Would like to resurrect an abandoned pool...

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T

terikin

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Jul 20, 2017
15
Harford Co, Maryland
Hi all!

I bought a house and pool this past spring, both had been abandoned for 2+ years. I'm nearly done resurrecting the house, and soon I'd like to work on the pool. It's in ground, irregular shape but roughly 15x30 feet with a little spa or whatever you call it at one end. It has what I've been told is (or was) a good cover, but the water underneath is still pretty green. Haven't taken the cover off yet, but peeked under a corner.

Supposedly the pump and filter were new within the past five years or so.

The following picture is from several months ago; the area around the pool is cleaned up pretty well now, and the leaves and junk are off the cover.

pool.jpg

I ordered the TF-100 Test Kit, and am thinking about copying this thread:
New Old House, New Old Pool....
and draining the pool to give it a good cleaning, bleaching the sides and bottom, and start from scratch.

The property is on top of a hill, and I know the water level in my well (just 20 feet from the pool) is about 50 feet down, so I'm not too worried about the pool floating if I drain it (perhaps that's a bad assumption?). I also have a friend who drives a tanker truck and fills pools, so I can refill it fairly inexpensively.

Any comments or thoughts on whether that's a good idea, or if it would be better for me to do the shocking/filtering process? (Or am I being presumptuous by asking this before testing the existing water?)

From my reading, I know I'll need bleach, and CYA. It sounds like a hardware store or supermarket or something is probably the cheapest place to get bleach (without additives, of course). What's the best place to get CYA? And are there other things that I should get to have on hand, or start with bleach and CYA, and only get other stuff depending on how the pool responds after it's full of new water?

Thanks in advance for any help, and thanks for the site!
 
t,

Welcome to TFP... A Great resource for all pool owners with resurrection on their mind... :drown:

I vote for a fresh start by draining and refilling. Sounds like a fun project!!!

Thanks for posting the pics,

Jim R.
 
Green is relatively easy to get rid of, if you don't have heaps of soggy compost in the bottom. But it would also be a shame to spend the dough clearing it to see awful plaster or scaling. Test the equipment while it's full so you know if anything needs replacement and then drain it. That's my vote.
 
Hi! I understand where you are right now. I bought a foreclosure with a pool that was neglected for about 2 years, too. I recognize the coping and looks like you might have an old Anthony & Sylvan pool just like me. You are several steps ahead of where I was because you found this website before tackling the pool. I spent $$$$$ doing things that I could have saved had I found this website.

My pool was on a hill higher than my house, so I wasn't worried about it floating. It has been drained twice. Once when I purchased it and last month when I started my remodel.

I agree. Test the equipment to make sure it will run and you don't have any equipment problems. If you have issues/problems/questions, post them up someone will help. Pics are worth a thousand words. Pics are limited for new members, but if you donate you have more space to upload photos. Your donation is tax deductible.

I get my CYA from either Wal-Mart or Amazon, but you can find it at some Lowe's, Home Depot or Ace. The labels will say different things like stabilizer, conditioner. Check to make sure the active ingredient is cyanuric acid.

I get my bleach/liquid chlorine from Wal-Mart. Plain, unscented generic brand is 8.25%. Sometimes they carry 10% stuff but check the dates to make sure it is fresh.

Test your tap water's CH. I live a little south of you and my tap water is hard by regular standards, but soft for a plaster pool. I buy my calcium increaser on Amazon, but will shop sales via different pool websites.

Don't purchase acid or other chems yet, but if you do need it I get mine from the hardware store, just make sure to get the 31% stuff.

You can rent a trash pump from home depot to help drain the pool.
 
So I've gotten the pool working now; thanks for the advice!
We tested the pump while it still had water in it, and the pump seemed to be okay. We then pumped the water out over the course of a couple days. Once the pumps got clogged with gunk, we baled about 120 gallons of solids out of the bottom.
Next we washed and scrubbed the sides and bottom with 14 gallons of muriatic acid, diluted 1:1 with water. Rinsed down the sides and pumped the wash water out onto a brick patio to kill the weeds growing in the bricks.
The tile was badly damaged, and there were a few places with mild scaling, but it seemed to be fine otherwise, so we went ahead and filled it. (I just spent a bunch on the house, so I'd rather not drop $10k on the pool for another year or two if I can help it.)
I did replace the main drain covers and the skimmer baskets, as well as the strainer basket in the pump. All of those things had become brittle and cracked or disintegrated.
It took about 25,000 gallons to fill, so I added about 8 lbs. of CYA, if I remember correctly. It's in a couple tied up old shirt sleeves, and it's still dissolving after about 10 days.
The CH was only around 75 ppm, so I added 50 lbs of calcium chloride. That got me to a CH of around 275.
I can only be at the place on weekends, so I'm currently using trichlor tabs to reduce my brother's workload, since he's checking on it for me.
Oh I had to replace the pump timer; the old mechanism had gotten too weak to actually move the switch. I just got an Intermatic T104, which was nearly a drop-in replacement. (The old timer was some other brand, and was somewhat corroded, even though it's just in the basement.)

So now I've gotten to swim several times with the family.

I'll see if I can post some pictures shortly...
 
From swamp (with frogs, toads, and tadpoles) to sparkling oasis...
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Hi terikin,

Nice job turning the duck pond back into a pool. Neglected homes and pools are a lot of work but worth it. It is clear you are up to the challenge and will have that pool restored to its original glory in no time. First things first, get the house dialed in, make the pool swim ready and when the big projects are finished knock off the little ones one at a time. Sitting back with your feet up admiring your handy-work is priceless. :cheers:

Folks here are eager to help out so don't be shy and good for you for becoming a new supporter of this site.
 
1/8"-1/4" of water per day is a typical evaporation rate. You can do a bucket test to see if you're losing water but that's usually only good for gross leaks.
 
I saw you reference your build thread on JoshR's thread. For your project, were you able to identify if you had a leak, and if so, remedy it? That sounded to me like a leak. I don't lose nearly that much water to evaporation in August in our pool - too humid.

Otherwise, were you able to run your pool OK last year? Do you have immediate reno. plans or just be thankful with clean water for a while?
 

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I haven't identified a leak yet; I ended up closing the pool for the winter before I got around to it. It was very inconsistent - sometimes I would lose an inch in one day, and then not really lose anything for a week. It did generally seem to be worse the more I ran the pump, but it was too inconsistent to be sure. The skimmers are both in sad shape, but I think the cracks in them are above the water line. I'm hoping to look into the leak more systematically when I open the pool this spring.

As far as renovations, I don't have any immediate plans, other than whatever is necessary to fix the leak. Over the next few years, I would like to replace the skimmers, upgrade to a variable speed pump and SWG, and eventually re-tile and plaster or maybe even Aqua Brite. After buying and renovating the house last year, I want to let the bank account recover a little longer before another big expense if I can help it. ;-)
 
Thanks for the update. I hope you can get some leak resolution this season and, with a few tweaks, make it work for you for a while.
 
So I keep distracting myself lurking on this forum... Maybe I'll go ahead with some of the equipment upgrades sooner rather than later. I don't think I'm interested in automation.

I'm leaning towards a CircuPool RJ60 SWG for my 25k gallon pool, and I'd probably install everything myself.

Anyway, here are a few specific questions:

- How much of a benefit is a variable speed pump over a dual speed pump? I don't have any water features.

- Should I use a CircuPool pump, or should I just use a $400-ish variable speed pump from Amazon? Or something else?

- I've seen several references to needing to wire the pump with the SWG rather than just relying on the flow switch to only run the SWG when the pump is running. What are recommendations for how to do that? Is it just as simple as powering both from my intermatic pump timer? Or does the SWG controller or the newer pump need continuous power? (Right now, I have the pump timer in my basement, but I'm thinking about putting a sub panel by my pool equipment and building a little equipment shed.)

(I still plan to fix the leak first, but it'll be another month before I can work on that. Meanwhile it's more fun to research equipment upgrades.)

By the way, here is what my pool looks like right now...
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VS pumps come with their own timer/controller. They are hard wired so always powered. To use a SWCG with one that is tied together with automation you need a timer for the SWCG. The flow switch is a secondary safety device, the timer is the primary.

Inyopools has a line of VS pumps that come with good warranties for DIY. Some folks on here have tried the Chinese pumps through Amazon. Some mixed results but you might try searching the forums. I think they were called Blue Torrent.

Take care.
 
So I've had some fun with the pool in the last few weeks. Before opening it, I went ahead and got an SWG and VS pump installed (CircuPool RJ60+ SWG). Both are working quite nicely; I like being able to run the pump at a low speed longer without paying $80 a month for electric...

I also managed to find the leak. When the pool was abandoned, it filled with rain water and froze in the winter, which did some funny things to the skimmers. The plastic of one skimmer has separated from the tile grout a smidge, and it was enough to drain an inch of water from the pool in about 12 hours. Of course the water level stabilized as soon a it got to the bottom of the skimmer.
I used A+B epoxy putty to fill in the crack, and now I've only lost about an inch or 1.5 inches in about 10 days - which can likely be attributed to evaporation, according to Matt's numbers earlier in this thread.

Now I just ordered a new diving board since the one I have started making horrendous cracking noises when I jump off it...
 
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