New to pool ownership - TF100 Results

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Z

zeddy

0
Aug 13, 2015
11
Los Angeles, CA
Hello

We just moved into our new (to us) home and pool, which we believe was built sometime around 1972. Pool details are in our signature. We don't believe the previous owner did much to maintain the pool, so we're almost starting from scratch. We've just installed a new Pentair Intellifo VS, and The Pool Cleaner should arrive within the next few days. Testing was done using TF-100:

FC - 0
PH - >8.2
TA - 170
CH - 1620 (note: we tested fresh tap water and the CH level was 425)
CYA - 100 (testing using the 50% tap/50% sample method gives us 50 or 60 * 2 = 100 or 120)

For comparison, Leslie's Pool Store gave the following test results:
FC - 0
PH - 8.0
TAC - 0
CH - 700

TDS - 5000

We have the following supplies already used/purchased (prior to learning about TFP):

PH Down (Clorox Brand) - 10 lbs already poured in over the past 2 months
Clorox Shock Plus - 1 pound poured in today, 11 lbs unused
Clorox Chlorinating Tablets 3" - 35 pounds unused

Goal is to follow the TFP method using non pool store chemicals. FYI - pool store told us they recommended we drain and fill the pool.

Plan of attack:

0. Drain and fill XX% of the water - see question #1
1. Run pump 24/7
2. Install The Pool Cleaner
3. Backwash the filter - consider replacing element if necessary
4. Get PH level down to 7.2-7.4 via muriatic acid (need to go buy)
5. Begin SLAM - we will probably do testing at 6:30am, 9am, 6pm, and maybe 8pm. Too much or too little testing?

Shopping list:
1. Walmart bleach
2. Muriatic acid (from Lowes - 31.45% Crown brand)


Questions:
1. Should we consider the drain and fill? Per pool calculator, to get our CYA down to 60 from, we should replace 40% of the water. Note that we are in Southern California/Los Angeles aka state is in severe drought. However, I'm more concerned about draining the pool than the fill part. More research will be necessary on my part to see if its something I can DIY or need professional help.
2. Is it okay to use the chlorinating tablets, either now to get the pool in check, or later once the levels are stabilized (HOPEFULLY!) My understanding is that liquid bleach is preferred since you can calculate the amount put into the pool on any given day.
3. What else do I need on my shopping list?
4. How does my plan of attack sound? Am I missing anything or are the steps out of order?

Thanks for any help you can provide.
 
Your CH is high and with your high PH you may already have come scaling going on.. For your CYA go with 120.. here is the CYA chart for SLAM at 120CYA Chlorine/CYA Chart

You have a good plan:
1. drop your PH to 7.2 before you start your SLAM, after your FC is above 10 you will not have an accurate PH.

2. You could do the SLAM with your CYA at 120 but you will go through alot of bleach but can be done.. you will need to stay above 46 FC for the duration of the SLAM. Once done with your SLAM you will need to stay above 13 FC.

3. any use of chlorinating tablets/shock plus/anything with dichlor/trichlor in it will add CYA or CH/calcium and you DO NOT need any of those. stick with liquid chlorine/bleach.. try to find 10% or 12% liquid pool shock as that will be less gallon jugs you will need..

your shopping list is full, that is the cool part of TFP :) you may need other things later but not now.
 
to answer your question on draining the pool, you need at least 50% changed, 60% would be better. you want to get your CYA down to the 40-50 range.

can you return any of the chemicals your purchased? that's a lot of money spent on chemicals that are going to increase your CYA, which is the biggest problem you have right now. you are going to do a lot of work draining your pool to lower your CYA, but then using shock and tabs are going to increase your CYA right back up over 100 and you will have to drain again.

I see that you are in California, are you able to drain and refill the pool? you also have really high CH. your CH in your tap is pretty high, so constant topping off of evaporation is going to raise your CH very high, which is how it got there in the first place. if you are able to drain and refill, I would try and do as much as you can, your pool isn't that big (15k gallons), so the more old water you get out of there the better. managing your CH is possible but its going to take work.

for chlorination, recommend you go with liquid bleach moving forward. it only adds chlorine and not CH or CYA.

for reducing pH, you should use muriatic acid. much cheaper alternative.
 
Thanks for the advice. I just did the math on the cost of chlorine if we didn't drain/refill to get the FC to 40+ with CYA at 100-120. The cost seems much greater than the cost of drain/fill (and hopefully lower CYA).

The new plan is to do multiple drain and fills (I'm thinking 20%?) to avoid any issues with the pool coming out of the ground. Then again, I live in Southern California on a hill, so I doubt that there will be water table issues. I may try and do a drain of 50% all at once. Outside of the water table, should I be concerned about anything?

I'll be purchasing the 1/6hp harbor freight submersible pump and running a hose to the street/storm drain. I called my local water utility and they said there are no restrictions (seems like she didn't know what she was talking about, I may call again to confirm) for pool draining. For the drain and fill, my understanding is that it is best to avoid leaving the plaster exposed to the sun. Is this of concern if the temps here are about 80 degrees max during the day? If I can slowly pump the pool over the course of two days, and refill over the course of the next two days, would that present a problem to the exposed plaster? The main reason I will be taking this long is I'd rather pump at night so the neighbors don't get upset about a constant stream of water running down the street, and I'll be filling the pool with a garden hose (unless there is a fill spigot inside the pool that I'm unaware of).
 
only real issue with draining 50% is if you have a high water table and concern about floating the pool. a single larger drain/refill is going to be cheaper and quicker than multiple fills. I would do 60% if I were you, assuming no issues with the water table.

the biggest concern with people exposing the plaster isn't allowing it to dry, its the changes in temperature. theory is that if its really hot out that the plaster will expand and crack. not sure that's really a concern though, but if you do, you could always put a sprinkler on it every once in a while to keep it wet/cool. doesn't sound like a concern though with your temps
 
Instead of the sewer, can you drain to your lawn, plants and such? I think it might be possible since you are doing a small amount.

I had to do a complete empty of my pool since I had a leak AND it was being refinished. I did dump some on my lawn and plants but I couldn't flood it with 25,000 gallons of water!

As to pool popping, that is a real danger and hard to know unless you drill around your property to determine such things.

If you have a clean-out on your house, dumping to there will keep neighbors unaware of what you are doing.
 
Bought a harbor freight 1/6 hp submersible pump yesterday. Hooked it up to a 100 ft hose and began pumping around 7pm. Based on my calculations of timing how long it took to fill a 3.5 gallon bucket, the pump does between 250-300 gph (vs. the 1,350 gph as stated on the box). With an estimated 15k gallon pool, it would take 11-12 hours to pump 3k gallons or 20%. Pump operates very quietly - with 20% off coupon it came out to be $50 and change. Unfortunately there is no on/off switch, and a 10 ft cord meaning I'm running an extension line within 10 ft of a giant body of water. To turn off the pump, you pull the plug.

Started by watering the property with the water being pumped, which meant constantly moving the hose every 10 minutes or so. By 11pm, the neighborhood was nice and quiet so I just let the hose run down the driveway and down the street into the storm drain. I luckily live on a giant hill so the water just runs down the street instead of pooling somewhere. I cut the pump this morning at 6am. My estimate is that we pumped 3k gallons, give or take a couple of hundred. During the pumping process, I tried my best to push all gunk kicked up by the pool brush towards the pump area. And by gunk I mean what looks like a yellowish dirt that had settled on the bottom - my assumption is this is dirt/algae? Our pool cleaner doesnt arrive until today so the pool was pretty disgusting.

We'll do some more measuring today to hopefully get a better idea of the total pool size. Based on that, I'll make a determination on if we should drain some more, or fill the pool up, test the water, and then do another drain and fill. I'm leaning towards the former to conserve water, but I do fear draining the pool too low.

Question - a house nearby was recently sold where the pool was completely drained. Does this serve as proof that I should have zero worries about draining the pool further than 20-30%?

Next steps after drain and fill (assuming we get CYA to a normal level)
1. Adjust PH
2. Hook up the pool cleaner
3. Begin SLAM (is it okay to have the pool cleaner running while SLAMing? My research shows recommendations both for and against)
 
I think you could easily drain a total of 50% and not worry about popping the pool BUT you never know. If you can find out more info on the house that was sold, you can increase your odds. Maybe call a few pool builders and ask them about pool pops in your area. Maybe talk to neighbors with pools...any of 'em heard of such a thing?
 
easiest and safest way to determine how low you can drain is to dig a test hole next to your pool. if you are planning on draining 3 feet of water, then dig the hole 3-4 feet deep. let it sit for a few hours, if its dry, then you water table is deeper and you don't have to worry about popping the pool. you only get hydrostatic pressure when the pool water level is lower than the groundwater adjacent to it. you are probably fine. if you are doing more, then I would suck it up and just do at least a 2/3 drain. that way you know when you fill it back up, you aren't going to have to do it again :) if you drain too much and your CYA is a little low, well that's VERY easy to get back up.

It would suck to do a 50% drain/refill only to find your CYA is still too high. especially with the diluted test there is a big range for its accuracy, probably near 20-30ppm with it diluted. if you measured 100, I would assume 130ppm as your starting point to be conservative. draining 2/3 of the pool would result in a CYA of 45. so worst case you maybe have CYA of 50 which is fine...or as low as 30ppm, which is also fine. if you did 50%, your CYA would be at 65 which is a bit higher than you really want.
 

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If you are on a hill, chances are you're not near the water table. Not to say there couldn't be some perched water, but you'd probably know if it was that close to the surface.

There are resources out there that might give you a baseline.

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/losangeles/water_issues/programs/ust/groundwater_database.shtml is one.

http://dpw.lacounty.gov/general/wells/ is another. And there are more.

I'm in the billboard industry and we build some signs in SoCal which generally involve drilling deep holes in the ground. Give me a bit better idea of your location and I'll let you know if I have any direct experience in the area.
 
Cinic said:
If you are on a hill, chances are you're not near the water table. Not to say there couldn't be some perched water, but you'd probably know if it was that close to the surface.

There are resources out there that might give you a baseline.

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/losangeles/water_issues/programs/ust/groundwater_database.shtml is one.

http://dpw.lacounty.gov/general/wells/ is another. And there are more.

I'm in the billboard industry and we build some signs in SoCal which generally involve drilling deep holes in the ground. Give me a bit better idea of your location and I'll let you know if I have any direct experience in the area.
Click to expand...

Great links, especially the 2nd one. There are 4-5 sites in my geographic area, and the lowest depth was 10 ft. I went ahead and pumped about 50% of the water, based on my estimates. I just finished filling the pool, ran the pump for about 1 hour, and retested CYA. CYA came in at 50, might actually be 40 but we'll say 50 just to be safe. Pretty darn awesome to know I won't be dumping gallons upon gallons of chlorine to do SLAM.

PH is registering off the charts - some posts have said this is just the nature of socal tap water. We're going to add some MA right now, and will retest again tomorrow morning to try and get it right.

Tomorrow after work we'll start the slam. I've read pool school several times now, and we're ready to keep the FC above slam level for however long it'll take to pass OCLT.

Thanks for the help - I'll update the thread as the days go by.
 
PH measured at 7.5 today after adding more MA this morning. I added some more MA to get it down to 7.2

Proceeded to put in 3 gallons of bleach.

The algae had grouped into clumps as a result of the drain and fill, due to the way the fill line shot the water out. Pretty disgusting - I went ahead and brushed the pool.

Here comes the dilemma - after we dumped in chlorine, we decided to backwash the filter. We thought we had a cartridge filter system, but upon closer inspection, we actually have a really old DE system. My assumption is that everything is from 1972 when the house was built.

20674727579_02f1daa6d0_b.jpg


20674728299_81666b1989_b.jpg


Box on the right is the gas heater.

Couple of questions:

1. I found the backwash valve on the back side of the filter housing. I'm afraid that if we backwash the filter, we'll be flooding this little shed where everything sits. It is absolutely disgusting inside - cobwebs for days, creepy crawlies all over, vines growing in through the roof, everything looking quite old. I don't think there is a drain in there. Some of the metal pipes going into the ground show signs of corrosion at the bottom (see the pipes leading down the timer). should we go ahead and think about replacing everything with a cartridge system? I received a quote from a well known pool guy in the area - $1,300 for a new cartridge filter system.

2. With the filter status unknown (previous owner rarely used the pool, but water wasn't that bad when we first moved in), should we continue to SLAM? I know that once you SLAM, you gotta keep at it 100%. I don't want to not put in 100% into the SLAM, but with the unknown filter situation, should I wait until we have the filter squared away before restarting?

3. Another option - try to clean the DE filter ourselves one time and see how it goes. I watched a youtube video of the process, and it seemed like the hardest part was getting the lid back on with a finicky redline o-ring. I'm thinking we could tackle our first DE filter clean this weekend, when it's light out, and when we can run to the store for any supplies that might be needed.

Thanks!
 
I would at least give a try at cleaning the filter. THEN if it does not work out replace it. Why spend money if you do not have to.

To keep from flooding the room:
-close off valves coming from the pool
-open up the back wash valve to empty the filter and basket (might as well clean it also)

IF you do not have valves to close the return and skimmer lines you can put a tennis ball in the skimmer hold and a carrot or potato in the returns (you can buy a plug thing for them but you might not have time to order and it come in for this weekend).

Have some DE on hand to recharge the system. Do some research to see how much you will need each time.

Kim
 
kimkats said:
I would at least give a try at cleaning the filter. THEN if it does not work out replace it. Why spend money if you do not have to.

To keep from flooding the room:
-close off valves coming from the pool
-open up the back wash valve to empty the filter and basket (might as well clean it also)

IF you do not have valves to close the return and skimmer lines you can put a tennis ball in the skimmer hold and a carrot or potato in the returns (you can buy a plug thing for them but you might not have time to order and it come in for this weekend).

Have some DE on hand to recharge the system. Do some research to see how much you will need each time.

Kim
Click to expand...

I went ahead and attached a hose to the backwash drain. Backwashed the filter, refilled with DE (80% of recommended amount). Water came out pretty gross, but not as bad as I thought it'd be. Maybe the previous pool owner had pool maintenance come out before the sale of the house.

So I think I've passed SLAM. CYA @ 50, recommended FC level for SLAM is 20. FC was 22 @ 8:30pm last night, and 22 @ 10:30pm. This morning at 6:30am, it was at 21. CC is 0.5. Pool is clear, no cloudiness whatsoever.

What is concerning to me is that yesterday during the day, the FC loss was significant. Granted, there is direct sunlight on the pool from probably 10am to 4-5pm, and we're beginning a heat wave here in socal. The FC tested at 29 @ 6:30am yesterday, 28 @ 8:30am (added 30 oz of 10% chlorine at this time), and 27 @ 2:30pm, and 22 @ 6:30pm. I don't know what "normal" fc loss is for this pool, but it seems like 6+ during the day is a bit high.

Should we keep FC above SLAM level for another day and test OCLT again tonight? Or is passing OCLT once good enough?

Obligatory picture from yesterday -

20713501160_7c8f50004c_b.jpg


will get a picture from today in a little bit
 
And pic from this morning at 9am. Unfortunately won't be able to get a picture while the sun is overhead today as nobody will be home. Pictures are bad for comparison purposes, but I think it shows how clean and clear the pool is now.

20715581269_ba0bdedc4b_b.jpg


The next question is what on earth are those dark streaks (bottom right side) in the plaster.
 

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