Hi all,
I've learned a lot on this site about care for our pool since purchasing this home 3 years ago. Due to the many posts about the irrelevance of calcium levels for vinyl pools, I've basically ignored even testing for it. My BIL brought it up recently though, stating his pool company suggested that our calcium levels are the next most important thing to chlorine- his pool is also vinyl. I remembered reading it wasn't important for us, even something along the lines of "anyone who buys that line from a pool company is basically drinking the kool-aid". But it got me to wanting to research again and have one question:
What about the concrete all AROUND our pool? Should I raise my CH level to help protect THAT from further cracking? It's all fairly old and has some cracks now but not what seem to be an exorbitant amount or anything... but we have a 1-year-old newfoundland/poodle mix whom is constantly in and out of the pool so, lots of water being sloshed all over the concrete.
Our CH is only 50. We have no heater and every other level is consistently good. I test chlorine and pH regularly, rarely have to shock, TA has been steady 80, CYA 50. So I shouldn't be worrying about the low CH at all... never have since we bought the house. Our liner was estimated to be about 10 years old then so we expect to replace it in the next few years and I honestly can't guess what condition it's in at that age (it's very faded in spots and has been patched in a few places on the floor but doesn't feel brittle to the touch) but if the low CH were indeed an issue, surely the liner wouldn't have lasted this long to begin with... And of course there's the metal pool ladder and whatever metal parts might be not visible to me, hardware or filter parts, I don't know.
If it can't hurt, I'm thinking maybe I should go ahead and up my levels to 150, just to be safe on the other elements...?
Thanks,
Nicole
I've learned a lot on this site about care for our pool since purchasing this home 3 years ago. Due to the many posts about the irrelevance of calcium levels for vinyl pools, I've basically ignored even testing for it. My BIL brought it up recently though, stating his pool company suggested that our calcium levels are the next most important thing to chlorine- his pool is also vinyl. I remembered reading it wasn't important for us, even something along the lines of "anyone who buys that line from a pool company is basically drinking the kool-aid". But it got me to wanting to research again and have one question:
What about the concrete all AROUND our pool? Should I raise my CH level to help protect THAT from further cracking? It's all fairly old and has some cracks now but not what seem to be an exorbitant amount or anything... but we have a 1-year-old newfoundland/poodle mix whom is constantly in and out of the pool so, lots of water being sloshed all over the concrete.
Our CH is only 50. We have no heater and every other level is consistently good. I test chlorine and pH regularly, rarely have to shock, TA has been steady 80, CYA 50. So I shouldn't be worrying about the low CH at all... never have since we bought the house. Our liner was estimated to be about 10 years old then so we expect to replace it in the next few years and I honestly can't guess what condition it's in at that age (it's very faded in spots and has been patched in a few places on the floor but doesn't feel brittle to the touch) but if the low CH were indeed an issue, surely the liner wouldn't have lasted this long to begin with... And of course there's the metal pool ladder and whatever metal parts might be not visible to me, hardware or filter parts, I don't know.
If it can't hurt, I'm thinking maybe I should go ahead and up my levels to 150, just to be safe on the other elements...?
Thanks,
Nicole
