We purchased a bank owned foreclosure (nightmare by the way) and it had a pool in the back. Because it was bank owned home we got no info on the pool, and from the looks of things I think the pool slowly evaporated all the way down until the last 2 feet because there is so much calcium on the entire pool, but the least is in the lower part of the "deep end".
To pass inspection the pool had to be refilled before we could close on the house, nothing was done to clean up the calcium beforehand and as this is a desert I don't really want to drain it to get rid of the calcium unless that's the only way.
Best I can tell the in ground pool is a prefab viking pool, which the website claims is "ceramic infused fiberglass". Based on the way it looks and the dimensions listed on various websites (not listed on viking website for some reason) the pool is about 10,500 gal. The bank was not required to do anything with the sanitation of the water so currently the chlorine levels are 0 for free and combined (I thought I'd test just to check). My dad owns a gunnite pool and at first told me to just dump loads of muriatic acid into the pool so that we could remove the calcium, but I mentioned it is ceramic and may be different than his gunnite pool so he told me instead to just test the water PH every day and add the recommended amount of acid every day and in about a week it would be dissolved.
I've been doing that for about 2 weeks now, and though there is a buildup of debris every morning on the floor of the pool, the whole pool is still coated in calcium. Every day the test says to put in the same amount. The PH is always very high (8.2 is the highest shown on the testing kit I have) and the total alkalinity is around 140 based on this testing kit. The instructions on the pool testing kit says to wait 24 hours in between acid demand tests and adding acid. I do not have a kit that tests calcium harness but the water here is very hard (stalagtites in the showers when we got the house).
Should I just continue adding acid slowly until the acid demand test doesn't require it anymore? Is there any other way to remove a heavy buildup of calcium? Also, there is not a lot of information on ceramic pools, and unfortunately the stores here that put them in don't care to assist if you aren't going in to buy a new one. We don't want to have it sand or bead blasted unless we know that wont damage it either, and most people in Vegas only know gunnite. Any advice is appreciated, we'd like to use our pool this summer if we can get this fixed, and possibly convert to salt if that is something that is possible with a ceramic pool.
To pass inspection the pool had to be refilled before we could close on the house, nothing was done to clean up the calcium beforehand and as this is a desert I don't really want to drain it to get rid of the calcium unless that's the only way.
Best I can tell the in ground pool is a prefab viking pool, which the website claims is "ceramic infused fiberglass". Based on the way it looks and the dimensions listed on various websites (not listed on viking website for some reason) the pool is about 10,500 gal. The bank was not required to do anything with the sanitation of the water so currently the chlorine levels are 0 for free and combined (I thought I'd test just to check). My dad owns a gunnite pool and at first told me to just dump loads of muriatic acid into the pool so that we could remove the calcium, but I mentioned it is ceramic and may be different than his gunnite pool so he told me instead to just test the water PH every day and add the recommended amount of acid every day and in about a week it would be dissolved.
I've been doing that for about 2 weeks now, and though there is a buildup of debris every morning on the floor of the pool, the whole pool is still coated in calcium. Every day the test says to put in the same amount. The PH is always very high (8.2 is the highest shown on the testing kit I have) and the total alkalinity is around 140 based on this testing kit. The instructions on the pool testing kit says to wait 24 hours in between acid demand tests and adding acid. I do not have a kit that tests calcium harness but the water here is very hard (stalagtites in the showers when we got the house).
Should I just continue adding acid slowly until the acid demand test doesn't require it anymore? Is there any other way to remove a heavy buildup of calcium? Also, there is not a lot of information on ceramic pools, and unfortunately the stores here that put them in don't care to assist if you aren't going in to buy a new one. We don't want to have it sand or bead blasted unless we know that wont damage it either, and most people in Vegas only know gunnite. Any advice is appreciated, we'd like to use our pool this summer if we can get this fixed, and possibly convert to salt if that is something that is possible with a ceramic pool.
:lol: )
I've been filtering my pool, with new pump and new huge DE filter, for some time now to filter out loads of scale that I've been working on lifting from my plaster pool all winter. It didn't seem to be clearing for a week. Into the second week it hit a magic point and overnight changed dramatically for the good. It has been significantly better each day since then. It's still going to take some more time but is beginning to sparkle now. BTW.. my filter is 80 sq ft using cellulose. I backwashed after about 6 days in. The pressure on filter hadn't increased that much but the Intelliflo VF pump "wanted" me to backwash.