Hi all! I’m new here and several of you helped me start up my pool, and it’s looking great. So great, in fact, I’ve talked up these methods to everyone I know, and my family members are all relying on me to help them get their pools on the straight and narrow!
Which leads me to my grandfather’s pool — ignore my signature for this (sig is my pool, not his). He has a 40,000 gallon 35 yr. old vinyl in-ground pool (liner has been replaced a time or two, couldn’t tell you when, but it’s in decent enough shape for now), SWG (unsure of brand), Pentair Sand filter, no spa/waterfalls/etc. He typically closes his pool for winter/opens it up for summer even though we are in the south because he’s getting up there in years and looks forward to the months of not having to take care of the pool for the grandkids. He’s about ready to fill in the pool completely because he keeps hiring pool guys and for the past three years the water never gets better than a murky, cloudy blue. Couldn’t tell you the last time we’ve seen the bottom.
Well, now I’m on the case, and want to see what I can do to help him out — he has a SWG, so if we can get this fixed, it should be relatively maintenance free for him (or way less time and expense than has been put in the past three years). And maybe he’ll keep the pool.
So, on to the good stuff — I took my TF-100 test kit and speed stir down there today to see what we are up against. Apparently the pool guy was out yesterday (wish I would have known and they could have cancelled that visit...).
FC: 30!!
PH: 7.2 (who knows if that was right given the chlorine level)
CC: 1
CH: 200
TA: 70
CYA: Off the charts — I immediately couldn’t see the black dot (test performed outside in daylight)
Salt is reading at 3200, no issues with the SWG that I know of
As soon as I saw the CYA, I now know we have to do a water exchange, so from here is where I could use some brain power to make sure we do this correctly, as I’m a 2-month old pool owner and haven’t ever had to do any of this.
He says he can drain his pool via the deep end main drain and bypass the filter. He would have to fill it up with a hose from city well water. This will be a slow exchange process because he is limited by his water source (no way to bring in water), and his pool is massive. But he is willing to give it a try. I didn’t perform a diluted CYA test at this point, because we know we have to drain anyway, and I’ll save the reagent to test after we do some of the water exchange.
Am I on the right track for first steps??
Once we get the CYA down to approx. 70, I’ll then have to deal with the obvious algae issues, and yellow staining around the liner — which I think is algae but he thinks is metal from the fill water (I’m going to test that later because we might need to filter the fill water if it’s metal coming in — I don’t want to stain the liner more). But who knows what else other stuff has been added to this water by these pool guys over the last 3 years. In his pool shed I found multiple empty buckets that used to be dichlor, a half full buck of stabilizer, a full bottle of phosfree, multiple pH up and down products, and was told that they’ve flocc’d, used sequestrates, algaecide (maybe that’s his metal source) and shocked galore. There is no telling how much they’ve spent on cloudy water.
Anything else I’m missing, not thinking of, or obvious pitfalls???
Which leads me to my grandfather’s pool — ignore my signature for this (sig is my pool, not his). He has a 40,000 gallon 35 yr. old vinyl in-ground pool (liner has been replaced a time or two, couldn’t tell you when, but it’s in decent enough shape for now), SWG (unsure of brand), Pentair Sand filter, no spa/waterfalls/etc. He typically closes his pool for winter/opens it up for summer even though we are in the south because he’s getting up there in years and looks forward to the months of not having to take care of the pool for the grandkids. He’s about ready to fill in the pool completely because he keeps hiring pool guys and for the past three years the water never gets better than a murky, cloudy blue. Couldn’t tell you the last time we’ve seen the bottom.
Well, now I’m on the case, and want to see what I can do to help him out — he has a SWG, so if we can get this fixed, it should be relatively maintenance free for him (or way less time and expense than has been put in the past three years). And maybe he’ll keep the pool.
So, on to the good stuff — I took my TF-100 test kit and speed stir down there today to see what we are up against. Apparently the pool guy was out yesterday (wish I would have known and they could have cancelled that visit...).
FC: 30!!
PH: 7.2 (who knows if that was right given the chlorine level)
CC: 1
CH: 200
TA: 70
CYA: Off the charts — I immediately couldn’t see the black dot (test performed outside in daylight)
Salt is reading at 3200, no issues with the SWG that I know of
As soon as I saw the CYA, I now know we have to do a water exchange, so from here is where I could use some brain power to make sure we do this correctly, as I’m a 2-month old pool owner and haven’t ever had to do any of this.
He says he can drain his pool via the deep end main drain and bypass the filter. He would have to fill it up with a hose from city well water. This will be a slow exchange process because he is limited by his water source (no way to bring in water), and his pool is massive. But he is willing to give it a try. I didn’t perform a diluted CYA test at this point, because we know we have to drain anyway, and I’ll save the reagent to test after we do some of the water exchange.
Am I on the right track for first steps??
Once we get the CYA down to approx. 70, I’ll then have to deal with the obvious algae issues, and yellow staining around the liner — which I think is algae but he thinks is metal from the fill water (I’m going to test that later because we might need to filter the fill water if it’s metal coming in — I don’t want to stain the liner more). But who knows what else other stuff has been added to this water by these pool guys over the last 3 years. In his pool shed I found multiple empty buckets that used to be dichlor, a half full buck of stabilizer, a full bottle of phosfree, multiple pH up and down products, and was told that they’ve flocc’d, used sequestrates, algaecide (maybe that’s his metal source) and shocked galore. There is no telling how much they’ve spent on cloudy water.
Anything else I’m missing, not thinking of, or obvious pitfalls???
Why guess over $0.25 of reagent? You can dilute as much as you need to estimate your number and run it three times for less than $1.00