Hi all,
I have been reading the forum for several years now. I follow as much advice as is practical. My schedule often puts me away from very long stretches so sometimes things get out of hand as my wife is not too interested in learning about the pool. When I am gone she will back wash and take a picture of a multi strip for me so I can tell her what to add as best I can.
Hopefully you all can help me with my pool. My plaster is bad and I am curious about the best path forward here for the pool as a whole and curious what y'all would expect whatever recommendations to cost.
-Andy
I have been reading the forum for several years now. I follow as much advice as is practical. My schedule often puts me away from very long stretches so sometimes things get out of hand as my wife is not too interested in learning about the pool. When I am gone she will back wash and take a picture of a multi strip for me so I can tell her what to add as best I can.
Hopefully you all can help me with my pool. My plaster is bad and I am curious about the best path forward here for the pool as a whole and curious what y'all would expect whatever recommendations to cost.
- • Pool Stats - Pictures attached
- o Kidney Pool with 9' deep end
- o ~18,000 Gallons
- o Likely Build Date - 1980s???!!!
- o Replastered at least once long before I bought the home.
- Lots of old stains; from before my time.
- o Sand Filter - Replaced the sand myself with Zeosand a few years back
- o Pump system doesn't leak that I can tell
- o Pool leaks once water gets above a certain level on the decorative tile
- o South Central US
- o No Shade - Direct Sun most of day
- • Maintenance Regimen Currently
- o Pending my cya and calcium will use - tabs, cal hypo or liquid to chlorinate
- right now keeping 1 tab in the floater and adding cal hypo
- o Add 1/2 cup of Dia. Earth to filter and a splash of superblue clarifier to improve filter performance after every backwash
- o Borates ~50 ppm
- o Do my best to keep chemistry balanced with Muriatic acid and baking soda
- o Trying Borates to see if they reduce chlorine demand.
- o Had a high phosphate problem at one point many thousands of ppm. So i treat annual with the PR-10000
- I noticed that with the high phosphate i basically had no room for error with the chlorine;I would get a super bad bloom the second it dropped below the required level
- o Pending my cya and calcium will use - tabs, cal hypo or liquid to chlorinate
- • Current State
- o Just got water clear after it being a literal swamp from fall through winter; been slamming it
- Just said screw it as far as taking care of the pool over the winter.
- o Previously have had issues with black algae; never really fixed it
- Its back and better than ever!
- o Plaster pitter and cracking definately needs to be resurfaced at a minimum
- o Just got water clear after it being a literal swamp from fall through winter; been slamming it
- • Current Chemistry - Leslies vs My Taylor Drops - X/X
- o pH - - 7.9/7.8
- o Free Chlorine - 12.39/15
- Total Chlorine Same
- o Alkalinity - 88/ (90 to 100)
- o Borates - NA /50ppm
- o Cya - 39/30
- o Iron/Copper/Phosphates - 0 ppm
- • My Questions
- o Given the poor state of the plaster is there much to be done with the Black Algae
- Would bleaching the whites in my pool do the trick. (50 lb pail of Cal Hypo?)
- o Other than looking like Crud and consuming sanitizer is there anything dangerous about it?
- o If I don't replaster the pool this winter would mixing a up a pumper of Jomax and bleach and following that up with a pressure washer be my best option?
- I would also not let the pool go to heck after.
- o Given the the bad delamination of the latest coat of plaster what would be the best most economical to handle the replastering.
- A friend who is a contractor recommended ripping the whole thing out; he is not a pool professional, but a thoughtful guy who is currently DIY re-doing his own kidney pool; jack hammering out all the old plaster. He said this would cost ~$80,000.
- His reason being the water intrusion behind the top coat of plaster from the delamination
- He also said it would probably be cost prohibitive for me to do what he is doing with the aid of guys he already has on the payroll.
- o Considering whatever y'alls recommendations are about the pool/plaster. Would yall recommend upgrading the pump and filtration system from sand?
- I got way ahead of myself a couple years back now and now have a CircuPool RJ+ Series Saltwater Chlorine Generator on hand.
- What is all this going to cost me!?!?!?!?!
- o Given the poor state of the plaster is there much to be done with the Black Algae
-Andy
