I have a 30 year old pool and spa with Pacfab Hatteras style lights. The epoxy resin on both lights has started to fail and I'm debating on my next move.

I am considering the intellibrite 5g color for both. Obviously cost is high, but I'm comfortable doing the install. Will these fit in these niches or are adapters needed? I'm struggling to find clear info on that aspect.

Would you go a different route with lighting?

Thanks in advance!

I'm planning on starting the construction of a pool with flush spa during the upcoming weeks. The current plan is to use a single Intellifo3 pump and Intellichlor SWG for the water circulation/chlorination. The attached diagram shows the planned pool/spa piping and valve diagram. One of the Intelliflo3 relays will be used to switch between Spa and Pool mode (energizing the diverter valves actuators), the heater will be manually switch on at this point. The system will consist of 6 pool returns (one of them inside the Spa) and 6 spa venturi jets. When in pool mode the return inside the Spa should circulate and chlorinate the Spa water forcing spa overspill, when in Spa mode the water should circulate and heat the spa water only.

I would appreciate your feedback on the following:

• Is it appropriate to install one pool return inside the spa to circulate spa water while in pool mode?
• Is a Pentair Intelliflo3 3HP pump appropriately sized for 6 spa water jets? No spa blower is currently planned.
• Can the Intelliflow3 control the Intellichlor output % from the selected program? The plan is to use the RS485 comms in standalone mode to communicate with the Intellichlor SWG cell (no further automation is planned at this point).

Any further comments or recommendations would be appreciated.

I moved into this house a year ago and was told the salt system wasn’t functional and they’d been using a service that added chlorine. I kept up with the chlorine, but now want to go back to using the salt system. I have a lot of experience tinkering with Autopilot systems, not Hayward. The display on the board works, none of the lights come on. I did see the check flow light after I threw the breaker, which blinked red and then turned off. Things I’ve tried:
- took cell (t-15) to the pool store and had it tested, it’s surprisingly fine
- replaced flow switch which had its wire cut and poorly spliced several times
- had water tested and added salt
This morning I popped open the case and I think I’m dealing with the burnt out coin-like thing on the motherboard. I took pics if anyone can confirm, and what the steps are to fixing it. I figure if that’s it I can start there and then look at replacing the board. If that doesn’t work.

Went down to the pool and see minor water rising from my auto fill valve port in the deck. I open it up and it is filled with these stringy weeds.

I grappled as many as I could with my hands and poured some chlorine into the port.

What is this stuff and how can I get rid of / prevent it growing?

I've had a pool for 40 years, this one for 4.5 years, and have never seen anything like this.

So after reading many of the pages here about borates, I went ahead and added them to my pool this week - over the course of a few days I added the 9 boxes of 20-mule borax plus 2 jugs of muriatic acid based on recommendations from pool math to reach 50ppm borates. The final levels appear correct based on the borate test strips I bought. My other pool readings are good - pH ended up slightly higher after the process (started around 7.2, ended around 7.7) and alkalinity is a touch higher (ended around 110). All seems well overall. However, shortly after doing this, my wife asked about a small she noticed after being in the pool - could this be from the borates?

Also, some sites mention that when borates are in the pool the FC levels can be reduced slightly - this isn't in TFP's charts - is this the case? Recommendations?

Overall, I haven't noticed much difference. I believe the pool appears sparklier than it was and the water is clear - but then again, it's pretty much always clear as long as I test regularly and use liquid chlorine rather than pucks.
Thanks!

I have a Waterways cartridge filter (installed about 7 years ago) with a 1.5hp, 2 speed pump with a side discharge (to the cartridge filter). The pool is a 15x30 pool. The cartridge is new (installed about 6 weeks ago). Between the pump and the return, there is a Raypak heater, check valve and frog leap.

Recently, when the pump is running on high, it will run and then shut off without warning (the timing it runs varies). When it shuts off, I can flip the speed to low, and after waiting about 10 minutes, I can flip the speed back to high. However, this is short term as it will eventually shut itself off again. The pump will start directly on high. Is this is a symptom of the thermal protection cutting off?

If so, based on the age, does it make sense to replace the motor, or even potentially, the entire pump assembly (including the pre filter basket, etc)? I am considering replacing the entire pre filter as one of the drain plugs leaks and it has been difficult to find a replacement. If so, any recommendations? I am also open to upgrading to variable speed.

Attached are photos of the labels on the pump motor.

(I assume that I do not need to replace the cartridge filter portion since I have no issues with that).

This SaS has a cell that's 1 year old and has had regular cleaning, recently the Problem detected light has come on. Salt levels are right, all other pool chemicals are near perfect. The generating chlorine light will come on briefly after a reboot then goes away. No other lights flash or do anything out of the ordinary. I will be testing the continuity of the cell cord tomorrow, but im hoping someone might shed some light on the issue or at least walk me through any troubleshooting tips.

We have a chlorine tank with an automated pump that runs on a timer. This afternoon, my son accidentally knocked the plug out and plugged it back into a regular socket instead of the one linked to the timer. Basically, the chlorine pump was running continuously for about five hours.

I didn't realize what had happened until AFTER my daughter and a friend had just spent an hour in the pool. As we were getting out, I heard the chlorine pump running, wondered why it was running at a non-scheduled time and figured out what happened.

Just tested the levels — CYA:20, FC: 23.

We had her and her friend both rinse off in the shower immediately and so far they don't seem to be having any other issues from the chlorine exposure. Anything else we should be worried about or watching for on that front?
In terms of getting the chlorine back down to a swimmable level, nothing to do but keep the cover off when the sun is on the pool and wait, right? Pool Math app says the target chlorine for that CYA level is 3-5 ppm. Do we need to wait until the levels are below 5 ppm to get back in the pool? Would adding CYA to get that level back up to 40 help at all?

Any guidance on the exposure for the girls or remediation of the high levels would be much appreciated. Thanks so much!

It's a hot weather we're having in TX.
Recently while swimming decided to inspect water line. Went around pool in water and started brushing well. Noticed maybe 30 spots total, largest ones no bigger than 3mm. Circumference about 22'+45'+22'+45'=134'.

Wondering, if I notice d these, should I do something asap or was a good brushing sufficient? I assume it goes without question to keep fc high. I noticed in readings records uve been slipping adding chlorine so over last couple weeks fc been bou cing between about 8 and 4. I'd add some then forgrt, etc. Cya is at 60, in process to raise to 70 as pool in full sun most of day.
These spots are really dark brown going on black. Slimy when touched.

Advice appeeciated.

christied48 said:

Click to expand...

Is this Tahoe blue?

I am careful to keep my LSI close to zero and follow the guidelines here, but it seems as though I am using a tremendous amount of chlorine. So much chlorine, in fact, that I have to add it every night. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

The chlorine chart here recommended a max FC of 7 ppm and a min of 3 ppm. And that is my target when I add chlorine each night (pH = 7.6, TA = 80, CH = 300, CYA = 40, and CC is usually 0.2 ppm or 0 using the Taylor K-2006). But when the sun comes out, my chlorine really drops so that by the next evening, 24 hours later, I'm usually at FC of 3.2 ppm. So I'm achieving my 3 ppm minimum but losing almost 4 ppm per day and I have to add 68 oz of chlorine to get back up to 7 ppm each night. That's a lot of chlorine, baby!

The pool is very clean, looks great smells great, and is exposed to sunlight much of the day. I skim the top once or twice a day, usually twice. Am I going wrong somewhere? So much chlorine so often just doesn't seem sustainable.

Who knows, I might like to occasionally take a day or two off. So I've started looking into other solutions like saltwater, UV, solar ionization, and ozone as ways to lighten my burden. Is saltwater the best way to lighten my load?

So how do professional pool cleaners do it? There is absolutely no way that a pool cleaner could dump chlorine in my pool once a week and keep it above 3 ppm. Are they just pretending to clean your pool? What am I missing? Thank you in advance for your response.

Hello, I thought I would just post that someone in the Home assistant community has developed a some communications to talk directly to the Hayward Omni. This used to be dependent upon a cloud account and interaction, but the local control is directly controlled from Home assistant. Much faster response than Cloud control for lights, valves, pump speeds etc.

Hi all, first time poster here. Our pool was completed about 3 months ago and I’ve been maintaining using liquid chlorine since startup. I’ve been slowly pouring half a gallon of 10% everyday at noon in this Houston weather, and am ready to make the switch to make maintenance less tedious. Unfortunately there wasn’t much room on the side of the house where the plumbing was installed and so the install looks like it’s going to be a little tight. I’m interested in the circupool rj60+, but wanted to check if I have enough room. I’m considering a vertical install where the inline chlorinated currently sits, or potentially installing horizontally in the plumbing run after the heater. Is there any reason that this won’t work?

Hi there. I’m new to this forum but not a new pool owner. We have a built in 23,000 gallon pool.

Last week we had this weird white stuff in pool and once again this weekend after swimming. I know parts of it are from trees, dog hair but the white stuff is what I am looking at. It’s not slimy at all. Wondering if it is just normal debris.

I’m guessing my pool was built in the early 80’s. Diving board base/pedestal just cracked. Posting pics and looking for advice on repair. Complete crack/break at the bolt at the front. Thanks.

Hi all. Glad I found this site! Looking forward to learning and getting better at how to treat my pool.

Bought a house recently and came with a an old pool. Here we go!

Hello Community
I’m installing my new Hayward Super Pump dual speed 1.5HP -230V
Model SP2610X152S
Motor model SP1610Z2MSC7
I’m stuck at how to wire it.
The plate says Maximum Amps 11.9/3.3
So I’m assuming I need a 15 amp dual line breaker. Correct?
Every YouTube video I’ve seen says that you need two live wires going to the pump and no neutral. But they are not dual speed pumps.
My diagram shows 1 live and « common » (which I assume is = to neutral?).
So my questions:
Am I correct on the breaker?
Do I need a neutral?
If yes, do I join the two live wires together?
And finally: what wire size? The manual says 8 or 6, but the hardware store told me I could never fit that in a 15 Amp breaker. And the connecting wires in the pump are tiny.
I will post a picture of the diagram and of the inside of the electrical plate

New here! Stumbled upon your website upon watching another video made by Inyo that referenced this site. This is the best resource on pools! Thank you for all that you do!

Hi,

I've had my pool for 11 years now, and I've been using the TFP protocols the entire time. I've never had a problem like this.

I opened my pool at the end of May, no issues. The weather has been so rainy and cool I never got in it during the month of June. The problem started last Tuesday. We had torrential rains all day and night - a real gully washer. As of Wed. morning, our pool looked like a cement pond - lots of dirt and mulch had washed into the pool. Unfortunately, neither my husband nor I could be home during the day to really start the clean up process. Until Friday afternoon, I was able to run our vacuum in the late afternoon, and run the pump to start filtering and backwashed it once a day until this Saturday. I also poured in enough bleach to bring it up to shock level on Thursday, but didn't keep at it since I wasn't able to be there to backwash as needed. Finally, on Saturday, I really got to work cleaning things up. Vacuuming, backwashing and adding new DE, adding chlorine. I'll admit it wasn't until Sunday that I started to keep the chlorine at shock level by testing (using the high chlorine level testing supplies) every hour or two. I did not run the pump all night because until today, I've been backwashing several times a day and didn't want to chance the pressure rising too high overnight. At this point, I haven't backwashed in over 24 hours, and my vacuum isn't picking up much debris anymore. However, the water will just not get past the light green cloudy color pictured below. I've added at least 8 gallons of 10% bleach over the past two days. Each time I'm testing the chlorine level is dropping between 5 - 7 ppm every hour to hour and a half. Clearly the chlorine is being used up, but I'm not seeing a difference in the water.

Is there something else I should be doing? Should I add more chlorine than the shock level? I used pool math to determine my shock level, base on my
CYA level. I realize that I since I couldn't clean it up right away, a lot of algae probably grew, but once the dirt and mulch was cleaned out, I expected the water to clear up a lot faster.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Kelley

Ok I screwed up. I've been having algae problems for months. We get a lot of leaves and junk blowing into the water, especially in the winter, and although I am good about skimming it out daily with a net I now have a very high phosphate level. Although I have kept my chlorine, pH and alkalinity levels balanced my Taylor test kit does not have a test for phosphates and I didn't take a sample into my local chain pool store because (insert lame excuse here). I had it tested today and the test came out at over 3800 ppb. As a typical chain store they want to sell you as many chemicals as they can and they had 4 chemicals on their list I should use to kill the algae before I even start to treat for the high phosphates.

So my question is do I really need to try and kill the algae before treating (sucking out) the phosphates or can I do the phosphate treatment and then shock the pool to kill the algae? If I should treat for algae prior to the phosphate treatment do you have suggestions as to what to use that doesn't involve 4 different products?

Your expertise and suggestions are much appreciated.

Charles

Does anyone have experience with this filter cleaning tool?

$350 is a bit pricy:

you tube video:
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Hello, newbie here. We are currently on day 3 of slamming our pool. Pool water remains cloudy despite the following readings:
FC 12
CYA 40
CC 0
I went ahead and added liquid chlorine to maintain a shock level FC 16. Have been vacuuming and cleaning the pool daily. We have a DE filter which we’ve cleaned periodically but have not been adding DE. I am thinking that this is the issue. Your thoughts would be most appreciated.

Is there a simple way to post a single pool log for informational purposes on future posts. I'll apologize now for not being tech savvy, I usually just type the data in, but I need to learn how to get one from pool math to future posts in the forums. Thanks

I just purchased a vacuum head with a 1.5 inch vacuum hose so I can manually vacuum my pool. I tried using one of those vacuum plates over my skimmer basket and got no suction doing this. My suspicion is the vacuum plate does not create a good seal against the basket. This seems to me to be a poorly designed concept. The next thing I tried was removing the skimmer basket and float valve and stuck the 1.5 inch hose directly into the skimmer intake port. The port completely swallowed my hose but I got plenty of suction for the vacuum. I had a difficult time pulling the hose out of the intake port when I was finished vacuuming my pool. The inside diameter of the suction port is 2 1/4 inches and the outside diameter of my skimmer hose is about 1 3/8 inches. I also noticed there are female threads on the skimmer intake port. I tried to search for an adapter online that will adapt my suction hose to the intake port of the skimmer but had no luck. Does such and adapter exist? Is there any other way to solve this problem. I am worried the sleeve on the end of my hose could come off and get stuck inside the plumbing. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hi. I have an ~30k gallon vinyl pool with an SWG. I am unable to get rid of the algae consistently. There are times it will subside then other times it starts to pick up again on the walls/deep end removable ladder stairs. The pool water itself is mostly clear, a little cloudy towards the deep end. The algae is on the the vinyl surface/ladder stairs. I replaced my T-15 cell (it was 14 years old) 2 weeks ago and the main board last season. SWG displays salt at 3800 and voltage/amps show it is generating. Below are the test results I ran this morning with TF-Pro Salt kit. I know the Chlorine levels are low but I just spent the last week slowly adding CYA as the pool was showing very low. Hoping they raise now that the CYA level is much better.

I am at my wits end (and a lot poorer). Any help would be greatly appreciated. BTW, the main stairs (white) will also at times start to turn orangish. If I sprinkle vit. c on them, it immediately cleans them. Thank you.

FC - 1
CC - 1.5
Calcium Hardness - 25
Alkalinity - 90
CYA - 80
Salt - 4000/4200
PH - 7.3ish (between colors)

We just had a 34 foot steel wall pool put in. We are building a feature wall that is 20 feet long. We are using cinder blocks. 2 high. We put a 6 inch deep by 20 ft long footing under the lip of the steel wall. The cinder blocks will sit pretty much right up to the edge of the pool. Leaving about a half inch for the stone face. After putting one row of cinder blocks on I’m worried we are compromising the wall. Are we doing this right?

Hello. I've been testing my free chlorine with the fas-dpd powder. When I pour the 2 scoops and swirl, I see very small clumps at the bottom that don't completely dissolve. Does this mean the powder is bad? Does it affect the results of the test? Or not a big deal?

I have severe calcium scaling through the entire surface of the pool. Now it looks like I have black algae problem as well. I was away on vacation for a week and had the salt cell on at 40%. Came back today and my FC is at zero and seeing black staining all around the pool surface. Should I treat the black algae first or get rid of the calcium scaling first? I have plenty of Scaletec plus bottles and plan on using them. Thanks!

Hello,

New to TFP but this is our second summer with the pool. Best thing we ever did was put in this pool but of course, I stress over keeping it in the best condition I can. I've relied on pool store water testing but after reading through the posts, ordered a Taylor k-2006 test kit from Amazon (I'm near Toronto and can't find anywhere else). It should arrive in the next couple of days and I am looking forward to testing everything.

Thank you for all of the information here and I am sure I will ask for advice at some point and hopefully can contribute in the coming years as I learn more.

New to forum long time above ground pool owner in Wisconsin 4 years to In ground Florida pool.
We had our pool resurfaced 6 weeks ago with a contracted company. They were contracted for resurface ,28 day start up , and replacement/ updated our existing filter system (pre resurface start up.
To our bad luck it has it that our new system was not running upon start and not filtering circulating properly for 2 weeks post resurface. Contractor was aware and we resolved by hiring a second contractor address the issues and get filter system going.
Which leads me to my question to address. With our filter system not running properly and chemistry levels not maintained properly I believe that we have black algae / black spots popping on the new surface.
I addressed the black spots coming out with the start up tech (Which is now finished with his 28 days) His statement was of those are not brushing off ? My thought is you should know this if you were brushing the pool per contract... His answer was Probably black algae .. His suggestions was add granular trichlor to pool and steel brush to break up heads. But the surface is just 6 weeks new in all my research the past 2 years this seems not to be advised. Stuck here on what to do Do not want black algae but also do not want to harm surface/ coloring. (Diamond Brite Super Blue) Side not this is 2nd resurface In a year. Two Different contractors
Looking for some some answers and good advice to proceed here
Consuming and Stressed
Thanks
Holly