Looking forward to dropping my pool service... and my first test results are in...

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changeyez

0
Bronze Supporter
Jan 5, 2016
79
Northern California
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Pureline Crystal Pure 40,000
I moved into a home with a pool in early March. I have had a pool service coming weekly for maintenance. I decided to try to my hand at the TFP method and got my TF-100 Test Kit and ran my first full battery of tests today. Here are the results:

FC - 11
CC - 0
pH - 7.2
TA - 160
CH - 450
CYA - 100+

My pool is somewhere around 22-29k gallons. It's an odd shape and hard to measure. I put my numbers into pool math and I see I should be replacing somewhere near 80% of my water volume. That isn't doable given the drought and high price of water in California right now. I see I need to add some Borax or soda ash to raise my pH and then aerate to lower my TA.

What is best way to aerate?

I guess my biggest question should be, what should I tackle first?

Thank you! I look forward to the help and eventually paying it forward and helping others once I'm an "expert".
 
changeyez said:
I moved into a home with a pool in early March. I have had a pool service coming weekly for maintenance. I decided to try to my hand at the TFP method and got my TF-100 Test Kit and ran my first full battery of tests today. Here are the results:

FC - 11
CC - 0
pH - 7.2
TA - 160
CH - 450
CYA - 100+

My pool is somewhere around 22-29k gallons. It's an odd shape and hard to measure. I put my numbers into pool math and I see I should be replacing somewhere near 80% of my water volume. That isn't doable given the drought and high price of water in California right now. I see I need to add some Borax or soda ash to raise my pH and then aerate to lower my TA.

What is best way to aerate?

I guess my biggest question should be, what should I tackle first?

Thank you! I look forward to the help and eventually paying it forward and helping others once I'm an "expert".
Click to expand...

Lowering your CYA should be your first order of business. But you do not need to raise your PH by adding borates then aerating. Aerating raises PH alone with no affect on TA. Your TA is high, so no need to add anything to raise PH if you can just aerate. How to aerate? .....it could be as simple as kids splashing around a lot or turning a jet return toward the surface. Or, you could get really creative and create a sprinkler with PVC that could screw into a threaded return if you don't already have any other water features. Those two are the easy/fun DIY things but I think you can purchase little floating mini sprinkler pumps too......not so much fun to build :)
 
Do you know how the pool service was chlorinating your pool? Were they using DiChlor or pucks? Many hard forms of chlorine will also lower your pH, which is why you will be fighting that. That would also be what has your CYA so high. If you are moving away from how they chlorinate, and using bleach, you will not have low pH issues going forward.
 
Smartjack said:
Do you know how the pool service was chlorinating your pool? Were they using DiChlor or pucks? Many hard forms of chlorine will also lower your pH, which is why you will be fighting that. That would also be what has your CYA so high. If you are moving away from how they chlorinate, and using bleach, you will not have low pH issues going forward.
Click to expand...
They are using pucks. The previous owner of the home (we bought it three months ago) did his own chlorinating via pucks as well.

How should I know whether or not to be worried about my IG plaster pool floating when drained? We have moist, heavy Adobe clay soil here.

Also, I don't see any hydrostatic pressure plugs in the bottom of the pool and I don't know if I can drain to waste with my setup.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
 

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How should I know whether or not to be worried about my IG plaster pool floating when drained? We have moist, heavy Adobe clay soil here.
Click to expand...

If you are worried about a high water table, you can always replace water with the tarp method:

1) Obtain a HUGE tarp (something like this 40'x60' tarp or another that's appropriate for your pool size).
2) Stretch the tarp over the pool so that the all 4 edges are above the waterline. You could attach floats/pool noodles to make sure the edges do not drop into the water.
3) Fill the tarp with fresh water while running the pump to dump to waste and/or allowing the pool to overflow. Be careful that the tarp edges remain above the waterline.
4) When you have enough water removed from the pool, you will have an equal amount of fresh water in the tarp. Now drop the tarp edges into the water to allow the old and new water to mix.
5) Slide the tarp out of the water.

If you have too much water in the tarp, it will have too much pressure to remove it. In this case, pump the water out of the tarp and into the pool until you can remove it.

This method will isolate the new water from the old water without removing any weight from your pool. You could technically replace all the water from your pool without ever dropping the water level.
 
The water's density is affected by both temperature and TDS. Since I have a salt pool with high CH, both increase density. 3500 ppm of TDS has about the same change in density as 20 degrees F of temperature. So in many cases, you may find that TDS is a bigger factor. But I usually refill in the winter so I get the benefit of both since the pool water is usually colder than the fill water.
 
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