Hi everybody, thought I would share my story with you and my success to date using the methodology taught here.
We bought a house end of Feb with an ABG pool and a huge deck. The deck, the fence, and the pool were rundown and neglected. We originally planned to rip it out and get rid of it. After we closed, the wife said, let's try it for a year before we get rid of it.
We saw the house in Jan and the pool was clear, I was hoping to get in before the green and get some chlorine in it, Feb was a warm month, so by the time we did our final walkthrough, it looked like this.
Now by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickr
I had been preparing and already had a TF-100 with XL option and speedstir ready to do battle with the green monster. Didn't have time right away to really fix it but I knew I had to get in front of it, so i dumped a bunch of bleach in it and brushed to mix it to slow the algae down and got here.
Progressiin by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickr
and finally started changing color to here
Progressiin by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickr
One of the complications I have, is we are only at this home over the weekend, we live and work 2 hours away Mon-Fri, so I get Fri night to Mon morning to do anything and then it has to ride 4.5 days before I can get back to it.
So I hookup the plumbing and start filling her up. Of course everything has been abused and neglected and has to be worked on every step of the way. Filter is disassembled, so I have to put it back together, luckily I had all the parts. The pressure gauge is shot, so I bought a new one from TFTestkits (great pressure gauge by the way). Had to replace the return fitting as it had a lumiaire lighted return, but they had busted the lens, removed the bulb and just let the contacts corrode away. So, got it filled up, ran a set of tests on it.
FC 0
CC -- didn't test it, it was green
pH 7.5 (on the low side of 7.5)
TA 190 (was not happy about this)
CH 100 (was surprised it was so low)
CYA 0
Was shocked it had basically no CYA in it. Shocked enough I ordered the standard to check my testing before adding any. So I added enough CYA in a sock to raise it to 30, hung it in front of the return and raised the FC to SLAM level.
Started scooping blind, brushing, vacuuming. Had tons of leaves in it. My wife had the next week off so she stayed the week and kept testing and pouring bleach in it, to hold FC at 12+, while my daughter got brushing duties. Of course that made it much easier to sell the idea of buying a bot to vacuum/scrub the bottom with. So ended up here.
Progressiin by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickr
and ended up with one of these
Robot by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickr
His name is OSKR. I rigged up a diy chlorine dosing system that I'll write up later, but is setup so I can turn the pump on-off, and schedule chlorine dosing from my phone.
We had pump leaks and switch failures, and line failures, and a plugged impeller, and rain storms, and wind storms, and ......I don't know what all else, then all of a sudden we could see the bot on the bottom, then the next weekend we could see the bottom, the next weekend it looked really good, my wife said we are done, I said nope, it's hard to see but it's not crystal clear yet, stay the course another week with the new solar cover on it, total chlorine loss for the week was about 5 ppm, CC's check as Zero and it looks like this.
Now by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickr
We bought a house end of Feb with an ABG pool and a huge deck. The deck, the fence, and the pool were rundown and neglected. We originally planned to rip it out and get rid of it. After we closed, the wife said, let's try it for a year before we get rid of it.
We saw the house in Jan and the pool was clear, I was hoping to get in before the green and get some chlorine in it, Feb was a warm month, so by the time we did our final walkthrough, it looked like this.
Now by Tracy Bagwill, on FlickrI had been preparing and already had a TF-100 with XL option and speedstir ready to do battle with the green monster. Didn't have time right away to really fix it but I knew I had to get in front of it, so i dumped a bunch of bleach in it and brushed to mix it to slow the algae down and got here.
Progressiin by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickrand finally started changing color to here
Progressiin by Tracy Bagwill, on FlickrOne of the complications I have, is we are only at this home over the weekend, we live and work 2 hours away Mon-Fri, so I get Fri night to Mon morning to do anything and then it has to ride 4.5 days before I can get back to it.
So I hookup the plumbing and start filling her up. Of course everything has been abused and neglected and has to be worked on every step of the way. Filter is disassembled, so I have to put it back together, luckily I had all the parts. The pressure gauge is shot, so I bought a new one from TFTestkits (great pressure gauge by the way). Had to replace the return fitting as it had a lumiaire lighted return, but they had busted the lens, removed the bulb and just let the contacts corrode away. So, got it filled up, ran a set of tests on it.
FC 0
CC -- didn't test it, it was green
pH 7.5 (on the low side of 7.5)
TA 190 (was not happy about this)
CH 100 (was surprised it was so low)
CYA 0
Was shocked it had basically no CYA in it. Shocked enough I ordered the standard to check my testing before adding any. So I added enough CYA in a sock to raise it to 30, hung it in front of the return and raised the FC to SLAM level.
Started scooping blind, brushing, vacuuming. Had tons of leaves in it. My wife had the next week off so she stayed the week and kept testing and pouring bleach in it, to hold FC at 12+, while my daughter got brushing duties. Of course that made it much easier to sell the idea of buying a bot to vacuum/scrub the bottom with. So ended up here.
Progressiin by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickrand ended up with one of these
Robot by Tracy Bagwill, on FlickrHis name is OSKR. I rigged up a diy chlorine dosing system that I'll write up later, but is setup so I can turn the pump on-off, and schedule chlorine dosing from my phone.
We had pump leaks and switch failures, and line failures, and a plugged impeller, and rain storms, and wind storms, and ......I don't know what all else, then all of a sudden we could see the bot on the bottom, then the next weekend we could see the bottom, the next weekend it looked really good, my wife said we are done, I said nope, it's hard to see but it's not crystal clear yet, stay the course another week with the new solar cover on it, total chlorine loss for the week was about 5 ppm, CC's check as Zero and it looks like this.
Now by Tracy Bagwill, on Flickr
