Hi all,
I bought a house in February and am in the process of getting its inground, 12-x24 pool open in time for Memorial Day weekend. The previous owner didn't live in the house last summer and the pool apparently wasn't winterized well. After sucking up a bunch of leaves, oak helicoptor seeds, nasty-looking bugs (slightly smaller than an adult thumb, looked like a cross between a grasshopper and some sort of mutant bee), and even a frog (poor guy), the water's chemical balance is almost decent. However, for the past week I've had foam problems.
Since cloudy water was a bigger concern than foam, I focused on solutions to clear the water, and I kept coming back to it being time to replace the filter cartridges. This is only the third summer for the pool, and I'm assuming the cartridges — given their age and the fact they were the filter manufacturer's (Hayward) brand — were original. My local pool shop only had two of the four cartridges I needed (new shipment supposed to arrive on Tuesday), so I ran the filter with two new cartridges, and the water cleared up a bit. It's still a bit murky, and the foaming problem continues. From what I recall, the foaming coincided with me opening the filter for the first time this year, so I suppose it's possible it's because of air getting into the system, but I'm not sure. It seems a pretty solid seal.
Anyway, foaming occurs when the filter is running. It dissipates after several hours of the filter being turned off.
My latest test results (from the day before adding the 2 new cartridges):
[*]total chlorine: 2.2
[*]free chloring: 2.2
[*]pH: 7.1
[*]total alkalinity: 110
[*]calcium hardness: 275
[*]stabilizer: 10
[*]total diss. solids: 750
[*]borate: 80
My pool shop deals in BioGard products and most (perhaps all) of what I've already dumped into it has been Caribbean Blue chemicals. My filter has a Pool Frog, but although I've added a new chlorine Bac Pac to it, I haven't yet added a new Mineral Pack.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I bought a house in February and am in the process of getting its inground, 12-x24 pool open in time for Memorial Day weekend. The previous owner didn't live in the house last summer and the pool apparently wasn't winterized well. After sucking up a bunch of leaves, oak helicoptor seeds, nasty-looking bugs (slightly smaller than an adult thumb, looked like a cross between a grasshopper and some sort of mutant bee), and even a frog (poor guy), the water's chemical balance is almost decent. However, for the past week I've had foam problems.
Since cloudy water was a bigger concern than foam, I focused on solutions to clear the water, and I kept coming back to it being time to replace the filter cartridges. This is only the third summer for the pool, and I'm assuming the cartridges — given their age and the fact they were the filter manufacturer's (Hayward) brand — were original. My local pool shop only had two of the four cartridges I needed (new shipment supposed to arrive on Tuesday), so I ran the filter with two new cartridges, and the water cleared up a bit. It's still a bit murky, and the foaming problem continues. From what I recall, the foaming coincided with me opening the filter for the first time this year, so I suppose it's possible it's because of air getting into the system, but I'm not sure. It seems a pretty solid seal.
Anyway, foaming occurs when the filter is running. It dissipates after several hours of the filter being turned off.
My latest test results (from the day before adding the 2 new cartridges):
[*]total chlorine: 2.2
[*]free chloring: 2.2
[*]pH: 7.1
[*]total alkalinity: 110
[*]calcium hardness: 275
[*]stabilizer: 10
[*]total diss. solids: 750
[*]borate: 80
My pool shop deals in BioGard products and most (perhaps all) of what I've already dumped into it has been Caribbean Blue chemicals. My filter has a Pool Frog, but although I've added a new chlorine Bac Pac to it, I haven't yet added a new Mineral Pack.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.