Gunite Pool Stains

[jtr8178]

I purchased this house 6 months ago, and I have some pool staining issues. It’s a 25k gallon gunite SWG pool with an infinity edge and trough.

This summer I did an AA treatment and it did a pretty good job. However the PH got away from me and I didn’t put enough sequesterant in and it came back, so I’m not trying round two.

I ran the chlorine to zero, and PH was 7.2. I put the filter on recirculate, and dumped in 2.2 lbs. it barely lightened up. I ended up throwing in almost 10 lbs of crushed vitamin C, but still a lot of staining except where I sprinkled it in directly.

I let it circulate for about 36 hours now and just checked again. No real change. My PH is bright yellow on the Taylor’s test kit. I put some viatamin C in a sock and put it directly Over a spot for 5 minutes. No change, like it didn’t do anything.

I just checked the skimmer bucket and it has visible iron looking stains on it still.

I hadn’t tested the sequesterant level, but last check several weeks ago it still had some. Is that causing the treatment to not work? Or am I just unbalanced in the water that bad? Or do I have some other staining going on?

I bought another 10 lbs of vitamin C but a little hesitant at to just throw more at it.

The pic of the steps has a storm holding my AA spot treatment down.

Chemicals:
Chlorine: 0
PH: Below 7.0
Alkalinity: 30
CH: 100
CYA: 30

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Aside from your 6 months of work, do you know the “chemical history” of this pool? Do you know when this pool was built? Do you know if the previous owner had a pool service or was a DIY’er?

The stains in the skimmer could probably be rubbed off using a Magic Eraser. The rest of the pool may have a mix of different stain types. At this point you’ve really added way more AA than should be necessary so adding any more is going to be a waste and will make rebalancing the chlorine a nightmare. I would rebalance the pool and get the pH, TA and chlorine back up to their correct levels.

After you get the pool water back to normal I would suggest you purchase a Jack’s Magic Stain ID kit and figure out what you’re dealing with.

 

[ajw22]

Have you taken your pool water into a pool store and had them test the water for metals? It may give you some idea of what you are dealing with.