I had a pool party yesterday and had the pool running all afternoon and evening. At the end of the party, I noticed a large crack along several of the tiles at the bottom of my vanishing edge tiles and extends down the face stone. This appeared relatively suddenly. There was no evidence of leaking or other issues in this area before the crack appeared. I regrouted this tile 2 years ago and it doesn’t seem to be leaking. The area is dry if I let the pool level drop about a half inch so no water flows over the edge. I also don’t see any significant efflorescence below this area indicating a leak. Thoughts on what happened? How do I confirm this is only cosmetic?

My thoughts are there is a small leak at the peak of the tiles that lets in water when the full edge effect is running. This water builds up behind the grouted tile until it gave way. I don’t know how to look for a leak since it only happens when the water is flowing rapidly over the edge so dye testing is not feasible.

When I regrouted 2 years ago, I checked all the tiles and they were solidly attached the wall. They are obviously loose now.

Thoughts?

Waking up this one, as I am hitting some of this as well..

I took pictures of the boxes and I don't see any letters that show a P or H, I do see Rev E.

Thanks

Moved from here.

1200 gallon pool clarifier amount

Hello everyone, First time posting here regaring our new(er) pool. This pool was built in late 2019- 2020 and has been trouble free until this point. We discovered some black algae a few days ago. From what I am reading, this could be a real beast and the best method is shock / brush until it's gone and possibly replace catridges after it's gone. This is our first encounter with the black algae - our other pools have been vinyl. Looking for advice / direction / suggestions on treatment. My current numbers are below. Need to order a new test kit today and deciding between TFP and Taylor.

FC .63
TC .63
PH 8.2
TA 117
CYA 24
Copper .3
Phospahtes 376
Salt 2300

This is a typical situation in my spa. I will do a test. pH is 8.2, TA is 50. I will add some MA to bring the pH down to 7.4 but the TA falls to 20. So I add banking soda to get the TA back to 50 and the pH goes back above 8. Rinse and repeat.

How do I win this battle?

Need help. Pool heater is old but has been working until 2 weeks ago. Started pool heater and cked in the evening and noticed it off. Heater pilot off so thought wind. Has done that before in the past. I couple start the pilot but as soon as I tried to go on, turns off. Got my multimeter out and removed the 2 wires from thermopile. Start the pilot and after min, 600mv. Ok, so must be gas valve. Ordered new one and same thing. When u put thermopile on valve, no mv. Should I get a reading?

Glad to be here!

I have a 30k in ground concrete pool. Just moved in.
It losing about 1/2to 1 inch of water per day. No visible puddles. Can’t see any leaks from equipment. All equipment seems to be working. But one skimmer is blocked. Has an attached spa.
Some cracks around the edges.

Jim from Chester Springs Pa

Hi, I am a first-time pool owner with a cloudy pool (sometimes w algae) and Leslie's is just costing me tons of money. Heard good things about this website.

Hi, my name is Angie. I have a 20 for above ground pool. I live in Connecticu

Hello. We had an F2 Tornado destroy a vinyl fence and send a ton of panels and debris into our pool. We lost power for 10 hours. Our filter, pump, and heater are back up and running but now it looks like the intellichlor salt chlorine generator on our Pentair system is staying off.... all lights are off....and this is a brand new intellichlor that was working fine.

I am a new pool owner, so my knowledge is limited and my pool company is not answering their phone, either their power is out or they are overwhelmed with service calls. I've tried troubleshooting. The main (big) circuit breaker is not tripped. I don't know how to use or re-set the "low voltage" circuit breakers on the panel. I have cleared all leaves and debris and backwashed.

What else should I try?

Hi All

Hope you’re all well.

New member here.

Look forward to learning about, and sharing the with you all the ups and downs of pool ownership!

Surj

Hi all

Hope you’re all well, new member here.

We have a kidney-shaped in-ground liner pool (approx 100,000L) which had been losing around 50mm a day for about 2 weeks. It has since settled with the water level about 80mm below the top of the pool light (well below the returns and skimmer). The rate of loss didn’t seem to be affected by the pump being on or off. There is no evidence of water-logging in the lawn adjacent to the pool light, so I’m hesitant to conclude that the light is responsible. There are also no visible holes or tears in the liner. The water level was holding well for years prior to this, but was full of debris for a while prior to being cleaned recently. The main drain was heavily covered in leaves, but was exposed a short while before the leak occurred, which is the primary reason as to why I suspect that the main drain line may be compromised.

The base of the pump is located approx 200mm below the designed water level of the pool.

Not sure how to proceed from here, so any help would be most welcome. Please let me know if any more info is needed.

Many thanks in advance.

Surj

Hello All!
I’m so thankful to find this amazing resource and network of pool owners!
We are 10 year owners. 15k gallon 24’ above ground Baquacil pool.
I’ve enjoyed learning every season how to better manage our water. I’ve also had multiple occasions where I’ve been ready to permanently close it due to cloudy water, and mold.

This year in our journey - we purchased a pool heater - as our water temp never gets overly warm here in Ohio - and the solar cover in my opinion is more hassle than it’s worth. So far we are very pleased with our investment in the 200k BTU heater. The water temp is wonderful!

being 10 years in, I’ve been forming many theories about chemicals, pool store testing, test strips and overall maintenance of the water. We’ve enjoyed many seasons of crystal clear sparkling water (typically always a cloudy period in those seasons but I honestly attribute that to me still being ignorant in how to meticulously maintain).

We use new sand each year. For the past two seasons our water has been dull. Clear but dull. I couldn’t figure it out. I was lost on how to remedy this and the advice from the pool store wasn’t helping. Then I found your site and began reading every article in the Pool School and searching various topics on your forum. It was there that I found what was most likely the culprit. For the past two season I had switched from sand to xeobrite. Two weeks ago I decided immediately to change media back to sand. The results were significant. Water is back to a clear, sparkling deep blue.

I’m now putting a plan together for purchasing a home test kit and planning a conversion from aquasilk( my local pool store stopped distributing bacquacil a couple seasons ago and went to GLB aquasilk) to Chlorine.

Sorry for the lengthy introduction but I can’t thank all of you enough. You provide a great deal of comfort that we’re not on this journey alone. Thank you all and happy swimming!

Hi All - 1 year old Pentair 400k gas heater. I am noticing every now and then our heater vibrates. Yesterday it was fine, today it vibrates. The vibration is low and you can hear it inside our house.

Changing pump speed doesn’t seem to make any difference. Any idea what might be the issue?

Here’s a video of the sound …

Login to view embedded media

I've finally ordered my inground liner pool kit. I have a 24'x50' pool being delivered in less than a month. It's 9' deep with 6' tanning ledge.

For plumbing it has:
-3 skimmers, 2 main drains, and 4 returns
-slide
-6 deck jets
- hayward c5030 filter
- no heater
I'm looking at the

Pentair IntelliFlo3 VSF 3.0HP with Touchscreen and Relay Board- 011078​

I am planning to run all skimmers and returns on their own valve controlled seperate plumbing lines. My question is:

The pump is set up for 2.5" plumbing on the suction and discharge. Should I run all the skimmers, main drains, and returns on 2.5" plumbing? I have some long runs to the skimmers and returns so didn't know about pipe size.

Thanks

I was nervous about my off center pavers and I guess it turns out that concern was valid. I see this morning that the paver has sunk at the edge the leg was sitting on and lifted on the other side. The edge of the pool is bowing outward somewhat.

Can anyone please advise how bad this is? Is it a leave it alone and reset at end of the season type thing or more dire of a situation requiring immediate correction?

Hello from turner maine, avid pool guy here willing to help when and where I can and also looking for help with automation, have a 24’ round pool and have had it for 5 years

Hi All!

I recently had to repair a crack in my thermoplastic steps and I bought a repair kit from Pool Step Specialists. I realized part way through that I was going to need to repair more than the one tread, and Steve graciously sent me an extra kit which ended up being overkill. Ultimately, I have an extra thermoplastic step repair kit that I do not need and I want to give it to anyone in the community who could use it (just cover shipping if you don't mind!). The only thing I used out of the kit are the foam rollers, which I'm sure can be had cheap at most hardware stores. I'm happy to send some photos of the kit if anyone is interested in it. I really appreciate the help I've received from both this community, and the folks at Pool Step Specialists, and just wanted to pass it along. They said the Step Gel (I believe some sort of epoxy gel coat) only has a 6mo or so shelf life, so I figured it might as well not go to waste with me. Feel free to message me and/or reply in the thread.

I ended up going a bit (ok, a lot) beyond their process and busted out the sinking pad behind the steps, backfilled with compacted crushed limestone, and also poured concrete under the surface of each tread. They recommend just cutting holes in the steps and reinforcing them from above, then patching the holes. You can see, I still had to do that on the second tread from the bottom because I couldn't quite get concrete to flow under there and they still had some flex in them. After I reinforced the steps, I repoured the pad behind the steps. Finally, I did the fiberglass repair and coated the treads of the steps using the kit. The steps now feel rock solid...because, well, they are 50% concrete. Here are a few pics of the process!

Hope this was interesting to someone, and that maybe there's another person with cracked thermoplastic steps out there in need of help!

After looking into many different pool automation programs for the RPi. (myhydropi,Raspipool,nodejs,etc) we need help trying to install ONE to work.

We had myhydropi working for years but now with the updated RPi software and everything we cant get it to work.

We tried Raspipool and can not figure out what we are doing wrong with the install to make it work on
Home Assistant 2023.6.3
Supervisor 2023.06.4
Operating System 10.3
Frontend 20230608.0 - latest

Can anyone help us get this up and running.

We have a RPi 3, with a 4 channel power relay, 3 onewire temp sensors, 2 atlas scientific sensors (ph and orp), single stage pump (in one relay), and lights (in another relay)

we would like to incorporate it all into HA if possible.

Thanks

Matt

Hi everyone. What's the best digital pool water tester? I have color blindness. Strips don't work for me. My pool guy's MIA, pool's gone cloudy/greenish and I need to fix things on my own (and hopefully then fire the joker).

We have a vinyl pool (15-17k gallons or so), kidney shaped, four returns, 3' shallow, 5' deep end, salt water chlorine generator.

We replaced our 11+ yo Heyward pump with a new pump (Hayward W3SP2307X10 MaxFlo XL Pool Pump, 1 HP)

After wiring, then starting it, it ran for a second, then the breaker flipped. Tried it again. Same thing.

Called a pool/pump repairman. He came to my house, examined the pump, including how I wired it. He told me the capacitor was bad (even though the pump was brand new). He advised I either submit warranty claim, ship it back and have my money refunded. OR get a new capacitor and replace it myself.

Well I ordered a capacitor whose specs matched the OEM: 108-130uF, 165Vac.

I was told to attach the same wires to the same place. I did so, (or so I thought), and tried the pump. The capacitor started smoking.

After some research, I realized I failed to attach one of the wires. I had put the two yellow wires on opposite terminals, but forgot to attach a third, grey wire.

Thus my questions:

1. So now, I'm assuming I need to buy another capacitor, since I made this one smoke. Is this true?
2. I'm also wondering if I have the voltage jumper on the Hayward set right. It comes factory installed with the jumper set to 240. I assume the power that goes to my pool pump is 220 because the circuit breaker is the type that is two circuit breakers connected with one handle. Also, the external timing box and current breaker (where you remove a thing to cut the current) look pretty beefy and big.
3. THEN, I noticed that the OEM capacitor says 165Vac. Is that related to the voltage being delivered to is? Is it a problem that volts being sent is 220, but the VAC is 165? If so, should I get a capacitor with a higher VAC, such as 220-250. As in this capacitor: Amazon.com

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me during this holiday weekend.

Hi everyone,

For those who have a water feature, do you have a separate filter for it? If so what filter are you using?

Thanks for you help.

Hi all!

I am replacing my booster pump motor. When connecting the red and black wires, do they wrap around the screw? or do I buy a connector like in the second pic? If so, which prong does it go onto since there are two for L1 and two for L2?

I had assumed I could follow the wiring from the old one but it's a mess and has more wires than this new one....I've got the red, black, green wires stripped, just not sure where to attach them?

I'm pressed for time today and had hoped this would be easier!
Thank you!
Marci

I totally forgot to introduce myself - just bumped in and started loading questions on you
I am F, 46 and living in Denmark with my SO and 3 sons (11, 17 and 19)

Being from Scandinavia, we don't have a large pool tradition here. When I grew up, only "the rich ones" had pools. Always IG, typically 8-shaped.
The rest of us got a new paddling pool for the garden every summer.

As the years have passed, pools have become more common, but mostly Intex-type. 95% of all owners empty them each fall and store them in the shed.

And 98% maintain them by "dump and pray", following test strips and guides saying 1-3 ppm FC.
I was one of them until last summer, when I discovered TFP.
I don't have access to the correct testing kits, so I go by my photometer and common sense........

The weekend, the youngest had a load of his friends over for a "pool party" (they're 11 years old), so I had bumped the FC up to 10-ish.
Later that day, a relative came with her 3-year-old to swim.
Her comment: "Oh, it's just so nice to swim in a pool without chlorine - everyone I know loads it up so it stinks like a public swimmingpool. Yours is much healthier for the little one".........

I didn't tell her that I probably had 8-10 times as much chlorine in our pool than those she refers to (the ones who go by "1-3 ppm max" and only uses pucks)

I have always used hydrochloric acid to lower the PH, but it seems like everyone is using sulphuric acid for this.
Is there any specific reason for this. Is SA better than HA?

The reason I use HA is, that we always have it at home and I can get it at the local supermarket - SA can only be found in home-improvement stores and similar.

What’s up y’all. Been having a pool since 2021 and pool pump broke. Trying to overhaul motor and lookin’ for help. Giddy up!

We have a 3 year old saltwater pool. In May our IC40 intellichlor went out. Had our pool guy come out to diagnose and told us to buy a new one. Hubby installed it and it's been turning on ok, however, the green cell light has never turned on. The flow and salt levels are green. Is there something we missed when setting it up or did we get a faulty chloinator? It's producing zero chlorine. Thanks in advance.

I've been using a 12mil clear solar cover for the last two years, and based on my records, I think it adds about 5deg F to the pool temperature in the steady state during swim season. Due to pandemic, I also haven't been away from home for more than two days during swim season.

I was wondering if I take the cover off while I'm out of town and let trichlor pucks do their thing, when I get back in town and put the cover back on, how long does it take to reach steady state heating? Is it next day effect? or does it take a couple of days?

I've always been too afraid of losing heat to conduct the obvious experiment myself