**disclaimer, this somehow became a novel**
Hi all,
I moved into a new (to me) house this past December (I do not recommend moving into a house with a pool in Dec because there's no way to confirm the pool is working as it should, especially when it's frozen lol)
Anyways, I had a pool company come and open the pool, they vac'd it, shocked it, we re-did some of the plumbing in the pool house and I added a chlorinator. I decided I would use the pool store to help with chemicals which uses Bioguard since it was "easy", I give them water sample, they print a sheet with what I need, in what steps I need to add it, how to do it and how long to wait till the next step. Everything "was" great for probably a month the water was really clear. I spent probably if I had to guess well over $700 on chemicals and it's only July, for main sanitizer I bought their "Smart Sticks" which is $110 for 18lbs in my automatic chlorinator, not sure what I was thinking. I have been doing their shock weekly as well as I was supposed to and bringing in water samples weekly as I am OCD with water and following everything they told me to do.
I had been seeing some accumulation on the vinyl liner seams and folds on the bottom of the pool and just thought it was dirt, then after we went on vacation for a week with the solar blanket on and the chlorinator on everything went bad, the pool was green even after I shocked it and not only did I see accumulation as before now there were yellow trails on the bottom of the pool. From what I could tell it looked like Mustard Algea after reading up here so I took a water sample into the pool store and showed them pictures of my pool, my FC was 1 not good and the computer recommended 7 bags of their BurnOut shock which I can't find on their website but the 21yr old pool chemistry expert said that sounded high so only use 4.....I did and nothing happened to the water after 2 days so I took another sample in and FC was .03 this time it suggested 8 bags of BurnOut and a different "expert" said that was too much and to use 4. These bags cost $9 each so they are not cheap. After 2 days of that no changes so I started reading more on here and decided FU pool store I'm going to switch to the TFPC method and start to SLAM.
The main problem is I don't have a test kit that does FAS-DPD only total chlorine, so I ordered TFT-100 and will have it by the end of the week since I can't find a local one. In the meantime I'm just doing a blind SLAM using Bleach, I know, terrible, Saturday I had added 2 gallons of Clorox, Yesterday I went to have the water tested at the pool store and FC was 5.4 and CYA of 43 and PH was 7.5 so I new I was good to start SLAM, so I used Pool Math and added bleach in to get to my shock FC and then without a test have just been adding more and more every 3-4 hours during the day. I have my pump running and filtering at all times, one thing I am doing which I need to stop when I get home is the pool store said to put my chlorinator on full setting meaning it's adding likely a lot of CYA from those silk sticks so I will have the CYA tested in a week, I've added lots of water and it's rained lots but I might be around 50 now.
Also I changed the sand in my filter as it hadn't been done in probably 10+ years just in case this helped. I can see that the blind SLAM is helping, this morning I longer saw the larger accumulations on the bottom although when I'm brushing I see the yellow/orange stuff come off the bottom I assume this is normal at this stage of the SLAM. The pool is less green and almost normal color but still cloudy not sure if that just gets better as I keep slamming?
I will update as soon as I can get back to the pool store for another sample to see where I'm at, really hoping that I get this under control and then moving forward will be using the TFPC method exclusively and doing my own testing.
Also will look into something similar for my Hot Tub when I fire that back up in the fall as I'm sure similar methods are used.
Thanks for reading!
Jerome
Hi all,
I moved into a new (to me) house this past December (I do not recommend moving into a house with a pool in Dec because there's no way to confirm the pool is working as it should, especially when it's frozen lol)
Anyways, I had a pool company come and open the pool, they vac'd it, shocked it, we re-did some of the plumbing in the pool house and I added a chlorinator. I decided I would use the pool store to help with chemicals which uses Bioguard since it was "easy", I give them water sample, they print a sheet with what I need, in what steps I need to add it, how to do it and how long to wait till the next step. Everything "was" great for probably a month the water was really clear. I spent probably if I had to guess well over $700 on chemicals and it's only July, for main sanitizer I bought their "Smart Sticks" which is $110 for 18lbs in my automatic chlorinator, not sure what I was thinking. I have been doing their shock weekly as well as I was supposed to and bringing in water samples weekly as I am OCD with water and following everything they told me to do.
I had been seeing some accumulation on the vinyl liner seams and folds on the bottom of the pool and just thought it was dirt, then after we went on vacation for a week with the solar blanket on and the chlorinator on everything went bad, the pool was green even after I shocked it and not only did I see accumulation as before now there were yellow trails on the bottom of the pool. From what I could tell it looked like Mustard Algea after reading up here so I took a water sample into the pool store and showed them pictures of my pool, my FC was 1 not good and the computer recommended 7 bags of their BurnOut shock which I can't find on their website but the 21yr old pool chemistry expert said that sounded high so only use 4.....I did and nothing happened to the water after 2 days so I took another sample in and FC was .03 this time it suggested 8 bags of BurnOut and a different "expert" said that was too much and to use 4. These bags cost $9 each so they are not cheap. After 2 days of that no changes so I started reading more on here and decided FU pool store I'm going to switch to the TFPC method and start to SLAM.
The main problem is I don't have a test kit that does FAS-DPD only total chlorine, so I ordered TFT-100 and will have it by the end of the week since I can't find a local one. In the meantime I'm just doing a blind SLAM using Bleach, I know, terrible, Saturday I had added 2 gallons of Clorox, Yesterday I went to have the water tested at the pool store and FC was 5.4 and CYA of 43 and PH was 7.5 so I new I was good to start SLAM, so I used Pool Math and added bleach in to get to my shock FC and then without a test have just been adding more and more every 3-4 hours during the day. I have my pump running and filtering at all times, one thing I am doing which I need to stop when I get home is the pool store said to put my chlorinator on full setting meaning it's adding likely a lot of CYA from those silk sticks so I will have the CYA tested in a week, I've added lots of water and it's rained lots but I might be around 50 now.
Also I changed the sand in my filter as it hadn't been done in probably 10+ years just in case this helped. I can see that the blind SLAM is helping, this morning I longer saw the larger accumulations on the bottom although when I'm brushing I see the yellow/orange stuff come off the bottom I assume this is normal at this stage of the SLAM. The pool is less green and almost normal color but still cloudy not sure if that just gets better as I keep slamming?
I will update as soon as I can get back to the pool store for another sample to see where I'm at, really hoping that I get this under control and then moving forward will be using the TFPC method exclusively and doing my own testing.
Also will look into something similar for my Hot Tub when I fire that back up in the fall as I'm sure similar methods are used.
Thanks for reading!
Jerome