high metal, and different opinions between pool stores

[anomale]

Hi,

Noob here. We had a pool guy for about a year and recently noticed that the copper plumbing was developing pinhole leaks and had other problems with the filtration stsyem so I took a sample of the water to a local pool store to see what was going on. the chlorine was ok ph was too low to register (water was yellow same color as the chlorine side) other readings were ok except it had copper at 5 and iron at 3 they sold me two bottles of liquid metal free to get rid of the metals first. I took another sample today (a week and a half later) this time the phosphors were at 1000, iron is down to .3 and copper is at 3 the pool store wanted to sell me another two bottles of liquid metal free and a phos-free agent to add in and once the levels go down they wanted to get me on a weekly dosage of this phos-free chemical. I decided to get a second opinion from another pool store, they told me not to worry about the metals or the phosphour and that the first store is known for trying to sell their chemicals for those two things. they told me to keep the chlorine and ph levels at the correct level and not to worry about anything else and that the metals are actually good for inhibiting the growth of algae. I'm not sure what to do now so any suggestions are helpfull.

my pool is 19,000 gallons, in ground, D.E, with a spray on fiberglass liner

thanks Adam

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

Copper has problems when the PH gets too low, below 7.0, especially if that goes on for long periods of time. That is the most common cause of problems with copper pipes. It is also possible for the pipes to be defective in some way and only fail after a couple of years, but that is far far less common.

With a fiberglass pool you will get obvious metal stains on the walls and floor of the pool as soon as the metal levels get at all high, typically starting around iron or copper levels of 0.3 or higher. If you don't have obvious stains the odds are your copper and iron levels are fairly low or zero.

Removing phosphates is usually a waste of money. There can be some rare cases where it is worth it, but that is unusual. In a similar vein, adding metal sequestrants, like metal free, is only worth it if you actually have a problem with metals. If you have never had metal stains, don't bother with sequestrant.

 

[anomale]

Thats interesting the fibeglass liner is white and has never stained other than the occassional leaf that falls to the bottom. So just to be clear... having a copper level of 3 and iron level of .3 is ok as long as the fiberglass liner is not staining? the pool guy at the first place said that this high metal will cause blonde hair to turn green is that true or was he just trying to scare me into buying something? I am pretty sure that the ph level was so low that it was eroding the copper pipes but I am slowly trying to correct that using the mule team borax. 6 boxes into it and I am finally matching the color on the test kit to a light orange registering 6.8. I'll keep adding the borax until the ph improves