getting my fence stained

[uwimage]

They said after they stain the fence they usually put a little dawn soap in the pool to make sure none of the stain sticks to the plaster...they DO cover the pool, they said they just do this as a preventive measure...

Anyone heard of this being done, can you see it causing any major problems?

Thanks in advance...

-Thomas

 

[duraleigh]

Hmmmmmm.....I wouldn't be too keen on soap in the pool. How much is a little? I would caution them to be VERY careful and proceed without soap.

 

[uwimage]

just an update, the fence looks great! (I'll update my pictures soon now that the back yard is almost completely finished)

they did add a couple of drops but it didn't bother anything, no extra bubbles, they seemed to think that it would prevent any drops of stain from staining the pool; they did cover the entire pool with plastic first.

If you need your fence stained in Dallas I'd recommend these guys, PM me if you need info.

 

[Rob]

Hrm, can't see how a couple of drops would really help anything, but hey, if that convinces them, then so be it.

Perhaps it is more for the owners benefit. They add the couple drops of soap in, and tell the owner its to prevent the stain from doing anything. That way if stain DOES end up in the pool, they can say its covered.

 

[Poolidiot]

In my own observation I dont think a little soap hurts anything. For the last 3 years I take a spray bottle and fill it with a little bit of dish soap and water and use this to spray wasp when I am in the pool( I have even sprayed it directly on the water when a wasp is on the water) In the 3 years of doing this I have had no problems do to the soap.

 

[ad90993]

I just had a patio cover stained. Due to idiot subcontractors when the pool was built, the patio pretty much drains into the pool, bypassing the deck drains. The staining company used some kind of soap in the water they were using to keep the stain off of the flagstone. These guys were very careful and built up dams with tarps to keep the runoff going down the patio drains. Still, some of it did go in the pool. The result was extremely cloudy water and an immediate drop in chlorine to zero.

I ran my pool pump continuously for several days. I had my SWC on super mode as well. Neither helped much. Chlorine only barely registered. Today I took a sample to a pool store and was lucky enough to come across somebody who was knowledgeable and tested carefully. All my chems (besides chlorine) were OK, but I had phosphates up to 2500 ppb. Pool guy said this would drive chlorine demand way up.

I backwashed, added 4 caps of Phos Free and 4 hours later I had chlorine up to 1.0 and much clearer water. This was all today, so I am still running the pump another day waiting to get my chlorine to 3. Bottom line for me: soap is bad.

 

[JasonLion]

I doubt the phosphates had anything to do with it. Four caps of PhosFree wouldn't have reduced the phosphates significantly.

The soap, and other organics in the water, required some fixed, fairly large, amount of chlorine to break them down. I suspect that you just happened to get to that amount of chlorine from the SWG around the same time you added the PhosFree.

 

[ad90993]

After retesting the phosphates 2 weeks later they were down to 1000 ppb. I re-treated again with another 4 capfuls and brought them down to 400 after another week. (BTW, the "capful" is really a large outer cap, about 6 oz each). Chlorine went up again to ~ 3.0, after which I reduced the output of the generator and brought it back down to ~1.5.

JasonLion:
My understanding is that most soaps (especially industrial types with TSP) contain a lot of phosphates. I doubt it is coincidence that my phosphate level dropped when using the PhosFree - chlorine does not break down phosphates AFAIK, no matter how high.
Also, I am told there is a higher chlorine demand when phosphates are higher, so wouldn't that account for the correlation in rising free chlorine to decreased phosphates? No doubt there were a lot of other organics, but isn't it likely that reducing the phosphates resulted in enough free chlorine to eliminate the organics?

 

[JasonLion]

Phosphates as high as 3000, and possibly even much higher, are not going to have any significant impact on the pool. Keeping phosphates below 300 can reduce chlorine consumption a little, but the effect is small. There is no significant variation in chlorine demand as you vary phosphates between say 500 and 3000 (and probably much higher as well though that is not well established).

Various soaps contain phosphates as part of a more complex substance. The chlorine will attack the soap complex and break it up into smaller pieces, consuming chlorine. One of the smaller pieces is phosphate. Adding soap will result in extra chlorine demand, which will go away when all of the soap is broken down. The phosphates will remain, not causing problems, unless you use a product like PhosFree.

I suppose that the PhosFree may have bound to some of the soap that had not broken down yet and cleared that out, which could be why chlorine demand went down when you added PhosFree.