Afraid Of My Pool

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Get a 5 gallon bucket. When you are set up and running (water in equals water out) take one of the hoses (I do the water in) and measure how long it takes to fill the bucket. Convert that to Gallons per Minute. Then use that to see how minutes it will take for 12000 gallons.

I get about 10 gpm with my set up. So it takes me about 600 minutes. Or 10 hours.
 
Fresh water floats on salt water. If you rent a pump and put it at the deepest part of your pool, sucking water from the lowest point, and add water to the surface gently, like in a bucket on a step that overflows gently onto the surface, or perhaps in the skimmer where it can flow out of the skimmer opening onto the surface of the water, you can exchange water that way without lowering the level at all. You have to monitor the process, so that you are adding water at about the same rate as you are removing it. Pump off.

As you continue to reduce the salt level, this trick will become less and less effective, but it'll work for a while. You can also do the same with temperature at some point. Cold water is heavier than hot water. If your fill water is colder than your pool, then you'd put the pump on the top step, drawing warm water off the surface, and put the hose in the deep end, allowing colder water to fill from the bottom up. If your fill water is warmer, then switch.

The best kit on the market for this use is the Taylor K-1766. Here or on Amazon.
 
Just curious, Ocean salt water has a higher salt content. Do you react in the Ocean?

It does seem that you either had a contaminated bag of salt or one with additives. I am curious as my wife was getting skin irritation. But then again, we don't have SWG. Turned out to be excessive phosphates in her case. Our fill water has 1000 ppm phos and we were up to 2700 ppm.
Just a crazy thought.
 
Okay, sounds like a plan. Thank You.

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Thank you so much. I appreciate all of the useful information. The process will start tomorrow.

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No reaction to ocean water, just this salt water pool. I now know that salt from Pinch a Penny did in fact have additives in it. Not sure as of yet about the bag that the pool service put in, but will find out on Monday.
We did have our phosphates checked, it was at 200. Plus we also did this pool transfusion twice and I still had the reaction, so we are assuming at this point, it is still the leftover salt in the pool.

We did install a Kinectco whole house filter two weeks ago, so the water that will be going in the pool will be fairly clean. Plus we also will be using a paper cartridge at the end of the house.
 
Just wanted to double check on this. When we add the water to the pool tomorrow it will be through our whole house Kinetico water filtration system. Not water softener. It is a Kinetico Mach 2060 OD Non electric Twin Tank Catalytic Carbon Filter with Automatic Sanitation Feature. This was installed 2 weeks ago.
We don't have the greatest water here, so we decided to go with it.
Knowing this it is okay to use the water through this, or should we shut it off and use the town water.
We always also use a paper filter when adding water to the pool. Well at least during and after the last 2 transfusions.
 
beachglass said:
It back washes every 2200 gallons. It uses a 1/2 cup of peroxide. The peroxide washes out the carbon. It does not get in the water. This is what my husband tells me.
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With a 12,000 gallon pool that means your filter will cycle through backwashes around 6 times. I would check with the filter company if it can handle that amount of continuous operation.
 
Good Idea. Since we want to get started today and they are closed we will probably bypass the system.

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What is the best way for use to test the salt ppm during this process. We usually had it tested at Pinch A Penny. Is there a test kit we can buy for this. We need to get it down from 1200ppm to ????
 

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beachglass said:
Good Idea. Since we want to get started today and they are closed we will probably bypass the system.

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What is the best way for use to test the salt ppm during this process. We usually had it tested at Pinch A Penny. Is there a test kit we can buy for this. We need to get it down from 1200ppm to ????
Click to expand...

Dirk said:
The best kit on the market for this use is the Taylor K-1766. Here or on Amazon.
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The bad part of that ^^^^^^^ is you will have to order it. I wonder if a good fish store that has good salt water people will have something you can use? Does Leslies sell anything close? Or just let them test it for you??
 
You can’t be sure it’s actually 1200 until you test it yourself reliably. Definitely get yourself a recommended salt test and also determine the level of salt you are ok with. Perhaps you could take a bucket of your pool water with a known ppm of salt (after you test properly), then dilute a percentage at a time until you no longer react, then dilute the pool to the same percentage.
 
beachglass said:
Thanks so much for that info. I would like to get it down as far as we can and then just pray. I cannot believe we are doing this for the third time, but also at the same time feeling hopeful that this is in fact the problem. It just makes sense.
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A scientific approach to your problem is more effective than prayers. You have been given suggestions on how to gather data to isolate the problem.
 
Will check with Leslie pool service. Also checking where I can get this kit or strips today. We have pinch a penny which I believe is open today, if not will test tomorrow am. Will be doing this transfusion for quite a while today.

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Good Idea. Well, we know for sure that 1/2 was not enough, since we already did that. Quite nervous to put my skin anywhere near the pool water after this rash. We will get there. Going to give that skin test a few days as my hands are still affected by the rash right now.
 
Turns out we had a container of the Aquacheck salt strips. I completely forgot that the pool service left them for us when we were checking the levels during the last transfusion. He left the container so they were in a secure place. Pinch A Penny reported 1200 ppm a few days ago. We just tested at it was 1190 ppm, so it was pretty accurate. So, we shall begin today.
 
Just to stay on the same page with everyone... there's some evidence that Judy's reaction has nothing to do with salt water. She's been in other salt water pools, and the ocean, without reactions. The current hypothesis is that there was some additive or foreign material in one of the salt bags that is causing the problem. Tracking the salt level as she replaces water is a relatively logical way to track the dilution process, but if this resolves her problem, it's not logical to assume it was the lower salt level that solved it. It will more likely be the dilution of the foreign compound, the identity of which has yet to be determined.

Also keep in mind, that should she be successful in diluting out what was causing her symptoms, that will resolve the current issue, but she'll never have found out what the actual culprit was, and so she won't be able to avoid it happening again... The dilution process is flushing out the evidence as we speak.

The ultimate solution would be to have the water chemically analyzed, and then allow her dermatologist to do scratch tests with any suspect chemicals discovered, and then really understand what caused Judy's allergic reaction. I don't know if that's practical or not. Just throwin' it out there...

By the way, date-wise, where is the addition of the water filter system relative to the appearance of the symptoms? Any possible correlation there?

It took months to flush out some sort of manufacturing compound from my new RO water filter. I should have taken it back. I think it was some kind of oil. It's clear now, but my RO water was not healthy for a while there...
 

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