After seeing the site for a while, I finally joined today.
This is my second post. First one was to the thread I was following about upgrading the pentair intellichem (and it worked!) Link
When I was younger, we had a pool growing up. Lots of algae, lots of days of not swimming due to shock/the pool guy visiting, and an old arneson pool sweep, that moved the dirt to the deep end. Many memories of backwashing gone wrong, DE filters with too many bolts, fixing the solar with rubber glue, lots of granules to add etc. It framed my future of owning pools with an eye of reducing maintenance by a lot, if possible.
This is my second pool as an adult. We got the place a few years ago, and it had a lot of staining from a neighbors oak tree nearby, and not a lot of care. We ended up having to refinish it with Pebbletec, add a second drain, and skimmer, add a hydraulic cover, and we updated the pool equipment with pentair parts. We Added the IntelliChlor IC40, the intellichem, the intelliflo VS, the easytouch, and replaced the existing lights with the pentair lights. We have the ethernet adapter, and monitor it from the iphone and by email, (and with the new version it hasnt wedged on me). Non pentair parts are the heater, and the polaris 280 sweep.
The pool has given me some trouble over the past couple of years, and I'm now paying a lot more attention to it.
It turned out that the intellichem and intellichlor were misconfigured, so that while the intellichem was keeping track of the pH perfectly (at 7.5) (with the 4 gallon muratic acid feeder) it was not able to signal the intellichlor to start. After trying for a while to manually keep the chlorine in check, and battling with algae, we had the setup looked at, and now the intellichlor finally turns on and runs correctly.
I now have the taylor test kit, and keep a weekly log of the water results, as well as strips for other levels (phosphates, nitrates, nitrites etc.)
The pool is now true blue, and the last hurdles I have are:
- keeping the chlorine at the right level. I'm still working through that, and starting to understand how ORP is loosely tied to chlorine. With the intellichlor working, the chlorine fluctuates but within the acceptable range of chlorine. With the new rev on intellichem, I think i'll be good, or at least it should fluctuate through an even smaller range.
- I have a couple of yellow stains, that refuse to come up. They are where the leaves usually settle, on the steps, near one of the skimmers, probably from the nearby oak tree. Normal brushing has yet to bring them up.
Current pool readings:
FAC/TAC: 2.0, pH 7.5 Alkalinity: 120, Calcium: 210, CYA: 75, Salt: 3450, Temp: 78, Copper: 0, iron: 0, nitrite: 0, nitrate: 2, Phosphates: 100, ORP: 616
Very glad to be here.
--C
This is my second post. First one was to the thread I was following about upgrading the pentair intellichem (and it worked!) Link
When I was younger, we had a pool growing up. Lots of algae, lots of days of not swimming due to shock/the pool guy visiting, and an old arneson pool sweep, that moved the dirt to the deep end. Many memories of backwashing gone wrong, DE filters with too many bolts, fixing the solar with rubber glue, lots of granules to add etc. It framed my future of owning pools with an eye of reducing maintenance by a lot, if possible.
This is my second pool as an adult. We got the place a few years ago, and it had a lot of staining from a neighbors oak tree nearby, and not a lot of care. We ended up having to refinish it with Pebbletec, add a second drain, and skimmer, add a hydraulic cover, and we updated the pool equipment with pentair parts. We Added the IntelliChlor IC40, the intellichem, the intelliflo VS, the easytouch, and replaced the existing lights with the pentair lights. We have the ethernet adapter, and monitor it from the iphone and by email, (and with the new version it hasnt wedged on me). Non pentair parts are the heater, and the polaris 280 sweep.
The pool has given me some trouble over the past couple of years, and I'm now paying a lot more attention to it.
It turned out that the intellichem and intellichlor were misconfigured, so that while the intellichem was keeping track of the pH perfectly (at 7.5) (with the 4 gallon muratic acid feeder) it was not able to signal the intellichlor to start. After trying for a while to manually keep the chlorine in check, and battling with algae, we had the setup looked at, and now the intellichlor finally turns on and runs correctly.
I now have the taylor test kit, and keep a weekly log of the water results, as well as strips for other levels (phosphates, nitrates, nitrites etc.)
The pool is now true blue, and the last hurdles I have are:
- keeping the chlorine at the right level. I'm still working through that, and starting to understand how ORP is loosely tied to chlorine. With the intellichlor working, the chlorine fluctuates but within the acceptable range of chlorine. With the new rev on intellichem, I think i'll be good, or at least it should fluctuate through an even smaller range.
- I have a couple of yellow stains, that refuse to come up. They are where the leaves usually settle, on the steps, near one of the skimmers, probably from the nearby oak tree. Normal brushing has yet to bring them up.
Current pool readings:
FAC/TAC: 2.0, pH 7.5 Alkalinity: 120, Calcium: 210, CYA: 75, Salt: 3450, Temp: 78, Copper: 0, iron: 0, nitrite: 0, nitrate: 2, Phosphates: 100, ORP: 616
Very glad to be here.
--C
