- Apr 29, 2009
- 65
Now that I have ya'lls attention! :lol:
Greetings from Tulsa! Been a lurker for awhile and finally joined up last month. Its amazing what you can learn by going through almost 300 pages of posts, I must have read and re-read Pool School until I was blue in the face. I even fell asleep with the laptop still on my...well, lap!
I am the proud owner of a old inground plaster pool (built in the 80's) which came along for the ride with a foreclosed home.
I was so glad to stumble across this site as the pool needed tons of work. Once we got the home renovations under control I turned my attention to the pool. As soon as I can post pictures I will but please bare with me on my descriptive speech. This thing was just nasty with a capital N. Been sitting unattended for a year. Needless to say I found all sorts of things where swimming, growing and what not once I removed the bank's homemade pool cover of 2x4's and plastic.
I ended up draining it (built-in hydrostatic valves), and spending two days shoveling garbage out, power washing, then acid washing then bleaching the walls. The light niche was complete mucked up with nasty organic material and algae. Its pretty much clean except for a large stain in the deep end that runs from both corners and across where the walls slope into the floor. Also, a few metal stains where the contractor threw drillbits and screws into the pool after building the cover. Will work on those and hopefully the other stain will bleach out, but I am shocked (no pun intended) the acid wash nor bleaching did the trick on the big stain.
I patched the cracks in the steps and plaster near the skimmer using a fastset pool plaster. Had to replace the valve, (sadly I replaced with the same slide-pull valve and not a multi-valve), pvc lines and electrical conduit to the 1hp PacFab Challenger pump. Even found and fixed the air leaks (thanks to TFP!), replaced all the sand in the Triton T-60 filter along with the filter cap and pressure gauge. I travel for work so I had to leave that Sunday evening so my fiancee started the fill. Now, its an offset rectangular pool and what I mean by that its 11 feet at the shallow end wide and one side goes out to about 15 feet in the middle and then back to 14 feet wide on the deep end. The other side is a straight 30 foot run from shallow to deep. The shallow end is 3 feet deep and the deep end is 5.5 feet when filled. I calculate its a 13,100 gallon pool. (13 feet x 30 feet x 4 feet using averages)
I came back that Friday and on Saturday morning, fired up the pump and let it run for 24 hours with a nice even pressure of 12psi.
With my new T100 kit (Thanks TFP!) I tested the water and my numbers were as follows:
FC: 0
CC: 0
TC: 0
pH: 7.8
T/A: 90
CH: 190
CYA: 0
Temp: 68
While I was gone I had the soon-to-be step son add bleach (Thanks TFP!) and brush the walls. That kept things at bay as I came home to a clear pool. I did go and buy 4 pounds of CYA (per the Pool Calculator) and added that to the pool. I knew (thanks TFP!) that it would take a week so I let the pool alone. (POP!)
Had to travel on business the following week and came back to these numbers:
FC: 0
CC: 0
TC: 0
pH: 7.5
T/A: 110
CH: 150
CYA: 20
Temp: 76 (I bought and put on a solar cover, just need a reel now)
I have run into a few issues: 1) The soon-to-be stepson doesn't know how to sweep up grass clippings off the pool deck and 2) I found today that the second "hole" in the skimmer is plugged with CYA crystals that haven't dissolved in a week, plus its been raining so I don't know if I should clean out those crystals and wait for those to dissolve as I don't want any problems with my CYA levels.
I do know I need to get my calcium levels up and was going to add some cal-hypo to kill two birds with one stone. However I come to you all mighty pool wizards for a point in the right direction.
Tomorrow I had planned on finishing cleaning all the crass clippings out and backwashing but with the CYA problem a bit hesitant to.
I have a crystal pool now and if I had chlorine in it I probably would have gone swimming today, well, perhaps not with the grass clippings.
So what say ya'll? (BTW - not from Oklahoma originally, transplanted Philly boy)
oh and THANKS TFP!
Greetings from Tulsa! Been a lurker for awhile and finally joined up last month. Its amazing what you can learn by going through almost 300 pages of posts, I must have read and re-read Pool School until I was blue in the face. I even fell asleep with the laptop still on my...well, lap!
I am the proud owner of a old inground plaster pool (built in the 80's) which came along for the ride with a foreclosed home.
I was so glad to stumble across this site as the pool needed tons of work. Once we got the home renovations under control I turned my attention to the pool. As soon as I can post pictures I will but please bare with me on my descriptive speech. This thing was just nasty with a capital N. Been sitting unattended for a year. Needless to say I found all sorts of things where swimming, growing and what not once I removed the bank's homemade pool cover of 2x4's and plastic.
I ended up draining it (built-in hydrostatic valves), and spending two days shoveling garbage out, power washing, then acid washing then bleaching the walls. The light niche was complete mucked up with nasty organic material and algae. Its pretty much clean except for a large stain in the deep end that runs from both corners and across where the walls slope into the floor. Also, a few metal stains where the contractor threw drillbits and screws into the pool after building the cover. Will work on those and hopefully the other stain will bleach out, but I am shocked (no pun intended) the acid wash nor bleaching did the trick on the big stain.
I patched the cracks in the steps and plaster near the skimmer using a fastset pool plaster. Had to replace the valve, (sadly I replaced with the same slide-pull valve and not a multi-valve), pvc lines and electrical conduit to the 1hp PacFab Challenger pump. Even found and fixed the air leaks (thanks to TFP!), replaced all the sand in the Triton T-60 filter along with the filter cap and pressure gauge. I travel for work so I had to leave that Sunday evening so my fiancee started the fill. Now, its an offset rectangular pool and what I mean by that its 11 feet at the shallow end wide and one side goes out to about 15 feet in the middle and then back to 14 feet wide on the deep end. The other side is a straight 30 foot run from shallow to deep. The shallow end is 3 feet deep and the deep end is 5.5 feet when filled. I calculate its a 13,100 gallon pool. (13 feet x 30 feet x 4 feet using averages)
I came back that Friday and on Saturday morning, fired up the pump and let it run for 24 hours with a nice even pressure of 12psi.
With my new T100 kit (Thanks TFP!) I tested the water and my numbers were as follows:
FC: 0
CC: 0
TC: 0
pH: 7.8
T/A: 90
CH: 190
CYA: 0
Temp: 68
While I was gone I had the soon-to-be step son add bleach (Thanks TFP!) and brush the walls. That kept things at bay as I came home to a clear pool. I did go and buy 4 pounds of CYA (per the Pool Calculator) and added that to the pool. I knew (thanks TFP!) that it would take a week so I let the pool alone. (POP!)
Had to travel on business the following week and came back to these numbers:
FC: 0
CC: 0
TC: 0
pH: 7.5
T/A: 110
CH: 150
CYA: 20
Temp: 76 (I bought and put on a solar cover, just need a reel now)
I have run into a few issues: 1) The soon-to-be stepson doesn't know how to sweep up grass clippings off the pool deck and 2) I found today that the second "hole" in the skimmer is plugged with CYA crystals that haven't dissolved in a week, plus its been raining so I don't know if I should clean out those crystals and wait for those to dissolve as I don't want any problems with my CYA levels.
I do know I need to get my calcium levels up and was going to add some cal-hypo to kill two birds with one stone. However I come to you all mighty pool wizards for a point in the right direction.
Tomorrow I had planned on finishing cleaning all the crass clippings out and backwashing but with the CYA problem a bit hesitant to.
I have a crystal pool now and if I had chlorine in it I probably would have gone swimming today, well, perhaps not with the grass clippings.
So what say ya'll? (BTW - not from Oklahoma originally, transplanted Philly boy)
oh and THANKS TFP!