Starting Over

[peggypie]

After a series of unfortunate events, I'm going to be re-booting my pool. I had a light, a heat pump, and a SWG installed and the light caused a ton of problems... the pool has not been used since.

The 3 feet of water left in my pool are so swampy that I'm going to drain it entirely and just start over with brand new water. I live in a city so the water is municipal drinking water.

I plan on testing the water for salt content (because there has to be SOME salt in the water, I'm sure) and then I'll add my salt from there.

My question is.. when starting with brand new water like this, is there anything else that needs to be done besides the salt chlorination? I don't know how many of the other factors are part of that... ph, alkalinity, etc. I live in NE so we have alot of acid rain which from what I understand, will counteract the rise in alkalinity from the salt.

Also... how long usually before the SWG generates enough chlorine for the pool?

 

[reebok]

what happened with the light?
I don't think there is salt in drinking water, but I could be wrong. but I highly doubt it's enough to affect how much you add when you're shooting for around 3000ppm. basically what you'll need is cya (cyanuric acid, stabilizer, conditioner, etc) and maybe some bleach or chlorine to get a dose in the pool right away without waiting for the swg to bring the levels up. and you'll just have to test your water to see what your other values are. I recommend reading through pool school, esp this article:
pool-school/
pool-school/water_balance_saltwater_generator

 

[peggypie]

Great article! And thanks for the reply!


THIS is what happened with the light


http://www.troublefreepool.com/new-light-niche-trouble-t15013.html

 

[JohnT]

Be very careful if you drain the pool. You can end up with liner wrinkles or even liner damage. It really won't help all that much with the algae anyway, since you can't get it all out and it begins growing again as soon as you start to refill the pool. The blackest, smelliest water can be cleared in just a few days by following the advice here: http://www.troublefreepool.com/pool-school/defeating_algae

 

[peggypie]

Thanks for the tip. I tossed some shock in there (water was pretty green and gross looking) and now it's a cloudy blue. This is still just a half-pool worth of water. I think I'll take your advice and use the water I have....assuiming the niche repair works. I have the hose in there now and a delivery for 8k gals of water scheduled for tomorrow. I'm hoping the water level will cover the light by tonight, and then I"ll take the hose out. If the water has not dropped by the AM, I'll go ahead with the delivery and then test and adjust from there.

I've never used a SWG before... and really have never used chlorine. Last year this was a Baquacil pool.

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

If this was a baq pool, be sure to clean out the filter and replace with fresh DE.

 

[peggypie]

Yup! That's been done.. had the water up and running (with extensive help from the pool store) as chlorine for about 3 days. Then the electricians showed up.


The ONLY ONLY ONLY saving grace to this entire disaster is that I live in New Hampshire.... where we have had NOTHING but rain since late May. Seriously I think there were maybe 2 days so far that I would have used the pool had it been available. I guess if there was a summer for this to happen, I picked the right one. I love my new heat pump...looks cool... super quiet...but I have not had the chance to run it for more than 8 hrs...TOTAL. It got wired up, I ran it, and then the water dropped below skimmer level because of the new light. UGH.