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Didn't look at the pool for a week, but admired the ducks from afar. Received some replacement o-rings today and when I went to put them in, there were big blotches of brown stains everywhere on the bottom of the pool and the steps, and brown mounds on the coping. Can't believe a few ducks...

I have an irregular kidney shaped pool. When I bought a solar cover and Rocky's Reel 5A with concrete anchors, I messed up on reel placement and lived with having a tough time getting the cover on and off for two years. Now that I need to replace the solar cover, I know that I need to leverage...

Water's slowly warming up, but I don't have a pool cover on it since my 12mil pool cover disintegrated a few months ago at exactly the two year mark. So we're getting daily duck visits now, but I'm running short of reagents to test daily so early in the season (waiting on refills order)...

Oooh, nice. My solar cover is just about ready to fall apart after 2 years of constant use on the pool and I was thinking of getting a UV blocking winter cover. How do you decide what size water tubes to use on a kidney shaped pool? My solar cover was 20'x45' rectangular and I obviously had...

Only occasionally - I think I lose about 3.5-4ppm per day. Last few days were interesting because I bought some boxed liquid chlorine on sale at Leslies and my FC dropped each day. After burning through them, I realized they were only labelled 10% chlorine. Now working through a recent yellow...

My routine lately is to test and add liquid chlorine every evening around sunset. When my CYA was at 20, I noticed that my evening FC was at 3. I added some stabilizer to get to CYA 30 and now my evening FC is at 4. These FC numbers are at the bottom range of the FC/CYA chart. I'm wondering...

My skimmer uses this 513036 basket: Amazon.com It has this weird raised semicircular bottom to accommodate the two pipe holes offset to one side. I don't see any Val-Pak skimmers with that odd base, so I assume I'm out of luck getting a basket that doesn't float?

I got a new basket with a plastic rod, and it took me a year before I figured out this solution 😬

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...

@pjt How do you judge the amount of acid poured? I also find it a bit hard to handle a gallon jug of MA when it's full.

I have some kickboards, and I that to keep my knees off concrete, and just pour into a 16oz cup, and then bend over and slowly pour the cup contends into the pool while kneeling on the kickboards over the returns. Muriatic Acid does bad Darn to myeyes and breathing passages, so I wear glasses...

Unfortunately I rent the house, and the owners are thinking of filling in the pool. SF Bay Area is having a tech recession, and inflation has made every so much more expensive, so nobody's ready to make expensive repairs. All the piping is under concrete decking from 60 years ago...

FC: 3 pH: 7.5 CYA: 30 CH: 275 TA: 90 I have a solar cover on my plaster pool and am wondering how quickly I can put the cover back on after adding Cal Hypo for chlorination. I usually add enough to raise FC by 2.5. Leslies store told me it should be 80% dissolved before it even hits the...

How do you swap the tips? Are they screwed in? or just have to yank on them hard with a pair of pliers?

Wow, my phone's camera sucks.

My previous bottle of R-0871 has a rounded neck. After running out, I switched to another R-0871 I got from TFTestKits that has a sharp cyclindrical shape. With the new bottle, I find it very hard to control the drops - they start dripping out without even squeezing the bottle and the drop...

Been using trichlor pucks like crazy last two months trying to get CYA raised up the easy way before solar cover goes in for swim season and I have to switch back to liquid chlorine. Happy to report that my ancient bag of soda ash raised pH back up exactly as poolmath predicted! Just have to...

Can you take the whole pump sprayer into the pool or does that part have to stay out of the water? (sorry, I have never used those before)

No, I use PoolMath mostly. Phone apps are too small for my presbyopic eyes. Will try to take a picture one of these days. It's always tough to get good light, and when there's the right light, I'm usually too busy scrubbing the pool :-)

FC 5 in evening, topped up to 8 at night, OCLT <0.5 consistently pH 7.5 CC 0 CYA 40 CH 250 TA 90 water temp 84F with solar cover This is a really old IG pool and the plaster is probably at least 15 years old and chunks are coming off, the black algae is in all the numerous cracks and pitted...

My plaster pool is getting more and more hairline cracks and they are all turning black. Stainless steel brushing gets some of it out, but with pretty limited effect. For the larger patches, I tried rubbing trichlor pucks, but they wear down quickly and the holder doesn't is tough to adjust...

I hate the fact that I only need refills on the chlorine related tests, but buying the chlorine reagents separately is the same price as a full TF-100 refill on sale. So I'm going to have piles of R-0007 to R-0013 just lying around...

TFTestKits also sells standard solutions for pH, CH, TA, CYA. So at least I can check those reagents once a year. FC I test so much I'm always running out of reagents and buying fresh refills anyway. Also, if OTO results match FAS/DPD results, that's confirmation enough for me that the...

Poolmath calculator predicted pH drop of 0.55 for 30ppm CYA rise. Plugged new pH back into calculator and it sent my CSI to -0.68, so going to split it into several rounds of treatment and check each round against expectations and keep pH levels up. Just raised my CH to 200 and going to start...

My CYA has dropped to zero over the winter due to a leak + water replacement. Was about to dump in some CYA stabilizer until I noticed how drastically it drops pH. I found an ancient bag of Leslie's Soda Ash in the pool shed where the bag is just about to crack apart into brittle flakes, but...

I'm dealing with an in-ground plaster pool that is at least 30 years old. All the fun attachments for return pipes don't work since my returns are all just 1" metal pipes (size is eyeballed - but definitely smaller than usual PVC) spaced around the kidney shaped pool with no threadings. In the...

My local Leslie's store gave me a heads up that they will soon be increasing the price of liquid chlorine again. Currently paying them $38 for 4 gallons in California.

Didn't drop my price on a 20'x45' 1200 cover at all. But did save me $10.95 handling fee. I guess that's still a savings. I love how the Doheny's solar covers do some serious number inflation with 1600 as the starter series number, 2400 midrange, 3200 top end....