Hi everyone.
We bought a house over the winter that has an in-ground gunnite/concrete pool. The house was built in 1973, and tax records indicate the pool was added in 1980 but I'm not positive about that.
We live in Lexington NC (central NC). The pool had sadly been abandoned, the real PO of the house moved away a couple years ago, and couldn't sell the house so it was forclosed and went to a "flipper" who didn't maintain the pool so there's a lot of unknowns. (for instance he mentioned that when he ran the pool heater the utilities cost went much higher... problem is... the heater has long since been disconnected from the plumbing and the gas lines don't go anywhere.. he had no clue)
It has a Hayward pump that was installed in 2012 apparently. Hayward sand filter, I don't know model etc can try to check tonight.
We tried a local pool guy who had worked on the pool a little for the guy we bought from, and who was recommended by a friend, but have mostly been really frustrated for a few reasons..
A) his hours make it nearly impossible for us to get to him
B) he told us both skimmers needed to be replaced @$10,000. Found out one skimmer was fine, and the other had a minor leak where it seals to the pool... I got some underwater epoxy sealed the leak, and now both skimmers going @$13 for epoxy.
Anyway... I've only used the Clorox test strips from Wal-Mart so far which is what I used to use back when I maintained my family pool when I was in High School and seemed to do OK, but I see there's other options out there too.
I have a couple of challenges.
1) No idea how many gallons the pool is, it's a very irregular shape so how does one calculate? The pool guy I went to "guestimated" 19,000 gallons, but my estimations come to closer to 30,000.. But I don't know how to get a really good estimate. I've attached a pic here... it's about 41 long at its longest point and 20' wide at it's widest point. About 4' deep at the shallow end, and over 8' (not sure of actual depth) at deep end.
![pool.jpg pool.jpg](https://www.troublefreepool.com/data/attachments/33/33246-2a665fbae214e3373ad39ca5fa457140.jpg)
2) When this picture was taken the color was good, and per the test strips Free and Total chlorine, PH and Alkalinity were all good. Hardness high and stabilizer low. The pool here was cloudy, such that you could clearly see the bottom at the 4' end but not the deep end.
Since this was taken, I was a bonehead and the chlorine tablets ran out, and I got a tinge of green... I stacked up tablets and started shocking, and now backwashing the filter about twice a day. It's back to a decent color but REALLY cloudy.
What's the safe "shock" level for Chlorine? I'm higher than "ideal" per the test strips, but from some of the reading I've done here still really low for shock.
3) We leave for a week vacation this Saturday... what can I do to try keeping pool respectable while we're gone?
We bought a house over the winter that has an in-ground gunnite/concrete pool. The house was built in 1973, and tax records indicate the pool was added in 1980 but I'm not positive about that.
We live in Lexington NC (central NC). The pool had sadly been abandoned, the real PO of the house moved away a couple years ago, and couldn't sell the house so it was forclosed and went to a "flipper" who didn't maintain the pool so there's a lot of unknowns. (for instance he mentioned that when he ran the pool heater the utilities cost went much higher... problem is... the heater has long since been disconnected from the plumbing and the gas lines don't go anywhere.. he had no clue)
It has a Hayward pump that was installed in 2012 apparently. Hayward sand filter, I don't know model etc can try to check tonight.
We tried a local pool guy who had worked on the pool a little for the guy we bought from, and who was recommended by a friend, but have mostly been really frustrated for a few reasons..
A) his hours make it nearly impossible for us to get to him
B) he told us both skimmers needed to be replaced @$10,000. Found out one skimmer was fine, and the other had a minor leak where it seals to the pool... I got some underwater epoxy sealed the leak, and now both skimmers going @$13 for epoxy.
Anyway... I've only used the Clorox test strips from Wal-Mart so far which is what I used to use back when I maintained my family pool when I was in High School and seemed to do OK, but I see there's other options out there too.
I have a couple of challenges.
1) No idea how many gallons the pool is, it's a very irregular shape so how does one calculate? The pool guy I went to "guestimated" 19,000 gallons, but my estimations come to closer to 30,000.. But I don't know how to get a really good estimate. I've attached a pic here... it's about 41 long at its longest point and 20' wide at it's widest point. About 4' deep at the shallow end, and over 8' (not sure of actual depth) at deep end.
![pool.jpg pool.jpg](https://www.troublefreepool.com/data/attachments/33/33246-2a665fbae214e3373ad39ca5fa457140.jpg)
2) When this picture was taken the color was good, and per the test strips Free and Total chlorine, PH and Alkalinity were all good. Hardness high and stabilizer low. The pool here was cloudy, such that you could clearly see the bottom at the 4' end but not the deep end.
Since this was taken, I was a bonehead and the chlorine tablets ran out, and I got a tinge of green... I stacked up tablets and started shocking, and now backwashing the filter about twice a day. It's back to a decent color but REALLY cloudy.
What's the safe "shock" level for Chlorine? I'm higher than "ideal" per the test strips, but from some of the reading I've done here still really low for shock.
3) We leave for a week vacation this Saturday... what can I do to try keeping pool respectable while we're gone?