Quick description of my situation: We bought the house in 2008 and were told it had a two-year-old plaster refinish on its surface. We didn't plan to use the pool for at least a year (repo house = tons of work with little free time) so we simply added trichlor when the water went cloudy. When I was unable to care for the pool due to illness in mid-2009 it greened, then blackened. We kept most of the monsters at bay with trichlor powder (not enough I guess) and monitored the filter/pump strainer, cleaning as needed.
FF to now: Not thinking about the heat coming, I pumped the pool out last week, down to the last 1.5' of the deep end. Our initial plan was to drain/scrub/muck/acid wash/refill it, but after asking around I'm not sure that I need to (or even should) acid wash it at all. (I tried a couple of test areas, finding success, then rinsed heavily within 15 seconds. Hopefully I didn't damage the plaster too much.) The heat is going to reach 100 this week, so now I'm thinking we should just muck it out and treat the plaster differently after refilling it...we could probably have it at least mucked/scrubbed and refilling by Wednesday. Let me know if pics will help with the diagnosis/treatment here and I'll take/post them this afternoon.
As of Saturday I have the 100XL test kit on hand for the post-refill testing (holy cow, that's a comprehensive kit!), so all I need is some direction. I don't want to kill the plaster with acid, but I'd like to get it as clean as possible before refilling, unless that's not as necessary due to what is possible with proper chemical balance and future maintenance of the entire pool and its equipment.
Sorry for the spew/redundancies here. I'm on a break between service calls and would like to get the knowledge ball rolling with TFP. It's 1315 here in California and I'll be home by 1430. Any questions/data/jeering/photo requests would be much appreciated. Apologies if I missed any FAQ. I'm here whenever I have the time but that has been hard to come by lately.
Thanks for anything you folks can tell me!
K
PS I have a good pressure washer on hand if that helps with determining how I should handle the issue, pre-refill, with time scarcity and the hot weather being my concern.
FF to now: Not thinking about the heat coming, I pumped the pool out last week, down to the last 1.5' of the deep end. Our initial plan was to drain/scrub/muck/acid wash/refill it, but after asking around I'm not sure that I need to (or even should) acid wash it at all. (I tried a couple of test areas, finding success, then rinsed heavily within 15 seconds. Hopefully I didn't damage the plaster too much.) The heat is going to reach 100 this week, so now I'm thinking we should just muck it out and treat the plaster differently after refilling it...we could probably have it at least mucked/scrubbed and refilling by Wednesday. Let me know if pics will help with the diagnosis/treatment here and I'll take/post them this afternoon.
As of Saturday I have the 100XL test kit on hand for the post-refill testing (holy cow, that's a comprehensive kit!), so all I need is some direction. I don't want to kill the plaster with acid, but I'd like to get it as clean as possible before refilling, unless that's not as necessary due to what is possible with proper chemical balance and future maintenance of the entire pool and its equipment.
Sorry for the spew/redundancies here. I'm on a break between service calls and would like to get the knowledge ball rolling with TFP. It's 1315 here in California and I'll be home by 1430. Any questions/data/jeering/photo requests would be much appreciated. Apologies if I missed any FAQ. I'm here whenever I have the time but that has been hard to come by lately.
Thanks for anything you folks can tell me!
K
PS I have a good pressure washer on hand if that helps with determining how I should handle the issue, pre-refill, with time scarcity and the hot weather being my concern.