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I'm planning my deck now and shopping for plastics. I've noticed that some posts above seem to lump composites and plastics together regarding mold, and that is simply not correct. Vinyl decking has no food for mildew to thrive on, and water cannot be absorbed into the material. If any mold...

I would recommend asking for bids on two options: the sub-panel option ( perhaps 60A would be better, especially of your pump requires a dedicated 20A circuit rather than a 15A circuit), as well as simply running (2) circuits (15A or 20A, but you may NEED 20A for your pump depending on its motor...

I have the Taylor k-2006 kit and I have been quite pleased with it. I have, however, been refilling the consumables from TFKITS and I just received my order for phenol red refills. Well, I recall reading somewhere that the TFKITS reagents are all Taylor compatible, didn't think to check the...

I think frustrated is right - patience is key. And since you have the same size pool as I, we both know how much surface their is to clean. Do you have a bottom drain? If you have successfully won an algae battle, the dead algae remnants will still remain as a white dusty substance in your...

I bet you never knew that when you installed the step weights, you got an algae indicator for free, did you? Glad you now know what's happening. Steps are sometimes problematic because the water flow underneath them is usually poor. If that's the case with your pool, you could try...

Do you have enough voltage at the pump? This could be a problem if your wiring is too small for the electrical load AND the run of wire is long. I actually doubt this is your problem, but thought I'd throw that out there.

Hmmm. CH is not the problem. I would guess the next likely cause of the cloudiness is the formation of algae, or other dissolved "stuff". I had cloudiness upon opening this year (since I opened late), and getting the FC up to shock levels for 2 days continuously took care of it. It wouldn't...

Like Frustrated said, too high a CH can cause cloudiness problems with high pH. It seems like every chemistry parameter has a downside to it getting out of whack, even with a vinyl pool. The only things that I think are relatively unimportant for a vinyl pool are CH (if not too high) and TA...

Do you know your CH level? If that or other dissolved minerals are present in high quantities, the higher pH can allow them to precipitate out and cause cloudiness. If that is indeed what is happening, then you can try vacuuming the white "dust" from the bottom of the pool before lowering your...

Well, the mouse traps aren't working. The first night, however, some sort of critter got under th pail because the pail was knocked over and the trap was about 15 yards away. Probably a raccoon. So now I may move to the tunnel spears.

Ahh yes, the old peanut butter and mouse trap trick - I used that this winter to clean out about 7 mice in the attic, but for some reason I didn't consider that for the moles. I guess I suspected you had to get into the corridors to get them. I think I'll give that a try. Nothing like the...

We have had moles in our backyard for a few years now, thanks to me neighbor's impressively large garden. They didn't bother the pool area last year when the pool was new, but this year there are several pockets where the liner dips into a small depression near the outside wall. One of these...

I can see why you'd be confused. Althoutgh I may come off sounding otherwise, I don't proclaim to be a code expert. Rather, once I investigate something related to codes, I try to remember as much as I can - someone always asks, "hey, when you were doing your...". With that said, my guess is...

I always assumed that using high speed was for vacuuming and other maintenance periods only. Are you saying that you need to run on high a certain amount of time per day, plus on low the remainder of the day? Wow - I didn't know that warmer water caused that much of an issue for the filtration...

I too am struggling with this as I plan my deck around my 27' AG pool. The deck will only go around a third of the pool. I would think with 2x6 decking that you should probably bring the deck inward to the water's edge horizontally, or at least nearly so. And it's likely that if you build the...

Sounds like you have a good plan! I think solar lights will be the norm in the not-so-distant future anyways. They will get better and brighter, and they're cheap to operate!

Another recommendation: http://www.htd.com/outdoor-speaker

mskovrinskie, In general, you cannot run low-voltage lighting closer than 10 feet to the pool water horizontally unless that voltage transformer were GFI protected on its secondary, and that's really not possible with 2 conductor wiring. So, 10 feet is the limit. Not sure what restrictions...

Jimbo, I only see a single drain in your pics. Is that right? I believe that code is for dual drains seperated by a certain distance. Anyways, congrats!

Mike Holt's illustration in figure 680-16 shows a violation of low voltage lighting being too close to the water's edge, and at 4ft from the pool wall, it is clearly a violation. On PDF page 21, he states, via his comment, that low-voltage lighting systems must not be located within 10 ft of a...

Check out this site if you want to educate yourself a bit before meeting with the electrician: http://www.selfhelpandmore.com/home-wiring-usa/ Note that this link applies to the 2002 version of the code. In 2005, the NEC significantly changed its requirements for pool bonding, both above...

I'm not far away from you either, in New Hudson. We don't have much direct experience since the pool is exactly 1 year old, but we do have a main drain. I also looked into this when we bought our pool last year. Trying to be as objective as possible here, I think the benefits of the main...

I just peel back the solar cover, pour the bleach into the return stream (which is beneath the water line in my pool), and then pull the cover back. I use a thin solar cover and don't expect it to last too many years anyways. The sun will beat it to its death way before the bleach will!

Last year was our first with a permanent pool (had an Intex the year prior). We never brushed at all last year. On opening this spring, however, the need to brush was evident! I doubt we'll brush very often now that we're up and clean again though. I think keeping the water balanced helps...

In southern MI, we just got into the pool for the first time yesterday. Pool temp was 78 in the morning, so we fired up the heater from 11am until 2pm. Water temp was 84. Today it was 85. Solar cover should keep us rather warm until the air temp drops a bit.

Water Warehouse Got Me Too My Pool Rover Jr. didn't arrive until the 6th even though I ordered on the third before the deadline (and I did get a confirmation that evening too). Their order confirmation email said they would email when the product shipped out, but that never happened. I called...

Elle, I don't know if you've found a Pool Rover yet or not (if so, please tell us about it), but I just ordered one from Water Warehouse online. They currently have free 1-day shipping to certain parts of the country. I purchased the Pool Rover Jr myself as I don't see much benefit with the...

I just threw the last of mine out. I had used EZ-Spa with my hot tub years ago, and so when we bought our Intex inflatable pool, we used EZ-Pool. It seemed to work well in the hot tub, but after I learned more about pool chemistry, I was smart enough to keep it in the garage for our new AG...

I too live in Michigan and just survived my first winter. After doing (too much??) research on this, I chose to NOT lower my water level and NOT seal up the skimmer. Instead, I placed a plastic beverage bottle, loaded 1/8 full with rocks, along with pieces of cut swimming "noodle" in the...

We have two of the LED light "floaties", and it provides an adequate amount of light for night swimming. Since we have small children, we didn't swim a lot after darkness really set in. Without going into a lot of details, adding an underwater light makes your electrical installation more...