They hung our blinds with drywall screws. Hung curtain rods with drywall screws. Hung literally every piece of hardware with drywall screws.

Overkill, much! Anyway - new windows means I won’t be dealing with drafts and I will finally have a front window that opens instead of just some pretty window to look out of!

Excitement is an understatement!!!

Hello everyone, newbie here with a pool situation with a maintenance service issue by a pool company.

I am new pool owner and have been reading a lot about water chemistry and pool maintenance. I have a 5,100 gallon pool and the pool tech added 5 lbs of shock on July 11 to our pool because the his test showed 0 ppm of free chlorine. Pool water color was clear, not green nor cloudy. He also put 3 chlorine tabs in the skimmer baskets and the pump shut off automatically about 1.5 hours after treating leaving chemicals without circulation, I noticed this and I turned the pump on immediately and removed the tabs and put them in the chlorinator. I contacted the company about this and they apologized about adding chemicals with no circulation.

Then I used the pool in the afternoon the following day on Wednesday 7/12 and experienced discomfort in the form of skin and eye irritation, I did not think much of it so I just showered and forgot about it. Then on Friday 7/14 my 6 month old nephew and my sister decided to use the pool, unfortunately they both experienced the same and needless to say I got very concerned especially because of the baby. So I decided to test the water on Saturday with a test kit I bought (Taylor K-2006) and the chlorine levels were off the charts. So, I decided to take a water sample and get it tested at Leslie's on Sunday 7/16. Evidently, the chlorine levels were too high, the test reflected 19 ppm but was told the print out report only goes as high as 15. They told me these levels were too high and that the discomfort we experienced was a result of high chlorine levels. They also told me the 5 lbs of chlorine added to our pool were too much for a pool our size. I can only imagine what the chlorine levels were the day chlorine was added and the days we got in the pool. Aside from the physical damage, high chlorine can also damage pool equipment. So I had to take care of this issue myself and had to buy a chlorine neutralizer ($17.99). I added 12.5 oz first and tested, levels were still too high at 10ppm, so I added an additional 6.5 oz and retested, levels came down to 4 ppm which is within normal recommended range and we were finally able to use the pool without discomfort. I feel it was unnecessary for us to experience that and for me to take action to correct the issue had it been managed properly.

I would love to learn what the pool community here thinks, what are your thoughts about this? Thank you!

Hi Folks,

I took my pool cover off last Friday and was greeted by this



Never seen that before. Matter of fact, after searching all over Google on this topic, it is the WORST water-behind-pool-liner photo I have seen anywhere. And its my pool. And I took the picture. Arrgghh!

At first I was tempted to troll you guys and gals a little with a "is this bad?" thread but I just didn't have the heart to do it.

So at any rate, before any of the naysayers jump in here and tell me horror stories I've already fixed it. I wanted to post and share how I did it in case anyone else has any other similar nightmares.

Two days later my liner was back in place and looks like this



Google was my friend in this case. I came across a video of a contractor correcting a similar problem by pumping out the water from behind the liner with a utility pump, and putting the water right back in the pool. I didn't want to go to the expense of purchasing another pump, so I ran my vacuum hose to a strainer and connected that to a piece of 1-1/4" PVC pipe slipped down behind the liner. This used my pool pump to remove the water. If you do this you need to pre-charge the drain hose with water and make sure all of your connections are seal tight.

I know this might be a “ford vs chevy” type question, but after going through bottle after bottle of liquid chlorine, I’ve got to admit switching to salt sounds pretty appealing, but I know nothing about them.

Any kind of guide available with comparisons, things to look for, etc I can read through to get some idea of what equipment would be best?

Why are my reading so much different (lower almost always) than Leslies? I'm 99% more trusting the tf100 readings it's not rocket science to do correctly. I'm guessing its just a total coincidence that their reading require me to buy more Crud. I cant imagine that Leslies never calibrates their equipment but maybe so.

Hello! We bought a new house that came with a pool. This is our first time owning one. I did some research that led me to this forum. We've been vacuuming and scrubbing the pool non-stop. We're planning to start the SLAM process this afternoon, but I want to run it by the pros first.

Pool: 28,000 gallons, Hayward Pro series sand filter

These are the test results:

FC: 0
TA: 240
CYA: 30
PH: 8.4
Calcium Hardiness: 250

PoolMath suggests adding 233 oz of liquid chlorine, 144 oz of pH down, 56 oz of dry stabilizer, and 207 oz of calcium chloride. Is this correct? What else should we consider doing?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Plans/Permits should be finalized this week, and we should be digging by the end of July!

If anyone sees any glaring problems, or things we're overlooking, feel free to chime in! I'd rather know now instead of after the concrete has cured!

Decisions we are consciously making:

• No hot tub (Not what we want to spend money/space on)
• 8' Deep end (Our family enjoys deep ends in other pools)
• Wood Fireplace instead of gas (Should put out more heat, be nicer to look at)
• Stamped concrete instead of pavers (trying to save money on items we aren't passionate about)
• No pool deck on far side (Approaching rear property line, ground slopes away from house)
• Propane instead of heat pump (Electricity is expensive in our area and our goal is to minimize heater usage)

Open Questions

• Can people jump off the auto cover vault lid? Would it be uncomfortable to be on the shallow end bench?
• Is pool automation worth it if we don't have any water features/hot tub?

Pool Info:

• Size: 18'x36'
• Depth: 3.5' to 8'
• Vinyl Color: Gray Granite Borderless
• Corner Walk in
• Shallow end full width bench
• Deep end swim out bench
• Automatic Cover

Pool Equipment

• Salt Water Generator
• Hayward Glass Filter
• Hayward Tristar VS pump
• 350 BTU/Hr Propane Heater
• Color LED light

Landscape/Hardscape info

• Stamped concrete pool deck "Light Cappuccino color" - Ashlar stamp pattern
• Stamped concrete pavilion floor "Light Cappuccino color" - Seamless pattern
• 16x16 Gabled Pavillion
• Fencing will be added

Wasn't sure where to post so I figured it's got alot to do with "testing a balancing" so here it goes.
I've always struggled reading the vial water level in the chlorine test as the inked markings never last long. I have bought several spares over the years and they're great when new but then before you know it I was back to square one possibly because I hate putting it back in the kit still wet so I'd dry it with soft paper towel but obviously wasn't soft enough so then I resorted to microfiber which is better but that just meant the ink wearing off takes longer and eventually find myself squinting and twisting at different lighting angles to finally see a good level. For long I've been thinking how to put back the fine lines but never came up with a 100% solution till one day this popped into my head. It's easy, simple and mostly available in lots of households today, it's the P-touch or similar label maker with the many font and label styles making organization easy and here was one more use for it. I printed the 5,10 and 25 and trimmed off before and after the number to keep it as small as possible and used the top edge to align with its perspective level. This has been making my testing much easier so I figured to spread the wealth for others to benefit.

Okay I finally got my TF-Pro kit and ran the whole panel

One thing that is very interesting is that I got a second set of FAS-DPD option so an additional R-0870 and R-0871. My kids wanted to test so I ended up testing FC multiple times (about 6 because they like playing with the color changes LOL)... The bizarre thing is that with one of the powder/drip combos I got a FC of 16 with the other I got a FC of 24. Each of these tests were repeated twice. I am using a single 500ml dripper bottle to pour from. Has anyone seen this before?
ph ~ 7.2
FC = 16 (second measure was 24)
CC = 1
TC = 17
CH = 275
TA = 130
CYA > 80

I've been having the same issues with a brand new IC40. When our pool was first finished in May, the reading from the IC40 was in the 4,500-4,700 which had us concerned about salt levels too high so we actually drained a little bit of water and filled it back with new water. We then tested with the K-1766 kit and it was showing numbers closer to 3,900. Then after cleaning the pump basket out and filling the pump with tap water before powering it back on, suddenly the readings from the IC40 were too low (2,600-2,800). I figured it was because I filled the pump with the tap water and assumed it would fix itself on the next power cycle. It hasn't so I opened a support ticket with Pentair. They of course want test results from a pool store which we did for the first time this past weekend.

- Leslie's test results: 3,050
- Pool Supply Atlanta results: 2,748
- Current reading from IC40: 2,650
- K-1766: 3,900

I just sent Pentair the Leslie's results although they may not do anything. I want to at least have this documented for warranty purposes. When I test with the K-1766 using the speed-stir, I stop after the water has completely changed to that salmon color but I'll try it again with the recommendation from @Jimrahbe above to see where we are.

I have a Sundance sentry 724 hot tub, yes I know it's a little outdated but I cant afford to buy a new one. Anyway, the heater on this baby stopped working for me a little while ago and I have been pulling out my hair trying to get it up and running again. I replaced the heater and the pressure switch; the pump, display, and temp sensors are working correctly. it was heating off and on kind of getting close and then not raising temperature for quite a while even with the new heater, I then replaced the pressure switch and instead of fixing the problem it made it stop heating all together. So, before I go any further into this pit of despair I thought it best to ask for some help, if anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them. anything helps.

So I ordered the TF-Pro Test kit and it came in on Saturday. Got around to running all the tests and thought I'd give a thorough review of it with the pros and cons. This is going to probably be a long post, but just thought I'd throw out my details.

Little bit of info about my situation. My pool was built before last summer so this is now my 2nd year maintaining it. It's a vinyl pool, about 22,000 gallons with a cartridge filter, and Hayward vsp and heat pro heat pump that heats and cools. Last year, all I did was put in a few 3" tablets a week in the chlorinator, and maybe added baking soda twice the whole summer. That was basically it. A few shocks with the 1 lb powder stuff. Pool was crystal clear with zero issues.

I then discovered this website and started reading about how the 3" tablets are, in short, the devil, and not recommended. I got super stressed that my cya was through the roof. After 2 pool company testers giving me opposite end of the spectrum results on everything, I decided to get my own top notch test kit and run everything myself. BTW, as many probably know, phin is now dead but I downloaded the iopool app and it will still let you sync the phin with it. I use that as secondary ph/sanitizer monitoring and it surprisingly does very well. 700-750 mv roughly translates to 3-4 FC and the pH has been right on. It doesn't test anything else though which is where the test kit comes in. Ok so to the test kit.

I couldn't decide rather to get the TF-100 or the TF-Pro. The website was not clear on what the differences were between the two. To my naked eye, it looked like it basically had the automatic stirer/magnet included (which I wanted) and a really nice looking box to pack it all in. After searching other posts on this forum, that seemingly matched with what I was understanding. Only thing that made me a little nervous was I found a post a few years back about somebody complaining about the calcium hardness being off on the Pro compared to the TF-100. Hoping it had been resolved since then, and since I really liked the case and wanted the stirer, I went ahead and spent around $20 more for the TF-Pro.

Impressions

I really like the case a lot. It was well thought out, everything was arranged and organized smartly. The bottles for alkalinity, calcium hardness, etc are all color coded and arranged together. Made it very easy to run the tests. The instructions are laminated/water proof which was also very well thought out. They were also very easy to understand and straight to the point details. The magnetic stirrer worked great and was cool to see. Is it worth $50? Probably not honestly but it is really cool and gives you a little more peace of mind that your "extra" tests are accurate.

I ran every test except the powdered chlorine and the CC. I was overall very impressed with the accuracy and the ease of it. Here are a few negatives I can think. The ph meter only read in 0.3's, meaning it was either 7.2, 7.5 or 7.8. The phin read 7.6 and a cheaper liquid test kit I had did 0.2 increments and was also 7.6. Coincidentally, my cheaper knock off test kit had the same looking chlorine and pH dual tubes, but it read the pH in 0.2 increments and chlorine in stricter increments. For a $150 test kit I honestly expected it to at least be 0.2's. It was slightly darker than the 7.5 so I estimated my ph was around 7.6....but wish it had more pH variance. This is also just a rare thing, but when I was running one of the blue bottles for (I think) the calcium hardness test....somehow during shipping a small portion of the liquid in one of the blue bottles was loose so when I opened it, a chunk of liquid dumped in my test tube and all down the sides of my magnetic stirrer, staining the side and it went inside the crack. I'm sure it's all fine but was just a little annoying. Had to dump everything out and rerun it. Only other thing is I wish there was a way to test for metals, particularly cooper.

Here's a little detail on each test.

Chlorine/Ph:. Idiot proof. 5 drops each, mix them up and you have your results. My FC chlorine showed up 3-6 and my pH was a little darker than 7.5 but not as dark as 7.8....so 7.6 estimate.

Alkalinity: Very easy to follow instructions and magnetic stirrer made it much easier. On the 7th drop, it turned a very light pink, then on the 8th it was a solid pink. For kicks, I put a few more drops in but it never turned "red" as the instructions indicated....was more of a dark pink. Assumed that was how it was supposed to be so 70-80 range was alkalinity. Pool store B called it 80 so I felt confident. Pool store A called it a single digit # lol...a 6 I think.

Calcium Hardness:. Same as alkalinity. Magnetic stirrer made it nice. It changed colors on the 5th drop indicating a 125 reading. Pool store A and B also called it a 125 so I felt confident in that result.

CYA:. This was the big one I was curious about. Since I used 3" tabs all last summer (about roughly 60 tabs from May 1 to October 15), pool math said that would of raised my cya by 94 so when I read all the horror stories through this website, that honestly was the main reason on why I bought this test kit. After all of that, my CYA turned out to be 30, possibly 40. I maybe saw the smallest hint of the dot at 40, but definitely nothing at 30. I used the light from the magnetic stirrer. Instructions weren't clear on if I should use that as the guide or not, but light or no light it was either 30 or 40 range. So why wasn't my cya higher? Best factors I can think of is I live in central Arkansas where we get plenty of rain in the off-season. I would guestimate that half or more of the water is probably replaced by rain during the year. July and August are hot and realtively dry, but otherwise there is decent rain here and there. I only had to top off my pool rom the water hose maybe a few times last year and it was during those months. So my conclusion at least for now is if you live say in Arizona or somewhere where you don't get the water replaced often, that would probably explain why the cya goes out of whack? Who knows but since I'm on the lower end, I will continue to use the 3" tabs since I have a 40 lb sealed container from last year. Every month, now that I have a nice test kit, I will monitor the cya level. I'm strongly considering going swg next year so way I see it, it would need to rise for a swg anyway.

So that's what I got. I know this was a marathon of a post, but just thought I'd give a detailed analysis of what I thought about it.

Conclusions

I think the $150 pro is overall worth it. The ph and FC was not anything special. My cheap knock off test kit that you can buy for $10 at Walmart gives the same results there. The extra tests is where it's worth it and I really trust the results. The TF-100 case looked unimpressive so for me I was ok to splurge another $20 or so to get what I think is an A+ case since I wanted the magnetic stirrer. If you want the magnetic stirrer, I think it's worth just getting the Pro. Shipping was great. Ordered it I think on a Wednesday afternoon and got it that Saturday. The no sales tax for uncle Samuel was also a nice touch.

What I would do if I ran the TF Test Kit website.

Make it very clear what the differences are between the TF-100 and the Pro. Put it in the Pro description with a statement saying something along the lines of "The difference between the Pro and the TF-100 is ......". If feasible/possible, include something to test for metals.... particularly copper.

Overall, very happy with the purchase and feel great that I now can test for everything.

For anyone that read through this, do all my levels seem ok. Anything I should do?

FC 3-6
Ph 7.6
Alkalinity 70-80
Calcium Hardness 125
CYA 30-40

I am now using liquid chlorine to sanitize my pool.
When I asked for help to leave my pool for a week vacation it was suggested by @PoolStored and @Texas Splash to switch from stabilized tablets & shock to liquid chlorine.
I’ll admit I was hesitant because I was afraid of the time it would take to keep up with liquid. Tablet’s make it easy but thanks to TFP I’ve learned tablets also end up making the pool harder to maintain. The Tuesday after vacation I picked up 2 cases of 10% chlorine from Rural King.
Since my FC level was still elevated but coming down from the 17 prior to vacation I didn’t add the first dose of liquid until this past Monday.
I decided to test everything on Sundays and I test the FC/CC every other day and when the FC hit 3, I added 26oz aiming for a FC or 7. I hit 8
Tuesday it rained a few times and today it rained solid from early morning until around 4pm. Thanks to the rain my pool gained over an inch of water and the FC fell 2.5ppm. This evening the FC/CC dropped from 8/0 to 5.5 / 0.5. I had a lot of fine debris and leaves, so I added 10oz of chlorine aiming for 7 and vacuumed out the mess. pH had gone down from 7.5 to 7.2 so I capped the aerator. My pump shuts off at 8pm and now it’s dark so I’ll test the FC/CC again in the morning. My CYA has stayed steady at 40.
I’m pretty excited that the liquid chlorine doesn’t seems to be hard or time consuming. I’m hoping I can keep it on the every other day testing / dosing schedule especially if I keep it running on the high side at 7.
Another reason for keeping it around 7 is my pool is also slightly under some trees, I get leaves & gunk at times. I’m hoping to get my husband to trim back this fall. He seems to think I need to take the pool down to cut the limb, I’m hoping we don’t. I really want to close and keep it up.

I can’t begin to thank you guys and TFP for all the help.

Hello-- based off the many threads here, I am seriously considering getting a pentair warrior. However my pool has a beach entry. Will the robot drive itself out of the pool?? I want it to clean the pool, not drive around my wife's flowerbeds.

Hello everyone, I have read through many posts from the experts on the DIY Pool Controller setup and the work done is incredible.

I started down the road of getting the Pool controller setup, unfortunately I can not get a hold of a Raspberry Pi so I have been running it on a Windows laptop with Raspberry Pi operating system. I think this isn't working great and may be an issue but not related to my current question.

My pool:

Concrete pool and spa which overflows.
Pentair Intelliflo Variable Speed Ultra energy efficient pump with is plumbed to pull from and return to the pool and spa, vice versa or a combination.
Separate I believe 2 HP pump which only pulls from the spa and returns to the spa. This pump has no control panel on it and is NOT connected to my pool heater.
Pool heater plumbed with Pentair variable speed pump
I have NO pool automation (Intelli touch, synch, etc.).

I have an RS485 USB adapter and the Pentair communication connector and wired them up and I don't seem to be getting any signals from the pool pump.

Which is my question, can I connect to the pump without it being connected to one Pentair's automation systems (which like all of us, I'd rather not even have).

Thanks for any help!

Hi Folks. What am I doing wrong? As you can see from this short video on youtube, everything is fine until I go to attach the vacuum plate and hose. I immediately lose prime. All the air is out of the hose. After watching the video any ideas? One thing to add in the video is that the vacuum still has some suction. I was able to pick up leaves on the bottom but the pump is all air and splashing water. Could the 2 seconds it takes for the vacuum plate to have the hose attached be causing this? Should I take the weir door off and slide both the vacuum plate and hose together through the skimmer instead? Thanks for watching!!!

Jun 11, 2017 - YouTube

“Someone stated that applying any bromine to a chlorine pool turns it into a bromine pool where any future addition of chlorine gets turned to bromine. This makes no sense to me.”

Me either, that’s why I used yellowtrine after reading a bunch of people making dire warnings like “once you put bromine in a pool, it’s a bromine pool forever”. The problem with everyone’s argument is they never considered the rate at which bromide degrades to bromate or what conditions enable that degradation. And I didnt just read those warnings here, I read them all over the place. What’s interesting is if you search the topic on google, you’ll get mostly results saying not to use sodium bromine but if you search using DuckDuckGo, most results will favor using it, so the search results on google are skewed because some chemical manufacturer is paying google to skew results in their favor.

Sodium bromide worked great against yellow algae. I will definitely use it if I have the problem again. One night with bromine worked better than the 3 prior days of over 20 ppm chlorine (I don’t know how much over because that is the max my test strips read. The yellowtrine worked much better than a high chlorine level and it degraded to bromate and stopped burning chlorine in a day and a half. My pool has full sunlight all day and it’s been hot out, and those are important factors.

When used as directed, you only add .06 ppm to your pool, and every time bromide goes through the cycle to bromine and back, there is a chance it will be converted to bromate. Under direct sun, the chance is pretty high. So if you maintain high chlorine levels in the day then the bromine all suicides pretty quickly. Sodium bromide is the only thing I’ve tried aside from chlorine that actually works, and works better than chlorine even.

Once again, I never learn, and I find myself banging my head against the wall trying to help people located on some of the various pool care facebook groups.

Why, oh why, are they all so adamant that more pools are going green this year because its so much hotter and so much more rain? These people will fight you tooth and nail to convince you that rain and heat cause algae, not their lack of proper water chemistry

I’ve been staring at my crystal clear water all winter, and now that the pool temp is near 70 I figured it’s time to do the spring chem balance and tweak everything to its optimal range. In anticipation of this I bought a couple bags of Clorox pool salt from Lowe’s a month or so ago as it was on sale. I always buy it from Leslie’s, but I figured salt is salt and it said 99.9% pure. Plus I was already at Lowe’s buying other things. Why not save a few $$ and what could go wrong? Well long story short, it says 99.9% pure but that extra 0.01% that isn’t is nasty. It left a brown stain on the plaster and when added to a bucket to dissolve with water, the water turned brown and left foamy scum on the side. In my days of using bleach I knew Clorox wasn’t great, low concentration and $$$. It seems their salt is something to steer clear of too. The pics below speak for themselves and a fair warning to others eager to open up their pools this spring.

Hi,

Since I found TFPool I've been using just liquid chlorine and love having more control over my pool using it. I have a full container of 3" tabs/pucks left over. The liquid chlorine has no smell. As I understand, chlorine gives off the strong smell when it comes into contact with bacteria. My question is, why do the pucks have such a strong irritating smell sitting in the bucket? Is it the filler that the chlorine is held together with that is interacting with the chlorine?

Thanks, Patty

Here's the setup I use to aerate my pool. I'm currently in the process of lowering TA with MA + aeration. I'm almost there! Today's chemistry results:
FC: 9.5
TC: 9.5
CYA: 55
PH: 7.2
TA: 125
CH: 225
Borates: 40
Temp: 76

I use bleach to sanitize.

This is expensive! My budget is at AU$440 ($US299)

Do you all reckon I can get away with no sequestrant if I initiate the draining as soon as stains are lifted?

Differential draining water exchange will take around 36 hours to remove the old pool water. I am also leaving polyquat out for budget purposes, but can't see algae becoming an issue in 14C 57F water

Working on getting my TA down (before I found this fabulous place I'd gone to the pool store where of course they told me I needed to put in Alkalinity Up) - I added the first dose of acid last night - brought TA down from 150 to 130 and pH down to 7.2...so now I'm getting that pH back up so I can re-dose with acid.

My eyeballs point up and break the surface but not enough for strong aeration, so thanks to Rangeball and dmanb2b's pictures and guidance, I was able to build this today. Hopefully this will make a difference!

[attachment=1:1t055b37]aerator1.jpg[/attachment:1t055b37]

[attachment=0:1t055b37]aerator2.jpg[/attachment:1t055b37]

Had my pool for 3-4 years. Keep it open all year long. Live in Texas use to triple digit days. I have a 10,000 gallon pool. CYA is 50ppm I use 12.5% liquid chlorine with the whale on the label. I add chlorine as though I use 10% chlorine. All my reagents are less than a year old and I buy direct from Taylor. I have not seen rain just mid 90s-100s with direct sun (pretty much every year) I am having no issues with any other balance of my pool. I set my chlorine to 8ppm every night. Exactly 24 hours later I have 2ppm with 0ppm combined chlorine. So I’m adding a little over half a gallon of chlorine every day.

I don’t remember burning through so much in previous years. Is anyone else in a similar climate experiencing the same? Am I just remembering wrong?