So as the title suggests, I don't know much about pool chemistry other than the very basics. I've been limping along for the last 4 years maintaining my pool. I'll give some backstory and as many details as I can, so this is about to be a wall of text!
4 years ago we bought our dream home. It has an indoor pool located in what would best be described as a 3 season room. We are in Northern Ohio so it gets quite cold in the winter and pretty hot in summer, and due to the fact the pool is enclosed and that room tends to get very warm we mainly use our pool in the cooler months. We do swim occasionally in the summer but we are mostly on the boat in the summer and in the pool in the winter.
As far as pool build. It's an oddity and I'm going to try and include some pictures for context here. The bottom is cement or mortar of some type, there is a tile section around the top and the side walls are a fiberglass/vinyl panel of some type that are joined at seems (this is important later). So there are 8-12 seems in the wall surrounding the pool. I do not know what is behind the wall material whether it is stone filler, concrete, or just dirt? But I do know that it leaks water both ways so it can't be something super solid. The pool is between 10k and 10.5k gallons. It is fed by a Pentair Superflo VS that runs 24/7 at low speed. Filtered through a Pentair Sand Dollar SD-40. Heated with heat exchanger that is fed from our house Geothermal heat pump. My wife keeps the pool around 90 in the winter time and we kick that down to 70's in the summer which it maintains nearly on its own without the heat exchanger. The pool has been "disinfected" using mostly a UV/ozone generating system that is fed inline after the filter and fed back in to the return line. There is also an inline 3" chlorine tablet holder that I keep filled but have kept the chlorine at a low rate. We get nearly no debris and of course no outside water being it is located indoors. We feed the pool from our well (we live very rural) and we have a very VERY heavy iron content amongst other contaminates. You will see in some pictures our last total fill left a ton of iron in the bottom of the pool. I have purchased a Pentair big blue filter for future fillings.
Here's the problem we've had. Over the last 2 years I've noticed the pool losing water at a faster rate than makes sense with evaporation or use. Yes I've done the bucket test. I did not test the in ground lines from the skimmer or drain, or the return lines. It was very obvious the seems in the side walls had cracks and the filler was failing. So we drained the pool this last summer and slowly worked on sanding down and removing the old caulk and filler and I then filled with fiberglass and then caulked over that with a below water rated caulk. We have a large boat on the Great Lakes so I am not new to fiberglass and water resistant fillers etc. We seem to be holding the appropriate amount of water now. The pool has been filled for over a week and we are losing nearly no water. At one point last winter we would lose 3-4 inches in a week, it would leak below the skimmer and run the pump dry if I wasn't on top of keeping it filled. Filling it with 50 degree ground water that often was playing havoc on both my chemical balance and more importantly the electric bill. I should tell you when we emptied the pool it was evident we were losing water through the seems as it leaked water BACK in to the pool for nearly a month after I emptied it. Very rust heavy water that stained the bottom of the pool in many areas.
One oddity that I cannot contribute to anything but would like to solve is that occasionally when we kick the pump up to higher speed for cleaning the jets will throw a decent amount of sediment back in the pool for a few seconds. Like it is just sitting in the lines while the water is moving slowly. I would like to know where this is coming from. The sand was just replaced in the filter before the pool was filled over a week ago.
One last oddity I think I have solved, last spring when we went on vacation I didn't want the pool running dry so I turned the pump off. Instead of losing water we gained water while I was gone and when we got back the deep end bottom of the pool was green while the rest of it was still clear. You can see a picture attached of that. I am now of the belief water was traveling both directions and we gained ground water from the heavy spring rains while gone.
I ordered a test kit through here, the first time I've used anything other than the cheap strips you get at the store. My current readings are FC 2.0ppm, PH 6.98, TA 290ppm, CYA 1ppm.
Can anyone help me out with what I need to do from here to get this pool running pristine. I am planning on doing away with the inline chlorine dispenser. I am interested in getting the pool on a timer instead of running on low speed constantly. Most importantly I would like to address the Total Alkalinity without effecting the fact my PH is near where I need it to be.
Thanks for reading all this and I'm sure I'm leaving out obvious details you all need to know so please ask anything and I'll answer the best of my knowledge.
Link to photos because I was having a hard time attaching them:
4 years ago we bought our dream home. It has an indoor pool located in what would best be described as a 3 season room. We are in Northern Ohio so it gets quite cold in the winter and pretty hot in summer, and due to the fact the pool is enclosed and that room tends to get very warm we mainly use our pool in the cooler months. We do swim occasionally in the summer but we are mostly on the boat in the summer and in the pool in the winter.
As far as pool build. It's an oddity and I'm going to try and include some pictures for context here. The bottom is cement or mortar of some type, there is a tile section around the top and the side walls are a fiberglass/vinyl panel of some type that are joined at seems (this is important later). So there are 8-12 seems in the wall surrounding the pool. I do not know what is behind the wall material whether it is stone filler, concrete, or just dirt? But I do know that it leaks water both ways so it can't be something super solid. The pool is between 10k and 10.5k gallons. It is fed by a Pentair Superflo VS that runs 24/7 at low speed. Filtered through a Pentair Sand Dollar SD-40. Heated with heat exchanger that is fed from our house Geothermal heat pump. My wife keeps the pool around 90 in the winter time and we kick that down to 70's in the summer which it maintains nearly on its own without the heat exchanger. The pool has been "disinfected" using mostly a UV/ozone generating system that is fed inline after the filter and fed back in to the return line. There is also an inline 3" chlorine tablet holder that I keep filled but have kept the chlorine at a low rate. We get nearly no debris and of course no outside water being it is located indoors. We feed the pool from our well (we live very rural) and we have a very VERY heavy iron content amongst other contaminates. You will see in some pictures our last total fill left a ton of iron in the bottom of the pool. I have purchased a Pentair big blue filter for future fillings.
Here's the problem we've had. Over the last 2 years I've noticed the pool losing water at a faster rate than makes sense with evaporation or use. Yes I've done the bucket test. I did not test the in ground lines from the skimmer or drain, or the return lines. It was very obvious the seems in the side walls had cracks and the filler was failing. So we drained the pool this last summer and slowly worked on sanding down and removing the old caulk and filler and I then filled with fiberglass and then caulked over that with a below water rated caulk. We have a large boat on the Great Lakes so I am not new to fiberglass and water resistant fillers etc. We seem to be holding the appropriate amount of water now. The pool has been filled for over a week and we are losing nearly no water. At one point last winter we would lose 3-4 inches in a week, it would leak below the skimmer and run the pump dry if I wasn't on top of keeping it filled. Filling it with 50 degree ground water that often was playing havoc on both my chemical balance and more importantly the electric bill. I should tell you when we emptied the pool it was evident we were losing water through the seems as it leaked water BACK in to the pool for nearly a month after I emptied it. Very rust heavy water that stained the bottom of the pool in many areas.
One oddity that I cannot contribute to anything but would like to solve is that occasionally when we kick the pump up to higher speed for cleaning the jets will throw a decent amount of sediment back in the pool for a few seconds. Like it is just sitting in the lines while the water is moving slowly. I would like to know where this is coming from. The sand was just replaced in the filter before the pool was filled over a week ago.
One last oddity I think I have solved, last spring when we went on vacation I didn't want the pool running dry so I turned the pump off. Instead of losing water we gained water while I was gone and when we got back the deep end bottom of the pool was green while the rest of it was still clear. You can see a picture attached of that. I am now of the belief water was traveling both directions and we gained ground water from the heavy spring rains while gone.
I ordered a test kit through here, the first time I've used anything other than the cheap strips you get at the store. My current readings are FC 2.0ppm, PH 6.98, TA 290ppm, CYA 1ppm.
Can anyone help me out with what I need to do from here to get this pool running pristine. I am planning on doing away with the inline chlorine dispenser. I am interested in getting the pool on a timer instead of running on low speed constantly. Most importantly I would like to address the Total Alkalinity without effecting the fact my PH is near where I need it to be.
Thanks for reading all this and I'm sure I'm leaving out obvious details you all need to know so please ask anything and I'll answer the best of my knowledge.
Link to photos because I was having a hard time attaching them:
