Lake Placid said:

Does your pool have a main drain and skimmers, or just skimmers?

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Just skimmer I think

Also always lube your orings- that can stop most leaks.

Jannzas said:

Below are my most current numbers. I keep fighting ph. I know cya is high, we are getting a lot of rain soon and I expect this to help lower cya for us. My question is would adding boric acid to the pool be a good idea, and, if so, could I do that now or do I need to wait until I get my cya back down? According to the article and math calculations I’ve done, I would need to add around 60lbs of boric acid. This will be our first real pool season. We put our pool in at the tail end of fall last year. We didn’t cover the pool this winter and I used, what I thought were, cya free pucks to keep chlorine out. I realize now that they are my culprit for exceptionally high cya. I also would love any suggestions for a better cya test. I loathe the cya test in my tfp testing kit. I just never feel like I’m truly accurate.
View attachment 644500

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If you let your pH get to 7.9 or 8.0, the pH rise will slow down a lot. It’s kinda weird in that the lower the pH gets, the faster it rises back up to its natural balance point.

Do you have any water features like waterfalls or jets that aerate the water? That makes pH rise as well and borates won’t counteract that.

Best to go with 2 patches. One larger than the spot then one larger than the first.
Round the edges on the patches so it doesn’t curl.
The glue in the kit at lowes is ok (its been holding for me )
but the boxer glue is the best.

Yeah. I was thinking earlier in the season of going with these new units but I’m just going to replace y failing cell with an old school version and let Pentair sort the bugs out. They didn’t have a good track record with the roll out of their newer automation panel, the IntelliCenter, a few years ago. It was very buggy when they released it and they took forever to get basic new features working right. It’s probably in a mostly customer-friendly usable state now but that’s years after its launch.

The main problem is that the manufacturer doesn’t actual manufacture anything anymore. They assemble parts from global suppliers and hope to get it all working. When things fail, they have to correct them but they can’t just shelve all the broken/buggy parts because they’ve already paid for them or have contracts in place to buy them. So they have to make the revisions on parts which takes the components manufactures a lot of time to fix, they continue selling the junk units to recover sunk costs, and then they hope to push through with warranty and service claims to keep customers on the hook. It’s ridiculous and annoying but that’s the state of global manufacturing.

FiguringItOut said:

I am using test strips. I have used 3 brands and they all read the same levels.

What indication is there to follow SLAM? My FC is not dropping and I no longer have visible algea. Is it simply because the water is still cloudy? The water did not become cloudy until after we had shocked the pool to kill the algea and vacuumed. Became cloudy probably 2 days later. Only thing I had added in those days was pH increaser trying to bring the dropping pH back up.

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Yes - cloudy water is the indicator of algae.
If there weren’t more still alive there wouldn’t be continued replenishment of dead algae if that makes sense.
The strips are no good. They are simply to broad with their ranges to do what needs to be done. They also get bleached out easily and will lead you astray.
Get a tf100/pro or Taylor k2006c on order and simply add 5ppm worth of liquid chlorine each day - nothing else- until it comes to keep things from getting worse.
Please read through the
SLAM Process article so you’re prepared to do battle once you have your kit in hand.

Skenn81 said:

I'm annoyed I gave them free press on here

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Let the spiteful part of you rejoice that its bad press.

Skenn81 said:

I know jokes were made here about it but in no way did I actually expect this thing to break so quickly.

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Neither did we. It was all in good fun until it wasn't.

Thanks, Vinnie. That’s what I’ll do. If it doesn’t work, the only thing I’ll really lose is time.

ajw22 said:

Welcome to TFP.



They are all mechanically the same. What is different is the controls, warranty, support, and branding.

Choose whichever value proposition best meets your needs.

Calimar/Circupool/BD/Blue Torrent Pump - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

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Got it, thank you!

@Katodude ?

"Less distance" means you cannot run it as far. If your pipe is spec'd out for 260k BTUs the gas plumber would test the output to make sure it will be able to deliver the larger volume that the 400k BTU needs. If it is not able to, they would either replace the line with larger line or could also install a high pressure valve on your gas meter to be able to deliver more gas in the existing line. My 400k BTU heater is run from a high pressure port on the meter.

Here’s a pic of my spaghetti lol


If I only had a top return the setup would be much simpler. When the pool was installed there was no deck and the pump/filter was closer to the pool. At that time I had an intex swcg unit attached to each return (so 4 hoses just for that).
The bottom return presents a winterizing challenge since I cannot plug it or unplug it from the inside of the pool with out going into shock in late October & march
it is also very close to the ground due to the pool being buried. This is why the valve is 1st then the 90 unlike the top return who’s pipe fits nicely against the wall. I can’t spin it off and on the other way.
I don’t love the look but oh well.
I had to come up with a way to shut it off so I could remove the plumbing at my leisure then afterwards quickly plug it from the outside without getting drenched.
*all my cables/cords are loosely hung right now - it usually looks neater than this

Seems ridiculous. I hope you get a positive response from higher up the chain.

This is a family site so I will keep my other comments to myself and just say people are dumb.

--Jeff

sugast said:

I added Magic Lube II to the pump basket lid. It still leaks. Could there be something other than a suction side leak causing the issue

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I couldn't see all the equipment but it looks like you have unions on the pump. Those have o-rings and can leak. Can you post a picture of all the equipment?

sugast said:

Also, the bubbling only happens in one of the four return lines.

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That could due to the location of the return and the way the plumbing is layed out.

Also, leaking on lower RPM vs higher is not uncommon. Higher RPM has higher pump basket suction which can pull the lid down tighter making for a better seal. Another factor is that at higher RPM, the water is moving faster so air leaks are less likely to be noticed and/or collect in the pump basket.

But just to confirm, the video shows the lower RPM first, then the higher RPM. If you first prime the pump at the higher RPM and THEN lower the RPM, does the air show up again?

PoolStored said:

Welcome to TFP!!!

How are you testing your water?
If you don't have one of the kits we recommend, get one. Link-->Test Kits Compared
Why? You need one to SLAM. Test strips and pool store test is usually wrong, and if we give advice on wrong testing, we can do harm.

To clear your pool, follow the SLAM process here...Link-->SLAM Process
Proof? Link-->>How Clear is TFP Clear?

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I am using test strips. I have used 3 brands and they all read the same levels.

What indication is there to follow SLAM? My FC is not dropping and I no longer have visible algea. Is it simply because the water is still cloudy? The water did not become cloudy until after we had shocked the pool to kill the algea and vacuumed. Became cloudy probably 2 days later. Only thing I had added in those days was pH increaser trying to bring the dropping pH back up.

HermanTX said:

Program 2 and 3 are very similar except for time duration.
I would delete one of them and make the other 9am to 9am (24 hrs)

Most VS pump programs will only run the highest speed when there is an overlap of schedules.
So what I expect to happen is as follows
9am Pump is on at 28%
10am pump speed ramps up to 65% for 1 hr then goes back down to 28%
At 10pm pump speed ramps up to 65% for 1 hr then goes back down to 28%

Let us know if this works.
I am not sure but the 24 hr low speed schedule may need to be Program 1.

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So i tried that originally, and it was not running one of the schedules. I’ll try again. New schedule attached. Ill see if it runs both clean programs now.