Greetings from Marylandistan

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VetteBlue

VetteBlue

0
May 15, 2015
52
Maryland
Good evening! We built our pool last summer and filled it on June 30. Relied on test strips and a few trips to the pool store last summer to maintain the water. But for this year, my TF-100 will arrive on Tuesday! We had tons of fun with the kids (girls now 13/5/3) last year and looking to repeat. It's our first pool, and so far all is well. Plus we've had great experiences with my pool builder and the associated pool store. Great people to work and deal with and they run excellent and friendly customer oriented businesses. We are fortunate in that regard.

Owning a pool hasn't been all fun and games. We did take a chimney cap blowing off of the roof in a snow storm and slicing a safety cover strap over the winter. (Cover is now on its' way back for repair.)

We just reopened our pool for this summer on Thursday and shocked it with 2 lbs of chlorine granules yesterday. Water was/is nice and clear. Water temp was up to 72.5 with our solar blanket and about 5 hours of sun today.

Looking forward to learning more from this forum! Thank you!
 
Thanks guys! Our water looks nice and clear. Temp is up to 73.6 and I just turned on my SWG. My pool store numbers from Friday are as follows: (before shocking the water)

Free Chlorine: 0.8 ppm
Total Chlorine: 0.9 ppm
Combined Chlorine: 0.1 ppm
PH: 7.6
Hardness: 30 ppm
Alkalinity: 110 ppm
Cyanuric Acid: 20 ppm
Copper: 0 ppm
Iron: 0 ppm
Salt: 3120 ppm

She did say to wait on Stabilizer and Calcium Hardness Increaser because those numbers will come up.

I know you wanted the TF100 numbers. I'm curious to see what the comparison will be. That kit with the salt test kit is scheduled for delivery on Tuesday. I was going to add salt because it's towards the low end of the IC40 operating range. But I'm going to wait until my test kits arrive and decide later. Got the little magnetic stirrer yesterday because the TF100 folks were out of stock.
 
Is your IG pool plaster or a liner? What granules did you shock with - Dichlor or CalHypo? I'm going to guess CalHypo as she said your CH would come up.

You do know you have fallen in with a bunch of renegades who generally don't believe pool store information and really don't follow their advice....
 
Sounds good! If you open a little earlier you can catch some good swimming on occasion here in May. Swam last weekend and this one too. Water temp is 76.
I'll check my salt cell reading against the strips (actually the drop test) once at the beginning of the season and since it's close I rely on the computer. The cell is going to function off of that reading anyway.
 

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tim5055 said:
Is your IG pool plaster or a liner? What granules did you shock with - Dichlor or CalHypo? I'm going to guess CalHypo as she said your CH would come up.

You do know you have fallen in with a bunch of renegades who generally don't believe pool store information and really don't follow their advice....
Click to expand...

It was DiChlor with the local pool stores label on it. And we are a liner pool not plaster.

Funny story to that. One of my old friends had a formed concrete/plaster pool built by one of the big national pool companies. His back yard is beautiful with lots of hardscape. I asked him for a pool builder recommendation and he said even though he loves the finished product he wouldn't recommend the guys he used. He was very frustrated that his took 8 months to finish in the offseason from November to June. Then said if you don't mind a vinyl liner pool, I have two neighbors who LOVED this pool builder. Sure enough they were right. My pool builder is awesome. Quite possibly the best contractor I have ever dealt with in my life. Originally I thought we would end up with fiberglass. But vinyl it is, with a fantastic pool contractor!

- - - Updated - - -

bmoreswim said:
Sounds good! If you open a little earlier you can catch some good swimming on occasion here in May. Swam last weekend and this one too. Water temp is 76.
I'll check my salt cell reading against the strips (actually the drop test) once at the beginning of the season and since it's close I rely on the computer. The cell is going to function off of that reading anyway.
Click to expand...

We're down here in St. Mary's by Pax River NAS. Jumped up to 78 today with the solar cover. But we haven't ventured into the water yet. I want the temp to be warm enough that when you walk in, the bottom step isn't a punishment. It's getting there. Everything is on and running properly. I wish we had the computer/wifi interface so I could keep tabs on it real time.
 
Received my Test Kits yesterday. But after receiving an inch of rain the night before, I just played around with the Salt and Chlorine tests. Definitely between 3000-3200ppm for salt. Chlorine was low but I have the SWG on 100% mode so hopefully chlorine will be back up to normal levels tonight and I'll have time to do more testing.

Meanwhile, pollen was pretty thick yesterday. Someone said to add clarifier to drop it to the bottom so it can be vacuumed up. We opened on June 30 last year so this wasn't an issue we encountered. Thoughts?
 
We do not recommend the use of clarifier. That is standard pool store advice so they can sell you a bottle of clarifier.

When getting an unusual amout of water replacement you can supplement your SWG with a little bleach to keep from running the cell at 100%. SWG cells have a finite life span, so the longer/harder you run it the shorter it's life. That is the basis of our recommendation to size the cell you purchase at least twice the size of your pool so you can run it at lower settings.
 
tim5055 said:
We do not recommend the use of clarifier. That is standard pool store advice so they can sell you a bottle of clarifier.

When getting an unusual amout of water replacement you can supplement your SWG with a little bleach to keep from running the cell at 100%. SWG cells have a finite life span, so the longer/harder you run it the shorter it's life. That is the basis of our recommendation to size the cell you purchase at least twice the size of your pool so you can run it at lower settings.
Click to expand...

Heh - yeah - this time though, that pollen advice was from a coworker. I don't have any clarifier at home anyway. But dropping the pollen to the bottom so it can be vacuumed sounded good.

Indeed my IC40 is double sized for my 18-19K gallon pool. Last summer I ran it at 40% all summer.
 
The pollen should just be gathering in the skimmers or filter if your circulation is working well. This time of year you will always see bits of it on the surface.
 
Pretty sure the excess I was seeing came off of my solar cover. Left it off for a few hours and the situation "cleared" up.

Now if it would stop raining so I can give my new TF100 and my Salt Test Kit a good workout... Since it arrived Tuesday, we have received an inch of rain the night before so my chlorine was low, and then yesterday I ran the SWG in shock mode, and now today it is raining again and 57 degrees. Pool water was 81 yesterday.
 
VetteBlue said:
Thanks guys! Our water looks nice and clear. Temp is up to 73.6 and I just turned on my SWG. My pool store numbers from Friday are as follows: (before shocking the water)

Free Chlorine: 0.8 ppm
Total Chlorine: 0.9 ppm
Combined Chlorine: 0.1 ppm
PH: 7.6
Hardness: 30 ppm
Alkalinity: 110 ppm
Cyanuric Acid: 20 ppm
Copper: 0 ppm
Iron: 0 ppm
Salt: 3120 ppm
Click to expand...

Ok first TF100 results:

pH 7.5
Salt 3200ppm
FC 3.5
CC 0
TA 110
CYA less than 20
CH 50ppm

Also interesting - the strips and the basic chlorine and ph test kit shows chlorine around 5.
 

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