Hello! My wife and I recently purchased a house near Baltimore MD and we are lucky enough that this particular house came with a pool. I've been stalking this forum a little bit to get spun up on how to maintain a pool since I have never done this before. I put that I think are the correct pool specs in my sig. Please let me know if I have missed anything or need to clarify anything else.
We have had the house for about 2 weeks now and the previous owners have left the pool in great shape. They said they have left me about $500 worth of chemicals which they said should last the season.
Since we have been busy getting the house in order, we have kind of neglected the pool. Now nothing has gone wrong to my knowledge and the water looks great. The previous owner assured me that placing 2 chlorine tablets in the chlorine dispenser which is inline with the pump -> filter -> purifier -> dispenser will last about 2 weeks. I have since opened it up and and put 2 more tablets in to keep the chlorine up.
They left us some test strips which i read here are not very reliable and being the engineer that I am I wanted to get something more accurate. I purchased the TF-100 test kit and it arrived this week. Only yesterday I was able to do a test of the water...
The TC reading looks normal however the ph reading looked way to low. The color was almost yellow which shocked me. I looked through the chemicals and there was a bottle that said it raised the ph level (i forget what it actually was). I put a bunch of the stuff (Sorry I don't recall what it was) in the skimmer yesterday and let the pump run for awhile.
I tested the water again this morning and the ph looks like it was a little better but looked like it was still around 6.8.
What can I do to get this to a normal level?
Is there anything else I should be checking now that it has been 2+ weeks since the previous owner has had it?
I tried the other tests in the kit but the reading seemed way off so I didn't bother to record them and i thought ph might of had something to do with this. I can try again if you guys want me to post the results or the observations that I saw.
Thanks again!
We have had the house for about 2 weeks now and the previous owners have left the pool in great shape. They said they have left me about $500 worth of chemicals which they said should last the season.
Since we have been busy getting the house in order, we have kind of neglected the pool. Now nothing has gone wrong to my knowledge and the water looks great. The previous owner assured me that placing 2 chlorine tablets in the chlorine dispenser which is inline with the pump -> filter -> purifier -> dispenser will last about 2 weeks. I have since opened it up and and put 2 more tablets in to keep the chlorine up.
They left us some test strips which i read here are not very reliable and being the engineer that I am I wanted to get something more accurate. I purchased the TF-100 test kit and it arrived this week. Only yesterday I was able to do a test of the water...
The TC reading looks normal however the ph reading looked way to low. The color was almost yellow which shocked me. I looked through the chemicals and there was a bottle that said it raised the ph level (i forget what it actually was). I put a bunch of the stuff (Sorry I don't recall what it was) in the skimmer yesterday and let the pump run for awhile.
I tested the water again this morning and the ph looks like it was a little better but looked like it was still around 6.8.
What can I do to get this to a normal level?
Is there anything else I should be checking now that it has been 2+ weeks since the previous owner has had it?
I tried the other tests in the kit but the reading seemed way off so I didn't bother to record them and i thought ph might of had something to do with this. I can try again if you guys want me to post the results or the observations that I saw.
Thanks again!