1960's indoor pool in Wisconsin

iced

Member
Mar 12, 2024
8
Wisconisn
Pool Size
40000
Surface
Plaster
Hi everyone,
We have a home with a 40,000 gallon indoor pool in Wisconsin. I believe the pool dates to the 1960s and was made using poured concrete instead of gunite, this is from the original "Refinite Sheldon" decorative skimmer covers in the coping. If anyone has more details on this, I would love to know. I love history and old pools!

Last renovation was done in the late 90s. Skimmer and all piping was replaced plus the main drain was removed and replaced with twin side suction points. The equipment also dates to that time. Previous owner had the plaster sandblasted and painted with epoxy 2 years ago before selling the home.

Here are some pics.
IMG_0303.jpg
IMG_0318.jpg
IMG_0316.jpg
 
Hi and welcome to TFP. I see you have a Talyor K-2106 test kit. Well done! Are you interesting into changing from bromine over to just chlorine?
The previous owner said he used to have chlorine but switched it to bromine because of the strong chlorine smells. He was using MPS and bromine tabs in floaters, I switched to generic chlorine bleach because I read using too many bromine tablets will inhibit the sanitation process.

Right now I am trying to get the pool cleaned up. Had a dehumidifier failure which took almost 2 months to fix. I shut down pool heat, dumped in a lot of bleach, and turned down the room temperature to 60. My mistake was turning off the pump too, now the water got very hazy and lots of dead insects setteled to the bottom. Been running the robot vac non stop since yesterday along with the pump. Brushed the walls a couple of times too which released super cloudy "stuff". Trying to do the SLAM process now, went through 24 gallons of bleach before the bromine level stabilized at 13. The pool turned a green/yellow color as soon as I added the first few gallons but it cleared up after a few hours. What was that about?
 
The previous owner said he used to have chlorine but switched it to bromine because of the strong chlorine smells. He was using MPS and bromine tabs in floaters, I switched to generic chlorine bleach because I read using too many bromine tablets will inhibit the sanitation process.

Welcome to TFP, what a great pool!

Strong chlorine smells usually mean that something is not right. It's not free chlorine that smells but the combined chlorine. It's often pools that are under-chlorinated that smell rather than over-chlorinated ones.

A properly chlorinated pool shouldn't smell. A hint of CYA (in an indoor pool, a bit more in an outdoor pool) and following the recommended FC/CYA Levels harnesses the power of chlorine and makes pool maintenance a breeze.

If the bromine works without issues for you then fine. If not and you want to change at some point then start a thread in the forum and we'll go through the details.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mdragger88
May have some metals in the water causing the color change or it could have just been from very high total bromine levels.
We were just discussing this yesterday in another thread

Looks very clear now!
Incase you haven’t found it yet here’s the bromine guide 👇
 
  • Like
Reactions: mgtfp