Hi everyone,
I’m new here and I’m a first-time pool owner as of 5 months ago when we bought our current house. My Dad told me this was the best site to learn about how to maintain a pool and to get your pool questions answered. I’ve found that to be true as well after going through Pool School and reading the forums.
When we first moved in, since we had never had a pool before, I hired a local pool company (top pool builder and weekly maintenance company in the area) to manage my pool. I figured I didn’t know much about pools and needed all the help I could get. I paid $75/week for the service of adding chemicals and cleaning the pool.
Recently I bought a new Taylor test kit recommended by this site because I felt I needed to have some idea of what was going on with the pool myself and I also have a Sundance Spa that I maintain.
When I first tested my pool water about 2 weeks ago using the kit, the FC was 17 and the CYA was well over 100. I knew those numbers were way too high from reading on this site.
The pool company came out and said my test kit wasn’t accurate. They were calculating an FC of around 8 and a CYA of around 50.
I thought they were probably right because I was new at this.
I tested again a week later and got similar readings. Meanwhile, they kept adding trichlor tabs to my floater each week.
I told them again that I thought I had problems and they sent a supervisor out. His test kit also read FC = ~8-10 and CYA = 50-60. He told me the pool was fine and that I probably had chlorine lock and they would come out next week to dump “a boatload” of chlorine in the pool to try to break the lock.
As I kept reading on this site, I felt something was off with what they were saying. I thought either my test kit was way off or something else was going on. I decided to take a water sample to a pool store to see if I was totally crazy or if my test kit was accurate. I know it’s advised here not to trust the pool store’s testing machine but I thought it could give me some decent data just to tell me if my kit was off.
Pool store’s readings:
FC = 19
CYA = 119
TA = 56
pH = 7.4
CH = 166
These readings confirmed to me that my kit was indeed accurate & the pool guy’s kit was the one that was off. I immediately called the pool company and told them I’d be discontinuing service for now and was going to attempt to manage it on my own. It was this site that gave me the confidence to do this. So, thanks to all of you who regularly contribute.
Here are my 2 questions now that I’m trying to resolve:
1. High CYA - I’ve read here that because I have a fiberglass pool, I should not attempt to drain it on my own due to potential damage to the shell. I did drain it down about a foot and replenished with new water but CYA didn’t move much. What should I do now? Is my only option to drain/fill at the same time for 30+ hours (based on my hose capacity of 6 gallons per minute)? Or is there another option you’d recommend?
2. When I bought the house 5 months ago, the pool floor looked great. But after several months of using this pool company, there are now circular tears in the gel coat at the bottom and black stains (cobalt I think?) around each of the tears that I can’t remove with the brush. Am I probably going to need a new gel coat? The current gel coat is 9 years old. Could these tears have possibly come from the pool company dumping the Muriatic Acid out in the middle of the water rather than following the process here? I didn’t see any of these 5 months ago when we moved here.
Sorry for the long post but I thought some context might help.
Thank you so much for all the help you’ve already given me through this site and any additional help you can give me with my current issues.
I’m new here and I’m a first-time pool owner as of 5 months ago when we bought our current house. My Dad told me this was the best site to learn about how to maintain a pool and to get your pool questions answered. I’ve found that to be true as well after going through Pool School and reading the forums.
When we first moved in, since we had never had a pool before, I hired a local pool company (top pool builder and weekly maintenance company in the area) to manage my pool. I figured I didn’t know much about pools and needed all the help I could get. I paid $75/week for the service of adding chemicals and cleaning the pool.
Recently I bought a new Taylor test kit recommended by this site because I felt I needed to have some idea of what was going on with the pool myself and I also have a Sundance Spa that I maintain.
When I first tested my pool water about 2 weeks ago using the kit, the FC was 17 and the CYA was well over 100. I knew those numbers were way too high from reading on this site.
The pool company came out and said my test kit wasn’t accurate. They were calculating an FC of around 8 and a CYA of around 50.
I thought they were probably right because I was new at this.
I tested again a week later and got similar readings. Meanwhile, they kept adding trichlor tabs to my floater each week.
I told them again that I thought I had problems and they sent a supervisor out. His test kit also read FC = ~8-10 and CYA = 50-60. He told me the pool was fine and that I probably had chlorine lock and they would come out next week to dump “a boatload” of chlorine in the pool to try to break the lock.
As I kept reading on this site, I felt something was off with what they were saying. I thought either my test kit was way off or something else was going on. I decided to take a water sample to a pool store to see if I was totally crazy or if my test kit was accurate. I know it’s advised here not to trust the pool store’s testing machine but I thought it could give me some decent data just to tell me if my kit was off.
Pool store’s readings:
FC = 19
CYA = 119
TA = 56
pH = 7.4
CH = 166
These readings confirmed to me that my kit was indeed accurate & the pool guy’s kit was the one that was off. I immediately called the pool company and told them I’d be discontinuing service for now and was going to attempt to manage it on my own. It was this site that gave me the confidence to do this. So, thanks to all of you who regularly contribute.
Here are my 2 questions now that I’m trying to resolve:
1. High CYA - I’ve read here that because I have a fiberglass pool, I should not attempt to drain it on my own due to potential damage to the shell. I did drain it down about a foot and replenished with new water but CYA didn’t move much. What should I do now? Is my only option to drain/fill at the same time for 30+ hours (based on my hose capacity of 6 gallons per minute)? Or is there another option you’d recommend?
2. When I bought the house 5 months ago, the pool floor looked great. But after several months of using this pool company, there are now circular tears in the gel coat at the bottom and black stains (cobalt I think?) around each of the tears that I can’t remove with the brush. Am I probably going to need a new gel coat? The current gel coat is 9 years old. Could these tears have possibly come from the pool company dumping the Muriatic Acid out in the middle of the water rather than following the process here? I didn’t see any of these 5 months ago when we moved here.
Sorry for the long post but I thought some context might help.
Thank you so much for all the help you’ve already given me through this site and any additional help you can give me with my current issues.
When I joined TFP my CYA was high. I just did several water exchanges to get it down to the 70-80 range and managed it from there. One day TX will see rain again and that's a great opportunity to lower the water level in advance to take advantage of some fresh water. You got this!