bicarbonate startup

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Ah, yes, but now we pay the price for using a sub-contractor and not the full-service company. The pool is leaking 1/2" per day and the light has fallen out of the wall. He should be back tomorrow to look at it.

But, the other guy was going to do an acid start up which the heater probably would not have withstood.
 
Did you get your issues resolved? Happy with the pool / color? If so ... who did you use, I'm in the market for new plaster in Houston and love the look of yours.

Thanks!

Chris
 
Funny thing is, I don't swim much but I enjoy the pool from every part of the house it is so pretty.

Our house is on an ordinary suburban lot but is diamond shaped as it is located at the end of a cul de sac so the house was built to take advantage of this unique setting. the house is shaped like an H with the top half pushed open a bit to 45 degree angles to open to the back yard. When you walk in the front door to the living room you look directly out to the pool through a set of french doors with side windows. To one side at a 45 degree angle is the den, with 8' x 8' glass looking at the pool and other large widows looking to the rest of the yard, on the other side is the master bedrooom with 8' x 12' glass looking at the pool. In every direction you are surrounded by garden or pool. All the glass is facing northeast so the windows are usually in shade and the pool is usually well lit by sun. Still we have solar screens so there is minimal heat gain when the sun does hit the windows.

I'd post another photo of that view but my dear husband has rigged a tarp to the pindo palm. His continued cutting of the pindo flowering shoots seems to cause it to create more shoots so he has decided to try to see if letting one go to seed will induce it to stop. Cutting those shoots is very hard work, requiring power tools and a ladder and always resulting in him bleeding from hitting a spike or two while working. So this is an experiment worth carrying out. Maybe that dose of Micro Life fertilizer that we hit the entire yard with this spring is causing the rapid production of seed spikes. In either case they are a hassle to clean up after.

Note to folks planting near a pool.... back up a lot so that trash does not fall in the pool. Amazing how much stuff plants produce. Flowers and leaves and fruit of all sorts. Not just in the fall, the evergreens shed in their season also. Even the evergreens make flowers, nearly invisible until they fall in the pool.
 
I think I've seen some other pics of your yard/pool and it is one of the prettiest I've seen on the forum. Always love to see more of it again when you are ready to post some. Nice that you can see the pool from everywhere since the color is so soothing. Did you ever figure out the green spa color and did it change?
 
Oh, the spa color is fine, it is a bit lighter than the pool due to the depth but the color is clearly the same. The turquoise flecks are visible in the steps and seat areas. It keeps the color actually a lot better in that regard than most of the photos I've seen of grey based pools where the step is such a grey vs the pool looking blue. My spa is the same color as the pool, just paler.

Oh, yes, that worked! this photo shows the deep end of the pool and the spa, with the wall whale brush there to show how different it is from that sort of blue.

Anyhow, the quartz finish is a great texture, just like the samples in the box and the color is quite consistent even though the plasterer did use calcium chloride accelerator when he told me he would not. There are some pale spots that are probably due to that, or maybe due to the sack of plaster that was torn and stiff but they used anyway (saying it would break up in the blender) but they are not so bad overall.

I think we had an accidental bicarbonate startup due to my high TA water and the plasterer apparently overdoing the bicarb in neutralizing the acid wash. The weird color in the spa on fill up may have been due to less neutralizing in that area. Were I to do it all again, I'd dump a bag of bicarb into the pool and the spa when I had a chance just to hope it was overneutralized if the contractor would not do a real bicarb start.
 

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And, I will note that I did a great job of monitoring the pool for the first month after plastering. The pH never did get high. The calcium level never rose at all until I added calcium, so I assume this means it all stayed in the plaster. The CSI was kept between +0.6 and +0.3 mostly, occasionally near 0 when I was about to add calcium. Currently, the pH will get to 8.0 if I don't pay attention, but that is due to the still high TA (130-150) for we are adding water every other day or so due to evaporation (1/4") and a small leak (1/4"+) combined with the spillover spa and waterfall. So while I do not have the CH up to 200, that is because I am monitoring CSI so often and keeping it about +0.4 to zero.
 
Based on posts I remember reading from you before I am not surprised you did well. Didn't you use to keep Discus? No small feat there, but hats off to you for being diligent with the chemistry. Way to go! :goodjob:

We have only talked to one builder, and already I am worried what I will do for fill up/startup. Our well is too slow and my CH is 700+ with TA around 220. :shock: Not good based on the startup procedures I've read thus far. :?
 

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