Pebble tec coloring?

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W

willwill

0
Aug 17, 2016
74
Florida
I am about 35 days from pebble tec black Pearl install. We brush daily And for last week run triton one or two times a day. Here is a video.. I am noticing some darker and whiter areas and I am confused if I am doing something wrong. There is some visible area differences in the floor. I don't know if it will eventually all even out. Or a install issue. Please see video and pic https://vimeo.com/199703674

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Who did the plaster startup and what chemical levels have you been maintaining? How were you told to test and maintain the chemistry? Who has been testing the water? Is this a salt water pool and was salt added right away?

Please update your signature with your pool's details so we can help you better.
 
Will do. Pool builder has been handling everything for first month and still ongoing. I am going to test tonight after garage is done. I emailed the pool builder also since I haven't seen his Chem guy out here in a week.


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willwill said:
Will do. Pool builder has been handling everything for first month and still ongoing. I am going to test tonight after garage is done. I emailed the pool builder also since I haven't seen his Chem guy out here in a week.


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Click to expand...

Best to bring it up with the PB and plaster applicator ASAP as there are things they might be able to do now to help correct the problem. Do it in a written format (e-mail with a response would be best) so that you have proof that this issue was addressed by you right away.

In general, grey and dark colored plasters are very difficult to get perfectly uniform; in fact, perfect color uniformity is almost impossible with any plaster product. Grey plaster colors almost always have some form of color variation and splotchiness to them. As well, over time and with exposure to chlorine, the color is going to fade and it may or may not fade uniformly leading to more color variation. My plaster is only a few years old and it is the basic Caribbean Blue pebble-tek color (lighter blue) so it tends to have the least uniformity issues. The color of the plaster creme is almost completely faded to grey and I recently had a plaster crack in my spa repaired that required some chipping out of the crack. The exposed plaster underneath was the original blue color and it was amazing to see how far the color has faded. I have always kept my chemical levels in balance and I have never had an algae bloom requiring extended periods of high chlorine levels. It's just natural fading.
 
More here on what to put in your sig, Pool School - Read This BEFORE You Post

My black onyx pebblesheen also has discolorations and they will only get worse as the sun fades the pigments in the plaster. I think it is more from the sun than chlorine because the horizontal surfaces are much more faded than the vertical surfaces in my pool after 5 summers. It varies a lot based on sun, clouds, sky color. PH and CSI also impacts it. Keep CSI between -0.3 and 0 for best plaster life and appearance. Also helps the life of your SWG cell if you have one. PoolMath will calculate your CSI for you. More about scale here, Pool School - Calcium Scaling

Here are some discussions on plaster discoloration
Scientific Evidence on Plaster Spotting
Being Blamed for Plaster Discolorations? Don't Get Hoodwinked
Diagnosing Pool Plaster Problems
 
The PB's pool guy as i stated in another thread, just dropped in 8 gallons of [FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Muriatic acid

to raise it up he says and he says that will help it even out.

We'll see. The PB has had full control over things for the first month. His pool guy comes highly recommended. Quoted me 145 a month for service. I may do it for a few months just until i get my "feet wet" so to speak.

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Your pool details are not showing up in your signature online but your Tapatalk profile says the pool is 16,000 gallons, is that right?

8 gallons of acid in a 16,000 gallon pool is a HUGE amount of acid and will likely drop the TA close to zero and reduce the pH to very acidic levels (below 4.5). The "pool guy" is basically trying to do a "No-drain" acid wash where the pool water is made very aggressive towards plaster so as to dissolve some of the plaster surface. The hope, on his part, is to remove any calcium that may have scaled onto the surface (possible if the chemistry was not properly maintained) and to reveal some more of the plaster color. The problem is, if the color variations are due to poor troweling technique or some inherent problem with the chemistry of the plaster mix (too much calcium chloride), then no amount of acid washing is going to really fix the problem. I don't personally like the "No-drain" acid wash technique as it has very limited usefulness and, like most acid washing processes, it likely does more harm than good to the plaster surface BUT it is pervasively used in the plaster industry as the go-to solution to fix plaster color variation issues. Did they by-pass your equipment (heater and SWG) at all? I ask because very acidic water can damage the special metal coating on the SWG plates and the inside of the heater core (if it's just the standard copper heat exchanger) .

Hopefully it works out for you.

As for his charge of $145/month, that's high but probably not out of the norm for your area. Honestly speaking, TFP teaches a method of pool care that is far different than what the "pool guy" will practice with far fewer problems and A LOT LESS cost. Most TFP'ers will tell you that they don't spend two month's worth of that guy's service (~$300) in an entire pool season, let alone two months. I certainly don't spend that much on chemicals (acid mainly) in an entire year...

Let us know how the acid wash works out.
 
JoyfulNoise said:
Your pool details are not showing up in your signature online but your Tapatalk profile says the pool is 16,000 gallons, is that right?

8 gallons of acid in a 16,000 gallon pool is a HUGE amount of acid and will likely drop the TA close to zero and reduce the pH to very acidic levels (below 4.5). The "pool guy" is basically trying to do a "No-drain" acid wash where the pool water is made very aggressive towards plaster so as to dissolve some of the plaster surface. The hope, on his part, is to remove any calcium that may have scaled onto the surface (possible if the chemistry was not properly maintained) and to reveal some more of the plaster color. The problem is, if the color variations are due to poor troweling technique or some inherent problem with the chemistry of the plaster mix (too much calcium chloride), then no amount of acid washing is going to really fix the problem. I don't personally like the "No-drain" acid wash technique as it has very limited usefulness and, like most acid washing processes, it likely does more harm than good to the plaster surface BUT it is pervasively used in the plaster industry as the go-to solution to fix plaster color variation issues. Did they by-pass your equipment (heater and SWG) at all? I ask because very acidic water can damage the special metal coating on the SWG plates and the inside of the heater core (if it's just the standard copper heat exchanger) .

Hopefully it works out for you.

As for his charge of $145/month, that's high but probably not out of the norm for your area. Honestly speaking, TFP teaches a method of pool care that is far different than what the "pool guy" will practice with far fewer problems and A LOT LESS cost. Most TFP'ers will tell you that they don't spend two month's worth of that guy's service (~$300) in an entire pool season, let alone two months. I certainly don't spend that much on chemicals (acid mainly) in an entire year...

Let us know how the acid wash works out.
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Thanks for this post, so this is going IMO much like the thread here :

Pebble Tec - uh oh please tell me I am ok.....

Hopefully we don't need to drain. I won't let it go if those white streaks say and just say " oh well" this is a high end designer in the tampa area, and i doubt he will either. So we'll see.

I want to learn TFP method, of course it'll take time :) I want a beautiful well kept pool, i spent a good part of a years salary on this pool and travertine! I am not sure why it's not showing up in my signature. I thought i updated it correctly. I'll try again!


Ty for this information. Oh and FYI the heater which is only for spa and SWCG is not on yet. So far we have not turned on the SWCG, i was told they wait the 28 days, and i guess now they are still waiting because things aren't normal yet.
 
I got a little flustered with my taylor kit yesterday.I really want to understand it, and how to find my CSI etc.. I was able to do PH which was a very pale yellow, which i assumed meant less than 7.2 as that's the lowest the container went. or 7.0 i forget.How do you find out exactly what it is?

edit... and i missed the builders pool service guy yesterday.But, i noticed he had put in some of the sodium bicarbonate? (baking soda?) he didn't put a lot in, but he has a 50 pound bag out there. i do see some on the travertine edge, so he must of put some in.


Should my infinity spa be down below the jet's when it's off after a period of time? after about 2 days of being off now, the spa is below the jet's in water level.
 

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Your Taylor kit is working fine. The pH test is only designed to read between 7.0 and 8.0. If you want to get a feel for how much base it will take to raise your pH back to normal you can perform a Base Demand test using the R-0006 reagent (red cap). You fill the pH tube with sample water and add the R-0004 pH reagent (5 drops) and gently mix. Then you add the R-0006 drop wise gently mixing in between drops until the color gets to a pH you can read. There are then charts inside the booklet for how much Base to add based on the pool volume and drop count. You can post the number of drops here and we can figure out how far down your pH is. He added baking soda because, as I said, he added enough acid to take your TA down to zero and drop your pH below 4.5. He is now trying to slowly bring the TA and pH back up with baking soda.


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I have been err on the side of caution with everything, i waited the full amount of time pebble tec told me, before could add my triton plus, so i only do what they tell me to do right now, especially since if anything goes wrong, i cannot be blamed. So no, no brushing from me in last 2 days, i missed the guy yesterday or i would of asked, and the pool builder probably now has me on the crazy client list. hah
 
The most important thing you can do for your pool, right now especially, and over the long term is manage your pH. Keep pH between 7.2 and 7.8 at all times. When pH reaches 8.0 lower it to 7.6. Managing your TA will make managing your pH easier. Keeping TA between 50 and 80 will help to slow your pH rise. TA will often reach an equilibrium and remain steady somewhere between 50 and 80.

More here about problems that result from not managing pH, Pool School - Calcium Scaling
 
Just an update, me and the pool builder ran into each other as he was manually running the auto filler this afternoon, and he put the pumps back on. We couldn't tell about any streaks because of the time of the day and the reflection we had going on, in the late afternoon we don't have direct sunlight on the pool. We looked at the plans again to double check the gallons. the pool itself is about 18700 and then about 500ish for the spa.So we're looking around 19k gallons, so the 8 gallons of acid added were actually a little lower than the 1 gallon per 2k gallons of water.Which makes me a little happier because i was worried about losing a lot of pebble. So anyway, tomorrow i'll check it out and start brushing, i didn't put the robot in, although i really wanted to, because i want a good scrubbing of the pool, the water even with the baking soda added is still very acidic, when i say very, i'm saying i tested and the alk and ph are still below "low" both on a strip and what the basic taylor test says, i haven't seen the alk test go green and i swear i added 40 drops .Maybe after pumps running and water moving around it'll change. I debated asking him if he wanted me to add more of the powder over the weekend, but if the areas of concern are still there, maybe it's better to stay acidic.
 
Just so you know, I did some calculations. In a 19,000 gallon pool starting out at a pH of 7.8 and a TA of 120ppm, adding 8 gallons of 31.45% (20 Baume) muriatic acid drops the TA to 0 and lowers the pH all the way down to 2.88. pH is a logarithmic scale so while 8 gallons in 19,000 gallons might not seem like a lot in terms of total percentage of volume, the effects of adding that much acid is dramatic. With zero TA and a pH of 2.8, the water is extremely corrosive to plaster and will dissolve part of the cured calcium carbonate/calcium silicate layer that forms when plaster cures. This is the point of a no drain acid wash - to remove a surface layer of plaster in order to achieve some kind of chemical smoothing of the surface. The dissolution of the plaster also increases you calcium hardness (since the calcium carbonate dissolution releases calcium ions into the water) and increases the salinity of the water (since chloride ion is added with every gallon of muriactic acid).

The alkalinity test in the Taylor kit does not go green. It starts off green with normal TA levels and turns red once you've added enough drops to exhaust all of the TA in the test sample. If you performed the test and the sample water instantly turned red when you added the R-0008 indicator, then you have no TA in your water.
 
8 gallons would lower the TA by 210 ppm. If you started at 110, the TA would end up at -100. To get back to where the TA was would take 59 lbs of bicarb.

The reaction with the plaster would neutralize some of the acid.

To find out how negative the TA is, do the TA test using base demand instead of #9.

When the sample goes red, add base demand until the color goes from red to green and multiply the number of drops of base demand by 6.3.
 
JamesW said:
8 gallons would lower the TA by 210 ppm. If you started at 110, the TA would end up at -100. To get back to where the TA was would take 59 lbs of bicarb.

The reaction with the plaster would neutralize some of the acid.

To find out how negative the TA is, do the TA test using base demand instead of #9.

When the sample goes red, add base demand until the color goes from red to green and multiply the number of drops of base demand by 6.3.
Click to expand...
Was just coming to figure this out, because today in the sun the streaks are gone and it's uniform.I don't want to keep it acidic if it's not needed. I'll have to re-read your post and see if i can figure it out :) ha



Edit... So i did the TA test standard and it says " sample should turn green" on step # 3 and it's red instead or well pink.

The pool service guy that's doing it for the builder was out there when i just went back out a bit ago adding some more baking soda, he said if i am happy with the look i can add another 5lb tomorrow if i want. Come to find out also, i think he said he put 3 or 4 cases of acid in, unsure of the strength and 4 bottles per case.So it's EXTREMELY acidic.He said 1 gallon per 1k gallons, so he thought he was under..I thought it was 1 per 2k gallons. But anyway, i just want to raise this now. He also said not too add too much too fast.
 
So you're at about -63ppm now and you should probably be up at 80ppm minimum so you need 140ppm alkalinity added. In a 19,000 gallon pool, that's about 39lbs of sodium bicarbonate (aka, Baking Soda).

Just to give you some background, in water chemistry, the point of 0ppm TA is defined as when the pH drops below 4.5. That is the point where the indicator changes color from green to red. A pH of 4.5 is chosen because that is where all of the bicarbonate alkalinity has been converted into aqueous CO2. So, right now, you are far below a pH of 4.5 (probably near 3 as I posted earlier) and, if you added 63ppm worth of bicarbonate to the water, that would get you up to 4.5. The remaining amount of bicarbonate (80ppm) is what will bring you back up to a pH in the 7 range. Here's a simple picture -

pH=0 ........ pH=4.5 ........... pH=7.5

<-- TA (-) --- TA=0 ----- TA(+) ----->

Anyway, I would add the baking soda in probably 10lbs increments and then remeasure. Every 10lbs of baking soda added to your pool should raise the TA by 38ppm which should be easy to measure with your TA test. You can add the baking soda by slowly broadcasting around the pool perimeter and then brush the baking soda around until it dissolves. You'll also want to keep an eye on the pH to make sure it doesn't get too high as you do this. Once the TA comes up into positive territory, you'll see the pH start to come up slowly. Baking soda only slowly raises pH, so it's a better choice to use if you want to creep up on the chemistry values.
 

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