I see everywhere to use 1 cup per 5 gallons of TSP. So if using dry TSP, how many ounces are in 1 cup? I know 8 oz fluid =1 cup? Or am i over thinking it and just fill a cup's worth of dry TSP per 5 gallons?

I have a waterfall that runs about 5 hours a day and the aerator is on running about 4 hours a day (separate pump). I heard they both may affect my PH. Is this going to affect my PH? How much +/- per week? Currently I'm at 7.4 PH.

Title kinda says it I got this installed a year ago, I always suspected something was up with it since I have been getting unexplainable air intake and some issues with the basket gasket and handles. I noticed that today is is spraying water from the side kinda consistently. Anyone have a good resource to use for troubleshooting it? And any idea what caused the seemly premature failure? Lastly has anyone tried to use the Hayward warranty for anything?

Thanks everyone.

I've been reading the wealth of information contained here and from what I can tell I should backwash When my filter pressure is 25% above baseline. I have 1.5 inch plumbing with a 1.5 hp VS pump. I use 3200 rpm to gauge and post backwash pressure is around 18. Based on that I should be backwashing somewhere around 22-23 PSI.

It never seems to get that high, maybe I'm backwashing too frequently but it was about a month since my last backwash and the filter pressure was still 18-19, but I noticed significantly less flow at the return jets probably 50% less than previous for a given RPM my VS runs 1500-2500 max rpm. Is this normal? Should I just let the low flow at the returns ride until the pressure creeps up to 22-23? I didn't want to cause any damage so I have just been backwashing when I notice the flow is significantly less since the pressure never goes up. I don't think my filter is oversized for my pool so I wasn't expecting to get the 3-4 month frequency between backwash that some people here have reported.

Thanks for the help.

Greetings and salutations.

I've got my first pool pretty dialed in over 4yrs. I upgraded from the basic Hayward suction bottom crawler to the G3 shaker.

I'm looking into a suction that will climb walls and do stairs and benches.

My pool is about 11k gallons, so quite small. I can barely even "swim" 4-5 strokes, being 6'2".

Is there a decent suction robot to do walls, stairs, and benches or is that the plug-in feature set?

Lastly, if it's plug-in only capability, what do I do with the suction hose connector in the pool, just turn it off and leave it unused?

I am wondering what this second pipe (on the right) in the skimmer is. It doesn't seem to do anything and appears to just trap dirt/sand etc.
The pipe on the left goes to the pump, any ideas what purpose the one on the right serves?

thanks!

Hi all,

Not long ago I decided to take care of my own pool and discovered and issue with my main drain.

Specifically, it doesn’t seem to be working. I put a leaf on it and it didn’t stick. I sprinkled some DE and it just sat on the MD cover.

I have a strong suspicion that when I had an addition built 2 years ago and they were moving my pool equipment, they capped my main drain pipe,l. Unfortunately, back then i didn’t know much about pools and pool plumbing…

Before I dig up my pavers and get to it, I was wondering if there is any way to troubleshoot it from the skimmer (to see if it’s even connected to the skimmer?)

See the image for the plumbing after it was moved. You can see two pipes are capped one 1.5” and one 3/4”. (i took a picture in case something wasn’t working, but pretty sure it’s out of warranty now…)

First, thank you all for the super useful info on this site. I wish I had discovered this site prior to having my pool built back in 2012, which leads me to these questions. I attaced a diagram of my pool layout. I "think" but not 100% certain is that the bottom drain was run with a 2" flex pvc pipe. All other plumbing was run with 1.5" flex pvc with the exception of the middle left return (it was a plumbed for a polaris pressure vac, but I repurposed it as an extra return. The pad is aprox 20 ft diagonally from the pool. Even though I think the bottom drain was run as 2", coming out of the ground the plumbing is all 1.5" PVC. To add to the cheapness of the PB they put in a 90sq ft cartridge filter.

I recently put in a VSP (SP3400VSP), and to get relatively decent/equal skimming action, I have it running @ about 2450 RPM with bottom drain 20% open, far left skimmer fully open and near left skimmer about 50% open.

Questions:
1. I feel like I should change the above ground plumbing to at least 2". Is it worth doing that? Should I go to 2.5"?
2. I feel relatively comfortable taking care of my parent's DE filter, so am thinking of moving to a 48sq ft DE filter, thinking 60 is overkill given my plumbing situation. Do you agree?
3. Should I try to dig down to where the 1.5 riser connects to the 2" bottom drain and go up with 2"/2.5" from there, or given that I am restricting the flow anyways to get skimming action I should not bother and just connect with the bigger pipe to the 1.5"
4. I may want to go back tho the presure vac in the futuere, would my 2x 1.5" returns be sufficient, or should I forget about the pressure vac and use the extra return?

Any other advice you would give?

thanks for all your help!

I'm trying to figure out how much calcium my pool will add daily due to evaporation and re-fill. Here are the variables:

Tap water 80ppm
I estimate I'm losing 167 gallons per day
My pool is 20,000 gallons

How many ppms will my calcium increase per day?

Do you take 167/20,000 = .00835 and multiply that times 80ppm? Or am I way off?

I cannot get my water clear and clean- please help!
I have an inground pool that holds about 35,000 gallons of water. It's painted concrete, safety ledge, then about 2 feet of fiberglass at top. OLD but solid. This year, no matter what I do it will not clear up, and only getting worse. At the beginning of the season, I emptied my Hayward sand filter, checked the inner equipment (laterals and center pipe) and replaced the sand, per filter requirements. Cleared leaves from pool and shocked very brown pool. Started out season fine but water was never completely clear. Cloudy white. Chemicals all fine. Phosphates a little high, lots of trees. Treated that quickly. Water improved for a few days, but not completely. Brownish green after a week but not algae. Scrubbed sides added shock again, and backwashed again, other chemical levels still appropriate, but pool store guys stated it could be metal in water from algicides. Treated that, but no improvement. Tested TDS, a little high so after a few more days of no clearing I performed a floc treatment with aluminum sulfate. Worked great, suctioned all debris on bottom to waste with main drain running so to not lose suction. Topped off water, adjusted chemicals and had clear water for the first time this season for about 3 days. Again, all tests still within normal limits but cloudy, green water returned after a few days. Started thinking it must be my sand filter and did a thorough inspection but found nothing.

Then did a sand filter test that I read about online. 2 cups of DE poured into skimmer to test filtration efficacy of sand filter. The test stated that the DE should get trapped in the sand filter rather than return to pool via return jets, if sand filter is working properly. DE DID RETURN TO POOL VIA RETURN JETS IN ABOUT 1 MINUTE. I discussed this with a friend who has experience with pool care, and he did not think this was an accurate test to check sand filter function. He suggested I check my TDS again and he stated that the only fix for high TDS was to dump and refill. TDS was high again. So, I dumped about 1/5 of pool water and refilled. 24 hours later with filter running, and with all levels appropriate but FC sltill reading high, still no change. Very yellow, green pool! I truly feel at this point that it is my Hayward sand filter not removing dead algae, bacteria, debris etc., but nothing appears to be wrong with it. Also, when I backwash my filter, the water is barely dirty/cloudy. In the past seasons pressure would go up and I'd get a good backwash/rinse of dirty/green water that would then turn clear, via sight glass. Now it barely looks dirty when backwashing, despite the filter running for hours and a very green pool! Below are all my numbers. PLEASE HELP.
Inground pool- 35,000 gallons
Hayword sand filter 300 lbs of sand
Pool temp 80
PH- 7.2
Alkalinity- 10
Calcium Hardness- 120 (changed light pink to clear, not pink to blue)
Cyanuric Acid- 80
FC- 11 (high from continuously trying to shock out the green).

-when looking at pool steps I can see green sediment in shallow areas. (skimmers and filter not removing)

-sand filter pressure around 10-12psi when filtering. Rarely goes up.

-also ran sand filter cleaner through skimmer recently with no improvement

I'VE DONE EVERYTHING.

Baking in the heat here 102°F and been using our 4300 gallon pool. Been quite a learning curve, but we've had good balance for many months now. We hate our Pentair IntelliConnect system and links here are showing us some options to get real control over our pool and automate more things.

DAV from Watkins Glen, NY

I have a polaris 280 and I was wondering if adding more swivels to the feed hose would keep it from looping and twisting up. I think there are 3 in the feed hose line now but it seems there is too much hose between the swivels. I have played around with the number of floats and the positioning but it doesn't seem to change it. The swivels I have turn freely and don't leak. Only concern is would more swivels actually impart some additional flow restriction.

Pool is inground 16x32 vinyl liner.

Background:
I recently brought this cleaner back to life. It came with the house but had been sitting for a while and appeared to be junk. Had to replace the pump volute and seals, and replumb it with flexible piping since the hard pipe was broken. Needed things like o-rings in the reverser. a wheel screw, and new catch bags and after all that it works quite well. I had to fine tune the head float to get it to climb the vertical walls. No thruster repositioning necessary. It operates fine on the blue restrictor plate which is what it had originally. I also reduced the flow on the tail whip a bit but I still have to verify wheel RPM.

I had planned on using something like the Polywood Adirondack chairs on the sun shelf in my new pool. Is there any concern for the plaster (WetEdge) with these kind of chairs versus a Ledge Lounger product or something made specifically for the pool?

Pic of pool (still in progress on decking).

Hi,
First post, after a lot of reading.
After 8 years of working normally, the relay that controls aux 5 started clicking on and off rapidly yesterday. Which caused my equipment to shut off. There is nothing connected to the aux 5 relay. After doing some troubleshooting, I found that the problem was actually the remote. Aux 5 was also flashing on the remote. When I took out the batteries of the remote, everything went back to normal, and worked properly. I left the remote over night and put new batteries in it this morning. The aux 5 light started flashing again and the pool equipment stopped again. My question is…Is there anyway I can stop the signal from aux 5 from being sent to the remote, since I don’t use it anyway, or do I need a new remote. Thank you for your help.
Steve

Our stainless steel walls are deteriorating and I'm trying to figure out how to repair them. They've been painted over, had a rust converter applied, and then primed. I was looking to glue sheets of plexiglass over the entire walls, which was successful at spot patching in the past, but the walls are so uneven and bowed that I'm not able to get a good seal with larger sheets.

Is plaster an option? The floor is probably fine, the walls are the concern, but would it adhere okay? Would prior coats of paint and everything need to be stripped off?

The picture shows patched and freshly painted, but then after a year the rust bleeding through and more holes forming. The drawing is the profile, I'm wondering if we can plaster just the walls to help seal/protect them.


If not plaster, are there any other options other than a custom retrofit liner (or would that even work)?

Currently strongly considering a SWG, but having a little trouble figuring out the correct size, and the differences between the various models. Currently 10k gallon pool is very stable/clear and no issues with chemistry. keep CC at 8ppm with CYA 50, add 32oz of 10% bleach daily to replace ~ 3ppm chlorine loss, and 8oz muriatic acid a week to take it from 7.8 to 7.5. TA pretty stable at 80, CH around 400. Currently run our main pump 10 hrs day at 1750 rpm.

Trying to find the right size SWG and lb/day capacity needed. Best I can figure, i need to add 4oz of SWG chlorine a day to maintain the 3ppm loss? so a CORE 35 is 1.4lbs/day so i'd need to run it 4.28 hrs/day to get the 4oz? Is that correct? Any issue supplementing heavy pool days (dogs+extra people) with liquid chlorine on infrequent basis?

And really can't figure out the difference between the various model #s for circupool. Due to my DIY skills and the controller/display built in i'm leaning towards using a CORE model (it looks idiot proof installation wise). I notice a lot of people go for the RJ model. Any particular reason?

I am from central Indiana and I just bought a hot tub and the water clouded up after a few days. High alkalinity, hardness and pH - it took me a bit to find my way to lower the alkalinity to around 50, add some borax and I now have stable pH. Turns out the groundwater here is about ~350 ppm for both hardness and alkalinity. I'm glad that is solved and I know my way around for next time I fill.

However, my combined chlorine is stubborn at 0.6ppm. I raised the FC to 15 yesterday, confirmed with my Taylor test kit. Today the FC is at 5 and CC is still at somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 (I used a 10 ml sample). I suppose I just will raise the FC again and see if the CC budges. I have some Ahhh Some on order, along with borate test strips, and an extra set of filters. How high should I be raising my FC? Do I repeat this procedure until I see some movement?

ph 7.4, FC 5.0, CC ~0.6, CH 200, CYA 30. Ozonator is running.

I'll have to add a photo later, but basically at each of the T joint spots on the pool, most of them on left or right on the underside i have rust. I have had this before, i used rusteoleum to cover it up, but now the rust is back but with degradation in the metal, holes etc.

On one of them i sanded and coated it again as best i could, then wrapped a bicycle tube around it and sprayed over that with plasti dip. Rough job but it seemed to be ok.

Any suggestions on what to do now that i discovered quite a few more under there? I'm thinking some sort of silicone tape and wrap em tight, but i dont know how long that will extend things short of tearing it all down and replacing the whole thing, liner included? I thought maybe there is some sort of wrap/brace i could also wrap around for strength

If this were to rust all the way to the top of the rail, this would put the structural integrity at risk, i would think, especially if theres more than 1 spot along the circle.

Thanks in advance

I started another thread asking about help with organizing my thoughts for pool construction. I am back with a follow up question. We have had our pool bid with an autocover and that was initially a non negotiable. We want the safety primaryily, but we also have lots of trees and a big dog. The autocover has some major drawbacks, however.

We want a rectangular pool, but would like some bump outs and that is not possible/easy with the autocover. Also, we have a sunshelf on one end and a slide at the other. Due to this, the cover lid will have to over the sunshelf. I am concerned the cover might look bad, or not retract fully in this area. Also, unless we want to spend $5,500 extra, we will have a large aluminum lid.

What are peoples thoughts on safety of the cover vs a specific pool fence? I think I would also get a winter safety cover (is that what they are called?). We could place this in the fall/winter when the trees drop or when we were out of town on vacation for peace of mind no neighborhood kids would get in our pool. Not sure how big of a PIA those are to take on/off.

Our kids are 6 and 4 now. Likely 5 and 7 by the time the pool is acually very usable. The 6 year old swims very well and the 4 year old can swim. Our inlaws have a pool about 15 min away so they have all been swimming since they were babies.

The cover seems like it will be better peace of mind, but in a couple more years I am not sure we would actually use it day to day.

Hello,
This is for a remodel with a brand new water feature wall. PB had mason build wall using cement block and same mason put on all the tile. Tile is from NPT large format 12x24” Slate color. As you can see from the pictures, there are dips and “lippage” from most of the tiles creating a very unattractive shadow pattern. PB says he sent a pic to his “normal tile guys” and they said its fine, expect variation. Mason said he did his best, blaming it on the tiles and showed me one tile that was flat and straight EXCEPT where it dipped in at the corner with a bend in the tile. They both want to move on as we are at pebble now but I cant get over how horrible it looks to me. Am I just crazy to expect flat looking tile? Is it operator error or did we get an obscure bad batch of tile from NPT? The pictures from NPT displaying this tile showed perfect flat tile which is what I expected. I also want to move on but Im going to be staring at the unevenness for years.

Greetings! I'm in the midst of a largely DIY inground pool build - 36x18' rectangle with 90 degree corners and using polymer walls. Will be getting a contractor to pour the collar next week so just double checking everything. I'm off just under 1" corner to corner - would need to shift by about 1/2" to square perfectly. It's going to be some work to do that as I've got it all staked in at this point. Sketchup tells me that's 0.3 degrees out from 90 degrees. Is that an acceptable variance or should I suck it up and square it?

I am following the slam procedures as posted on the TFP website. I also used the Pool Math to figure out how much chlorine to put in. However, I could not find the decimal point and so I was struggling with how much so I just used the back of the liquid shock bottle. I have a 6200 gallon pool so tonight I put in 80 ounces for 30 cya and 7.4 ph….. revisited Coolmath and saw the decimal and redid the math and I should’ve only done 39 ounces. Is this going to be OK?

I’m in the midst of troubleshooting a leak and figured I start a thread to get advice from everyone.

1. I first started to notice their might be a problem as I was seeing the salt level in my pool drop. I just converted to a SWG and this dropping level of salt tipped me off on their might be a problem.
2. I turned off the auto fill, isolated the pool and spa and watched the water levels overnight. The spa level barely changed, the pool dropped 1/2“ in 12 hours.
3. I plugged all my return lines, turned off auto fill, marked both the spa and the pool levels and added a bucket filled with water as an additional indicator. In 12 hours, the spa and bucket dropped about 1/16“, the pool again dropped 1/2”.


So where I stand now, I appear to be loosing about an inch a day. I have no visible leaks around any of the pumps, plumbing or around the pool that I can see. There is no air bubbles in my pump or return lines. Since I’ve isolated the return lines, so I think I can rule them out.

What should I focus on next?

Pentair EASYTOUCH PL4/PSL4, ScreenLogic 2
Haven't looked at ScreenLogic since last year.
App on my Android phone connects to SCREENLOGIC and correctly displays Pool temp and lists the features and schedules
But I cannot get anything to go: lights, pump, water fall. Just edited the daily filter cycle will check tomorrow to see if it took.

Just did my spring dump, clean and refill on my 250 gal stand alone hot tub. My fill water alkalinity is a whopping 440! What is the recommended TA for a hot tub? And is the only way to get this TA down to reduce PH and aerate to get it back up and repeat until TA comes down? Here are my current fill water levels with a TF100 kit.
FC 0
PH 7.5
CH 200
TA 440
CYA 0

Hi,

I recently (3 years ago) bought a new house with a 16x25 fiberglass pool (10 000 gallons) and I am having recurring Iron Stains issue which comes back at least once or twice every season. It covers the entire submerged fiberglass which becomes yellowish.

Before I start my acid ascorbic treatment:

FC: 0 (I did let it go to for the ascorbic treatment, previously was 4-6)
CH: 400
TA: 80
PH: 7.2
CYA: 50

I followed the directions as per the following link: Ascorbic Acid Treatment - Further Reading

Filter on recirculate, about 1 pound of ascorbic acid, add enough sequestering agent, etc.

Within minutes, all stains are gone and submerged fiberglass is pristine white... YAY! After 24-48 hours, I balance water again with PH between 6.8 and 7.2 and start pouring liquid chlorine VERY SLOW until all of it is eaten by the ascorbic acid... After my first poured gallon of liquid chlorine, I slowly saw a few stains come back... i continued to pour liquid chlorine very slow (half a gallon and then wait 30 minutes and check for FC... Result is always 0... continue to pour.... but after 3-4 gallons, FC was still 0 but ALL stains are back covering the entire pool..

I am getting very discouraged and I do not know what to do next.. I live in the city, I don't believe water has that much iron in it. I have a 2019 Hayward heat pump and a very old pool pump that I believe is rusted.. I had to get it repaired two years ago and I remember it was pretty rusty.. Could my water pump be the cultpit ?

I just do not know what to do anymore and before I start the process again, I was hoping you fine folks can provide some guidance on how to permanently resolve my issue.

If you are still reading, thank you VERY VERY much!

Peter

We have a new gunite build, pool/attached spa. A bucket test verified that we have a leak, and a dye test revealed the leak is in the spa at one of the inlet jets (about 300 gallons per day). Looks like the leak is at the joint between the plaster and the plastic flange/socket of the inlet. We "red neck" fixed it with underwater duct tape (see photo) that is surprisingly is working.... and we're back to our normal "evaporation" loss, which is about 3/16". The tape fix, I assumed, eliminated the possibility of any cracks in the actual plastic. The spa inlets are different from out pool inlets that they are these translucent recessed two-piece inserts that thread into the plastic housing/socket. they have two little protruding tabs on top, presumably for a "tool" that we don't have. The tabs are about 1/4" x 1/8" high and about 1-5/8" apart center-to-center, clocked 180-degrees from each other. I can easily drain the spa water into the pool in a few minutes to get complete, dry access.

What is the preferred permanent fix for a hairline crack/gap like this? I am envisioning anything from an epoxy to a silicone to a plaster slurry to a plaster removal & repacking. Assuming it's a silicone or epoxy, what is the preferred product I should buy? I'd like something with low viscosity that can inject into the hairline crack/gap-- preferably in a small syringe that's injectable. And what is the "tool" I need to remove these rings from the spa? I could only remove one of them by hand.

I have a ball valve that used to go to a drain/waste line, but that line had a leak in it underground that actually damaged our pool several years ago. (The line was shared with house sump pump which did the damage.) So we never use it anymore, and always keep the valve closed.

For the last 5+ years this valve has leaked VERY slowly (~10 drops / minute), and often only at the beginning of the season. But suddenly in the past week it has started leaking much faster so I need to fix it. Picture:


The connected line used to go underground, but is now just open above-ground as you can see at the far right below. The water trickles out the line, not out the valve handle or anything.


I'm wondering if I can just get a PVC cap like this 1.5 inch FPT cap and attach it somewhere? Or is there a better way to repair this? Sorry I am a complete newbie when it comes to pool plumbing so I have no idea how these fittings work.
(But I am also thinking a cap may be good for another reason -- a complete failure of a valve could end up flooding my basement with all the water that would pour out so near my house.)

EDIT: another question, as a temp fix, do you think I could slow the trickle by playing with how far I close it? Like if I back off a tiny bit from fully closed or something like that?

I have the new intex pool with the new t-joint design and i am having problems getting the last T-joint connected, I have tried everything i can think of but it i cannot get it to connect i can't seperate the 2 top rails far enough to get the t-joint into the last top rail....PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!