Hi Everyone,
We are just finalizing our build, and going to pull our permit. The 3am wake up questions are coming fast and steady now!
So far, with help from this forum, I'm gaining a lot of confidence about the plan. I've decided to go with a Stenner pump for our new 50k gallon pool build. Its going to take a lot of chlorine, but I can get the high test stuff here in 5 gallon sizes, and I'm building a handy shelf to put it on while siphoning to the tank. It shouldn't be too much of a chore. I'm a geek about systems, and like the idea of starting my pool with incremental dosing of everything. Down the road, I can always go to a SWG, I'm plumbing for that option, and the salt content will be slowly rising anyway. We are going to run our water features a lot, so I might even add another pump for acid, if it becomes worthwhile.
Everything will be automated with the Omnilogic program. Filter, Stenner pump, solar, lights, waterfalls, etc. I will take daily test readings, chart them, and slowly adjust to my automation program. Hopefully I'll end up with some decent baseline "programs" and then adjust things as conditions dictate. A-OK so far.
I'm going to use the fixed output Stenner pump, and control dosage with a time clock schedule. My plan, is to dose the pool with about 75% of the necessary chlorine in the afternoon/evening, so that it has maximum effectiveness overnight, and then put in the other 25%, during the late morning, to help it maintain FC through the heat of the day. Good plan? I have no idea, but experimenting and learning is the fun part.
So far, so good. Then last night, this occurred to me:
What if we are enjoying the spa all afternoon/evening? Friends stop by on a Saturday, liquid refreshment flows abundant, and we end up using the spa from say, 4pm until midnight? This is a likely scenario! Now, if I don't remember to alter the program, won't I be dumping a huge load of chlorine into just the spa?
My knowledge of pool systems is limited to the pool I grew up with, but when we turned on the spa and heated it, we turned off the filtration to the pool, and essentially created a closed loop system to the spa.
Playing with the Pool Math calculator, and some very general assumptions, I could be using 120 oz of 12% chlorine per day in the summer. 75% of that (my planned evening dose) is 90 oz. In a 1500 gallon spa (guessing on size here), that would raise the FC by 59 ppm. That seems pretty aggressive, even with a bunch of bodies in there.
Am I understanding the process right? Is this as concerning as it seems to me?
Do I need to turn off my Stenner pump, if we are going to be using the spa during the dosing period? Or maybe change the program to spread the dosing our over maybe 4 periods, so I never put in more than 30 oz at a time? Would that still be problematic?
Or do the modern pool systems have separate loops, so that the pool and spa both circulate independently regardless of use? I can ask my PB about this, but since I am taking control of the build specs, I prefer to sound at least halfway knowledgeable about these things.
If anyone can enlighten me, I would sure appreciate it!
Jason
We are just finalizing our build, and going to pull our permit. The 3am wake up questions are coming fast and steady now!
So far, with help from this forum, I'm gaining a lot of confidence about the plan. I've decided to go with a Stenner pump for our new 50k gallon pool build. Its going to take a lot of chlorine, but I can get the high test stuff here in 5 gallon sizes, and I'm building a handy shelf to put it on while siphoning to the tank. It shouldn't be too much of a chore. I'm a geek about systems, and like the idea of starting my pool with incremental dosing of everything. Down the road, I can always go to a SWG, I'm plumbing for that option, and the salt content will be slowly rising anyway. We are going to run our water features a lot, so I might even add another pump for acid, if it becomes worthwhile.
Everything will be automated with the Omnilogic program. Filter, Stenner pump, solar, lights, waterfalls, etc. I will take daily test readings, chart them, and slowly adjust to my automation program. Hopefully I'll end up with some decent baseline "programs" and then adjust things as conditions dictate. A-OK so far.
I'm going to use the fixed output Stenner pump, and control dosage with a time clock schedule. My plan, is to dose the pool with about 75% of the necessary chlorine in the afternoon/evening, so that it has maximum effectiveness overnight, and then put in the other 25%, during the late morning, to help it maintain FC through the heat of the day. Good plan? I have no idea, but experimenting and learning is the fun part.
So far, so good. Then last night, this occurred to me:
What if we are enjoying the spa all afternoon/evening? Friends stop by on a Saturday, liquid refreshment flows abundant, and we end up using the spa from say, 4pm until midnight? This is a likely scenario! Now, if I don't remember to alter the program, won't I be dumping a huge load of chlorine into just the spa?
My knowledge of pool systems is limited to the pool I grew up with, but when we turned on the spa and heated it, we turned off the filtration to the pool, and essentially created a closed loop system to the spa.
Playing with the Pool Math calculator, and some very general assumptions, I could be using 120 oz of 12% chlorine per day in the summer. 75% of that (my planned evening dose) is 90 oz. In a 1500 gallon spa (guessing on size here), that would raise the FC by 59 ppm. That seems pretty aggressive, even with a bunch of bodies in there.
Am I understanding the process right? Is this as concerning as it seems to me?
Do I need to turn off my Stenner pump, if we are going to be using the spa during the dosing period? Or maybe change the program to spread the dosing our over maybe 4 periods, so I never put in more than 30 oz at a time? Would that still be problematic?
Or do the modern pool systems have separate loops, so that the pool and spa both circulate independently regardless of use? I can ask my PB about this, but since I am taking control of the build specs, I prefer to sound at least halfway knowledgeable about these things.
If anyone can enlighten me, I would sure appreciate it!
Jason