French Gray Diamond Brite

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jtech1

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Jul 9, 2009
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Went to see a pool today just plastered in French Gray Diamond Brite a few days ago. No chlorine yet. The water looked a little green. I was told it would be blue in a week. It still seems that DB French Gray is a bit lighter than some other company's French Gray colors. The only other DB base color is Onyx and that is too dark.

We are looking for a natural look... not pond water... but mountain lake. Lots of field rock around the pool and into the water.

Has anyone ever darkened DB French Gray? If so, what did you mix and how did it turn out?

I am a little hesitant to get in to mixing colors... just seems like one more thing for the installer to possibly mess up if not mixed properly.

I also noticed the mottling in the finish... was not too bad... and actually adds character, I think... but the one other thing I noticed was white spots... not a lot, but here and there. Is that areas where there was a hole or pool of cement without pigment or aggregate? How does an installer avoid that? They definitely did not look good.
 
In order to darken DB French Gray you would add some DB Onyx. Bascially adding black to gray to darken it. You can read about our plaster from my signature link. Not all DB, not much actually, but it is a medium gray plaster. Ours was done in batches of plaster so once we agreed on the forumlation of plaster (day of plaster looking in the mixer) then you just replicate it. If they are doing one large batch then the quantities are just larger but the process is the same. To give you an idea, one bag of DB Onyx in a 12 bag mixture is similar to French Gray (can't say whether it's a "light" FG or "darker" FG having never seen one in person). A half bag of DB Onyx (which is what they had in first) was clearly light gray - too light for me. You can see some pics there also - but the equipment isn't running yet so I'm not sure if the water color is accurate.
 
I have the french gray diamond brite and love it! I've never thought that the water looked green at all. I've had several people comment to me how nice the color of the water is in fact, and how natural it looks...just like what you're looking for. It gives it kind a lagoon type look I think. If you'd like, I'll snap a picture later and post it for you.

As to other colors...I can't really advise you too much. My builder gave me a free upgrade to the french gray over white plaster...anything else he was going to charge me for, so it was pretty much a no brainer for me
 
bmoreswim, wow! I went though your thread. Very nice pool! Nice basketball court also! :) A couple questions... what did they use to color your carved wall? I have a cave with carved gunite on the inside and have been trying to figure out how to get it to match the rock work around it. Your wall looks very natural and real! Did your plaster look similar in shade to the DB French Gray samples on their web site? or was it slightly darker? Looking forward to seeing more pictures as the water color changes.

ssummer, I would definitely appreciate seeing some pictures of your French Gray DB. How long has it been installed? Was it straight French Gray with nothing else in the mix?
 
Thanks for the court comment. DW said she wanted a basketball hoop, I mis-heard and put in a basketball court. Oops! The stone was painted/stained with a proprietary product to StoneMakers dealers. In one post I put more details regarding that. There were a lot of different people who participated in applying the finish to the "stones". The primary one was an artist, the others were painters. It was then sealed with a masonry sealer but I don't know which brand. I would say the pool finish color is similar to, but no lighter than, DB French Gray from the website.
 
Just straight French gray as far as I know. Had been installed for just over a year now. Here's some pics, but I'm not sure how good the true color of the water came through...[attachment=0:2ntab69w]uploadfromtaptalk1369681752319.jpg[/attachment:2ntab69w]
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Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 2
 

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ssummer, thank you! It seems that every French Gray picture we see is different... some are extremely light and some extremely dark (the one on the SGM web site is very dark). But yours is the perfect deep blue we are looking for. Do you find that the color varies by time of day, cloud cover, angle, etc? Or is it pretty much the same? I am guessing colored lights work pretty well at night with French Gray?
 
We have french grey DB, and the color changes constantly. The initial green someone else mentioned on here happenned to us, turns out we have a healthy dose of copper (Cu) in our tap water, and this gave it an incredible green tinge. Over time our pool water had pretty much become completely diluted out with rain water (we get A LOT of rain here), and the Cu content is way down, we dont even have to use sequestrant any more.

The color changes on overcast days, sunny days, perspective, etc. We really like the more muted blue. If you want alot of light in the pool I would sugggest doubling the amount of lights installed. I only did one pool light (LED color changer) and one spa light, and I wish I had put in more.
 
Color definately changes based on how the sun is hitting the pool, and how much sun is hitting the pool. I would think that this holds true for any pool, as the color of the water is just the reflection of light off of the bottom of the pool. I've never seen it look green in anyway though.

I too wish that I had gotten more than one light installed. I have found that the blues and greens of the lights look best and fill the pool the most, whereas any of the lighter colors or reds only fill about half of the pool.
 
I had read that about reds prior to my build... I put in 3 of the 5g LED color lights and a GlowBrite shelf lite. I hope that gives me good coverage... I guess I will find out soon.

ssummer, looking at your pictures, would you say they are typically what it looks like on most days, or if you stand over it and look down, in most cases does it usually look lighter?
 

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We are going with plain old French Gray Diamond Brite... just got delivered today. Interestingly enough, every bag was from one lot, except for 3 bags... from three different lots. Not sure why the supplier would throw those in there... I guess the PB will need to throw a scoop of each of those 3 bags into every batch they mix to ensure everything is consistent... I could understand bags from two lots... but 4...
 
This thread was very helpful to us. The plaster looked great when done... better when acid washed... now water is solid green after brushing and starting up the pump, but I am looking forward to blue again over the next few days...
 
No problem here with gray plaster and clear water. I think water clarity is probably a bigger determinig factor to seeing kids well. But with this site your water should always be crystal clear. And with any pool, adequate lighting for night.
 
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