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I kind of suspected this is a "you get what you pay for situation". Water chemistry is fine and I've been following TFP guidelines for years. I've had the pool for 14 years and watched the previous SWG slowly degrade as it hit its end of life. One of the symptoms of EOL was the much more rapid...

I need to replace my IC40. It's well past it's 10,000 hour lifetime, isn't generating much Cl, and requires cleaning every week. (Ca level is moderately high so I do have to clean it more frequently but usually only every month or 2.) Last time I replaced it, it cost under $600. Now it is $1100...

I've got to believe that others have had this problem. We have 2 Hot Spring spas (same model) in our primary and vacation houses. One is 12 years old and the other is about 8. Both have been incredibly reliable and virtually trouble free. I noticed recently that the fancy oscillating massage...

If I don’t enter a test result (e.g., I don’t do Ca hardness everyday) Poolmath shows me the results of a previous test. In my case, it shows a result from a month ago, not the most recent test which was 5 days ago. Is this a bug? If so, it means that the CSI calculations are off.

My solution was to train myself with a standard. You can get a 50 ppm cya standard on amazon. I ran the test with that until I learned what visibility corresponded to 50 ppm. I periodically rerun with the standard to refresh my learning.

The one and only time I dealt with algae I used the SLAM process but it kept coming back. I realized there was a reservoir of algae somewhere that wasn’t being reached by the chlorine. It took quite a while and lots of investigating to find it. I started with the light niches and ran the slam...

First off, let me admit to an embarrassing fact: I have a PhD in chemistry and screwed up my pool by listening to a pool store and my pool builder. I thought they were experts and knew what they were doing so I just didn’t pay attention to the chemistry. (Too many other things to worry about.)...

The accuracy of the test can only be as accurate as the least accurate component. In the case of pH, the color match is really subjective. The titration tests are more accurate but you’re still depending on the precision of the droplet size from a dirt cheap plastic bottle. CYA tests are...

I’m sure there are pool reverse osmosis services in the Phoenix area. I had similar CA levels and after treatment I had absolutely perfect water. (Had to add back CYA and salt but they are relatively inexpensive.) Pool level is maintained throughout due to makeup water being added but the...

Our pool is 12 years old. Every time I’ve had an issue with the IC40 and salt levels (twice), I’ve ended up replacing the flow/temp/salt sensor. If the IC40 disagrees markedly with a good salt titration test (e.g., Taylor), it is most likely a bad sensor. It is easy to replace and available on...

Mine stabilizes in about 10 seconds. I store upright in KCl solution and rinse with distilled water then shake dry before using. Mine has a little icon that comes on when it has reached a stable reading. I calibrated it recently and it was still right on. I’d be wary of not doing a full...

Pool reverse osmosis is different house plumbed RO. When we did it, we could stop the process at whatever chemistry we wanted. We choose to terminate at Ca in the low 200’s. It does remove salt and CYA. I viewed this as a chance to start de novo. for those of us in the parched west, under new...

I’m also confused about the Ca drop. An old research advisor once told me that, “When you start blaming your instruments, your know you’re really confused“. That said, I question the testing. Ca can’t just disappear unless you are splashing an enormous amount of water out of the pool or lose...

For all the terrific information on TFP about water balancing, I’ve never seen anything that addresses the differences a cover makes on a salt pool. Our pool is almost an indoor pool (I.e., covered) except for a couple of hours in the afternoon if it is in use. (Keeping it covered keeps the heat...

I have both a salt meter and the chemical test. I actually use the salt reading on the SWG now. Neither the meter nor the chemical test are particularly accurate and the important thing is to make the SWG happy and efficient. If the SWG tells me it is happy and it is generating a consistent...

Something must be going on since Ca can't disappear on its own. I successfully kept our pool balanced with almost no scaling up to CH 1200. (I saw no problem with the Taylor Ca test at the upper range.) The TA was pretty consistently around 100 so I had to keep the pH in the low 7's. There were...

How much did you pay for it since you get what you pay for? I bought a cheap one and found it unstable and unreliable. I then paid about $80 and it's great. When I worked in a lab, the pH meters cost several $100's.

Be careful; the intellichlor will report low salt levels when the flow sensor fails (or the cell needs cleaning). Believe the test first. I usually see the intellichlor within 10%

I use a pH meter from Apera. It’s quick, easy, and accurate. You need to calibrate it periodically but that’s easy. I found the color based tests awful.

Yup, $2200. we’re on a well and there is no way I’m going to tax my well by drawing >20,000 gallons in a short period. The cost of damaging our well would make the $2200 look like petty cash. The cost covered a bunch of trips of a medium sized water truck 45 min each way. Our “driveway” is a...

I successfully managed calcium up 1200 ppm. Drain refill was >$2200 and the Ca in the fill water was > 200 ppm. I found a pool RO service that ran the water through their system and I ended up with incredibly pure water. RO services are much more common in S Cal and Arizona so you should be...

I successfully kept my pool balanced with CH at 1200. Granted, I was adding acid a couple times a week to keep the CSI in the desired range. It was during a drought and I was loathe to do a drain/refill with 21,000 gal. Refill water from my well was 350 ppm Ca and there was no way I was going to...

Just an aside from someone in the software industry for 30 years... A lot of these hardware companies outsource or skimp on their software, both the firmware and interface app. (A friend who worked for a hardware company said they viewed the software as a “necessary evil”.) You end up with a...

Is it too much to ask for both? A better design would have been to have a modular top portion that can attach to their cover or be adapted to an existing cover.

Our pool has a nice finished concrete deck and the skimmer cover is also concrete. Evidently, the skimmer came with a plastic form which the builder filled with the same concrete. (It wasn't just a mold; the thin edge of the plastic form remains around the concrete.) Replacing this cover with...

I'm slowly building the capability to monitor the systems our house and I've built a web dashboard that allows me to see if there any problems that need attention. The one system that is really opaque is the pool. I've been looking at the WaterGuru hardware but it seems to be completely closed...

We just fixed a catastrophic leak in our pool that drained it dry. (I wrote about the cause in another thread and it proved to be an easy to fix with no impact on anything really. The only real casualty was a leaky pump seal due to it running with minimal water for many hours. Any easy fix I’ve...

I solved one stability problem on the pi by just having a cron process that rebooted everyday at midnight. There was evidently some piece of software that crapped out over time; a daily reboot was sufficient to solve the problem. The power outage problem was different and I have no idea what...

We were in a similar situation but we lost ALL the water in our pool. (Fix was absolutely trivial with no impact on the systems. Best possible outcome.) Do you fill with a outside hose bib? If so, are you sure it goes through the water softener? Softened water can be bad for plants so when our...

I’m a retired programmer and have 6 raspberry pi’s scattered around our property monitoring or controlling various systems. None are ”mission critical” in that they actually must be functioning for the underlying system to work; they are add on controllers or monitors. I’ve considered building a...