Cleaning yellowed parts?

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Flybriz

Flybriz

0
Bronze Supporter
Apr 18, 2010
59
Tulsa, OK
Hi All,

Thanks to the sage advice on this forum, I'm well on my way to turning my green swamp into an oasis. I pulled the cover off of my above ground pool last Thursday and it was an awful green mess. I can now see the bottom and I think with a few more days of proper chemistry and filtering it should be 100% clear! I do have a question regarding a fix for some "yellowed" parts, particularly the bezel and inside of the skimmer, along with the inlet. I'd really like to get these back to white if possible - I've scrubbed them with a nylon brush but they aren't cleaning up. The water-line was below these components during the winter so I'm thinking that they are yellowed because of sunlight and not due to algae. Any tips out there for sprucing these up? I've seen some products out there designed to clean yellowed plastic but I imagine that none of them would work well underwater, nor be good for the pool chemistry. Thanks!
 
At the risk of being labeled Mr Clean! I suggest you try Magic Erasers. It seems I'm always suggesting those things. I love them!

On the RV I've used straight bleach to de-yellow the window trim that had yellowed from the sun. I'm sure it takes life off them but it's a price I'm willing to pay.
 
Some of my pool parts (multi-port valve, return nozzles, etc) have yellowed permanantly (I think). It's the butter cream color as described.

I think it's because they are made of ABS plastic and there's little that you can do. I hope I am wrong, I would love to fix them.
 
Try holding a vitamin C tablet against a yellowed area and see if that makes any difference. Often it is just the plastic yellowing naturally, but sometimes it is iron staining (which Vitamin C will remove).
 
Magic Erasers are made of Melamine foam and there's no chemicals in them to dissolve in the pool. Whatever small particles get torn off wil be large enough to get filtered out and leave nothing in the pool.
 
About five minutes of scrubbing with the Magic Eraser did not produce a result. Also several minutes of scrubbing with a vitamin C pill did nothing. It appears that this is just the standard issue ABC plastic yellowing problem. I found another website not related to pools that suggested wet sanding with a fine grit sandpaper, basically taking off a fine layer of the surface. I tried this method on my skimmer to vacuum hose coupler (or whatever that thing is called) and it whitened it up considerably. I'm going to try this method on the skimmer bezel and see if it produces a similar result - Definitely something you don't want to do a ton of times, but taking a very fine layer off the parts should be okay once or twice.
 

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Just a quick update - I tried the Magic Eraser on the skimmer housing and it made a dramatic improvement! Looks like the vacuum hose coupler test was not a good one - that part admittedly is often sitting out in direct sun, and the plastic has permanently yellowed. I'm fine with that - but the parts in the pool itself were bothersome. A few minutes with the magic eraser and the yellow funk that had settled on them vanished. Be advised, the eraser breaks apart quickly, especially when cleaning some of the sharper corners of the skimmer housing - so make sure your basket is in place and pump is off as to not accidentally suck some of it down into your equipment. Thanks everyone for the support and suggestions.
 
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