A lot of wheel marks on the deep end bottom of the pool

[sabra]

I'm desperately need help and answer from a problem just created. Please help!
I'm a new owner of a pools maintenance service company, I've sub-contracting plasterer (licensed company) to plaster my customer's pool. It has been over a year, and nothing bad had happened. Last week, I started up a pool (plastered with diamond brite) after filled up 3 days (a deep pool with well water). The next 2 days, the pool was turning very milky. I consulted the ex-owner and he told me that the water could have too high calcium, to put in more acid should get rid of the cloudiness.
I did what I was told, clearly the cloudiness had gone away after 2-3 days. My pool tech went to clean the pool after, it left a lot of wheel marks on the deep end bottom of the pool like tic-tact-toe. Of course the pool owner was very upset.
I consulted the ex-owner again (he has been in the business for over 40 years). He told me to lower the ph and start brushing the bottom daily. I have asked some other people who were in the business for a long time too. They all told me to do the same thing.
5 days over, the pool did not get any better and actually got worse. It was because the brushed area plus the streak marks look so different from the shallow area. I've been trying to look for an answer to fix it and also want to know how to prevent it never happened again.
The calcium level was 400. We used the softened water. This is the only different from my other pools. I wonder if the calcium from the plaster was drawn by the water since the water was filtrated (no more calcium and potassium). That was why the water turned cloudy. And the wheel marks were darker than the rest of the area because the calcium was removed by the wheels.
Please explain to me if you know the answer. What should I do?
Thank you.

 

[JasonLion]

Did you have the pump running when acid was added? If the pump was not running, the acid would have pooled near the bottom of the pool for a while before it mixed in completely and affected the bottom of the deep end far more than it would have other areas. If that is what happened, fixing it is going to be very challenging.

 

[sabra]

I did turn on the pump while I pour acid in. Should I go ahead to try a light acid wash?thank u for ur help. I did not know how to post on the forum.
Emily

 

[duraleigh]

This is just a long shot possibility, but it's cheap and easy. Test the wheels themselves on a tiny area and make sure the wheels are not the culprit. I am almost certain they are NOT but you will know in five seconds by rubbing them on the plaster.

 

[JasonLion]

I can't disentangle exactly what is going on, but several things occur to me.

First, you should never run a pool cleaner during the first three days after plaster is applied, and preferably not run it for the first week. If a pool cleaner was run very early after plaster was applied it will leave tracks that become permanent as the plaster cures.

Second, there isn't really enough information to be sure, but it sounds like your usual fill water is high enough in TA and CH that you are effectively doing a bicarb startup, which greatly minimizes the amount of plaster dust. If water from a water softener was used this time the CH level would be much lower and you would effectively be doing a normal startup, where large quantities of plaster dust are common. Adding acid will significantly help control the amount of plaster dust during a normal startup, in effect changing it to an acid start. An acid start will keep the plaster dust under control, and it will also remove some plaster throughout the pool in a pattern that should be mostly uniform, but will never be completely uniform. Keep in mind that this paragraph is fairly speculative, since you didn't post enough information to confirm or deny my assumptions here.

The usual solution to uneven coloring/exposure of quartz finishes is to perform a manual acid wash, where you vary the amount of acid used in each area to try and match the exposure of the the quartz grains thus balancing the colors. Doing this well takes some skill and it won't resolve actual indentations in plaster (if there are any, which is sounds like there are but who knows).