new here and well pools as well

[piker28]

Hey everybody I just joined up here and hope to learn alot from you guys, it looks like a great site and comunity. I moved into my new home about 5 months ago and well you guessed it, it came with a pool. I have never had one in my life so its a challenge to start with. I hired a pool company to come every couple weeks to do stuff, well it seems they dont do much i cant do and well they dont help ha. Anyway ive been noticing some stains on the bottom of my pool and i never saw them before, when asking the pool company i hired they said they were there (i dont believe this one minute) and then there started to get small brown stain spots around the pool which again were never there before, and finally now large areas are starting to guess you would say stain brown. Does anyone have any thouhts on what it might be or ways to remove it? i mean i have this big nice pool and really looks like garbage cause of all of this. Ill link some pics below of some things i was talkin about...

this shows some dark stains of course hard to see i kidna circled it, these are not brown though

this shows on the steps how its getting a brown line on the top step

and on the wall you can see some of the brown stain growing higher and bigger ha

any ideas?

 

[duraleigh]

Hey, there, Piker,

Welcome! It's difficult from the pics but it looks like iron stains. Do they feel slippery/slimey to the touch? Do they rub off easily? Bring us up to speed on those questions and you'll get lot's of helpful advice.

 

[piker28]

yea sorry, kinda a pain in the butt to shoot water shots i was toyin with the white balance to do as good as i could. They do not brush off i know that cause i just recently fully shocked the pool and went to town with the pole brush and nothing other than the average dust moved. The first shot of in the water, is a darker color stain and didnt feel slippery when i felt it with my foot, but i am in water haha. But tomorrow ill check the one rising on the side of the pool and see what it feels like.

I just love this thing on a hot day (finally realize what ive been missing without a pool all those years) and hate seeing this thing stain and get dirty

 

[duraleigh]

If they don't come off easily and they are not slippery/slimey, I suspect that's iron stains.

Crush a vitamin C tablet (ascorbic acid) and hold the powder on the stain in a small spot and see if that removes it. That'll confirm it's iron and we'll go from there.

 

[Buggsw]

I was thinking iron stains, too.

 

[piker28]

yea this pool really pisses me off but it really intrigues the heck out of me to be honest. Because it seems the more i read around, that you can bring the water to be tested(which we did) and they told use it had no copper, not sure if they scanned for iron. But if the iron and what not already settled out of the water to create the stain it would not read in the scan. Hopefully sunday i can go pick up some of this vitamin c stuff, having a big pool sucks cause i need alot of it ha. My question is using this method to remove the stains does that mean the pool is unusable, like you cant swim in it till you return it back to its normal chemical state?

 

[duraleigh]

It's not copper. You're right about it not testing positive for iron if the iron had ALL precipitated out.

Confirm the stains identity with the ascorbic acid and post back. Swimming during treatment will be no problem andit won't take long, anyway.

 

[piker28]

sweet well thats good news, what was weird today when i went out to feel if those stains were more slippery than the rest of the pool it kinda feels like they are but what the heck do i know about pools ha. Eitherway i started to see more appear on the steps so i went in with my hand and could brush it off, and well with the brush i removed the new stains...

what i am guessing is this iron is being deposited into the pool and if it settles without being brushed or whatever, thats when it stains right?

about this acid one said tablet other said powder, should i just get a bcket of the aicd since im presumming this is the issue because im not sure if they would sell the tablets in a small amount to just test and see if it is iron in the pool

 

[JasonLion]

Vitamin C, which is ascorbic acid, is available at any grocery store in the vitamins section. Getting everything you will need to treat the whole pool will be a little expensive. It is probably worth doing the test with a few tablets from a small vitamin bottle just to be sure before you spend the money to do the whole pool.

 

[piker28]

cool yea ill see if i have any around my house to test em. But when and if i do the full thing id need..

-absorbic acid
-sequestering agent

any suggestions on the sequestering agent? Im assuming one for metal and a couple i ran across on another board were (Proteam's Metal Magic and Jack's Magic Pink Stuff )

 

[NWMNMom]

Metal Myte is another you can get at Lowes or Menards too.

 

[piker28]

so when i scrubbed a few of those vitamin c tablets on the stains it seemed to partly take them off. Went out and bought all the goods (acid, metal sequesterant, algeaside).

The thing is it says to lower the chlorine in the pool, now the sticky here says to wait it out a few days, but on another site i read you can use sodium thiosulfate...anyone heard of using this or where to get it at?

 

[andysutt]

I think you may be going a bit over board on chemicals... just my opinion. Im not expert.

If the vitamin C got alot of it off, I go that route on all the stains you can. It is possible that some of them may never come out. Try one thing at a time, so you don't waste your time/money and mess with the quality of your water.

 

[piker28]

nah i didnt really get all that many chemicals, the vitamin c did not get that much off, i had to really scrub hard with it and it kinda dimmed the stain. I only bought the things i listed and to me thats the most normal stuff, just the acide to lean, metal stuff, stuff to stop algae growth with no chlorine in the pool etc etc

the thing with the sodium was that i dont feel like waiting for the chrlorine to really drop because it will take some time and well i want it to be done im an impatient person haha.

The other thing i forgot to ask is, i have one of those pool cleaners, polaris, little guy rolling around in the pool to clean and pick up stuff. When doing all these chemicals is it better to remove him or leave him in the pool for all of this?

 

[mbar]

A quick test is to take the vitamin C tablets and crush them - put them in a sock and rub on stain. You can also use some ph down and do the same. If the stains lighten, then they are probably mineral. You can take a chlorine tablet and rub on stain, or some chlorine granuales in a sock and rub - if the stains come off or lighten then it is an organic stain. If you find out what kind of stain it is, I can tell you where to get ascorbic acid, and how to do a stain treatment. You really should post a full set of numbers, this way we can see what is going on with your pool. :-D

 

[piker28]

ha kinda sucks i bought the stuff

the only tests i use are those aquacheck ones which i dont think give as good numbers and are that accurate. When i brought the water to the store all i got was the water hardness was a little high and the chlorine was a 5

 

[andysutt]

I'd invest in a test kit... even if its the $15 dollar 6 way test from Walmart... it's better than nothing.

For all the money you've spent on chemicals so far, you coudl have bought a TF 100 kit

 

[piker28]

Yea but the pool means alot to my dad and he wants it all nice and clear and yada yad ayada for when he has some people over, so i want to just do it and bang it out at whatever DECENT cost ha.

I still need to buy a pool vacuum, but thats not really needed till we close open it again

ill have to go to walmart for this test kit

 

[piker28]

ha a walmart, sports authority, 2 pool stores and not one had this 6 way test kit gotta love it


but always hot chicks at pool stores gotta love it

 

[LadywithIron]

I bought a test kit at a pool store, Taylor 2005. There was enough stuff in it to test CYA maybe three times, and I had used 1/3 of it before I realized that the little test tube with the black dot was MISSING. I wish that I had paid closer attention and had seen this

http://www.troublefreepool.com/viewtopic.php?t=259

and had bought one of the test kits from this site. I had one of the hth kits from walmart with a perfectly good little tube with a black dot, but I had to be a do gooder and give that kit away when I bought the big one, so I guess I am headed back to walmart for another one lol

No good deed............