Hello all, thanks for welcoming me to your forum. I moved into a home with a 30,000 gallon oval plaster pool in 2017 and had to immerse myself immediately in learning all I could. After taking a few costly trips to the pool store and realizing that the employees there may very well have known less than I, I began to look around and found your website. That's the good news....
Some quick facts:
- DE filter
- New pump just installed
- booster pump also present to help with vacuuming
- 4 return jets- 1 (used with the booster pump) on one side; 3 others on the opposite side; Venturi fittings on 3 of the 4 return jets- which I notice bumps up the pressure a few PSI from the standard eyeballs.
- When pump auto-starts in the morning, there are considerable air bubbles coming from all the jets for up to a couple minutes, which eventually goes away- is that normal or a sign of air leaks somewhere?)
- 2 skimmers; both on the side straddling the booster pump return jet
- Propane heater present but not operational, I've had guys from two different gas companies visit and both said it would be cost prohibitive to get "up to code" and that's even before they would know if it works, since it looks pretty archaic and has been exposed to the elements for God-knows-how-long, not to mention the cost of the actual fuel. However, this consigns us to a relatively short swim season (June (if we're lucky - beginning of September;it starts getting rather cold at night in Sep in New England. (more on that later)
Over the years, I have begun to follow the TFP gospel and have obviously benefited (I use liquid 12.5% chlorine now, for example, which is actually cheaper than bleach, and twice the strength, go figure!). I decided to wait until joining/posting until I was pretty sure I could reasonably grasp some of the issues and/or questions I was still having, so thanks in advance for anyone who cares to comment:
- Due to the shortness of the swim season, the pool guy who opens and closes my pool, suggested I construct a "poor man's heater", consisting of a sump pump, which sits on one of the pool steps in the shallow end and a good length of black garden hose that snakes onto the pool deck and then coiled up onto a concrete retaining wall before before returning warmer water (sun-baked by the black hose) back into the pool in the deep end, via a slow trickle to presumably build up as much heat as possible in the garden hose. It seems to work, at least on particularly sunny days, where the water returning into the pool is actually hot to the touch. My question regarding this is that, originally I had the hose suspended out of the water as it trickled into the pool. Was I unknowingly giving the pool unwanted aeration, because my PH is ALWAYS drifting up? I have since submerged this garden hose to see if that will help with PH issue. (The sump pump in the shallow end also has some minor air bubbling at the surface- could that also be a culprit?)
- Which leads to most of my issues, considering that I haven't had much trouble with any of the other key readings , except for PH, which seems to only stay in the sweet spot like it's just passing through town, as it makes its inevitable way from 7.0 up to 8+. This season I have taken the TFP advice and lowered my TA even further (down to 80) to see if that will harness my ever-rising PH. But in case it doesn't, is it just normal to have PH always rising? (The people who sold us the house made it seem like they were constantly adding muriatic acid, but I doubt they were paying much attention to certain things, such as their eyeballs were all pointed at the surface, which with all those 4 return jets was creating quite a gurgling effect!) And if this is normal and I'm resigned to buying muriatic acid every week, don't I run the risk of eventually lowering my TA even lower than recommended (or will that drift upwards also with the PH?)
- Given if I'm able to reach a certain stability with TA of near 80 (or perhaps lower) and can't control my PH, I've also been reading into using Borax to help even further to regulate the PH. However, even though it's somewhat advertised as "far cheaper than the alternative" it still amounts to, by my calculations, something like 27 boxes of Borax and 8 gallons of muriatic acid to bring Borate level to 50 ppm, that's over $200- is this a viable and worthy option? Can I do this gradually and still get the final results, instead of the all-or-nothing hoarding approach (plus it's rather difficult at the current time to even get Borax, much less 27 boxes of it...)
- Finally (for now) I've done a fair amount of research on some additional skimming- lots of trees, pollen, shifting winds and bugs here in NH and combined with lackluster skimmers, I find I'm fighting a losing battle most of the time in keeping the surface clean, and the only product that might seem to possibly work is the "PoolSkim"- not sure if there's a forum on here regarding that (I apologize if I haven't looked into it yet- I just discovered the product yesterday
- Does anyone here have any thoughts? Mostly positive reviews, but I would definitely value someone's opinion here. Does it work like indicated? How obtrusive is it? Is there a reasonably easy way to get it in and out of the pool if there are people swimming?
Sorry so long-winded- I told myself that I wouldn't be- but maybe that's just the nature of the beast on an initial post- thanks again for all the wisdom- you've taken the maddening part out of this
Don
Some quick facts:
- DE filter
- New pump just installed
- booster pump also present to help with vacuuming
- 4 return jets- 1 (used with the booster pump) on one side; 3 others on the opposite side; Venturi fittings on 3 of the 4 return jets- which I notice bumps up the pressure a few PSI from the standard eyeballs.
- When pump auto-starts in the morning, there are considerable air bubbles coming from all the jets for up to a couple minutes, which eventually goes away- is that normal or a sign of air leaks somewhere?)
- 2 skimmers; both on the side straddling the booster pump return jet
- Propane heater present but not operational, I've had guys from two different gas companies visit and both said it would be cost prohibitive to get "up to code" and that's even before they would know if it works, since it looks pretty archaic and has been exposed to the elements for God-knows-how-long, not to mention the cost of the actual fuel. However, this consigns us to a relatively short swim season (June (if we're lucky - beginning of September;it starts getting rather cold at night in Sep in New England. (more on that later)
Over the years, I have begun to follow the TFP gospel and have obviously benefited (I use liquid 12.5% chlorine now, for example, which is actually cheaper than bleach, and twice the strength, go figure!). I decided to wait until joining/posting until I was pretty sure I could reasonably grasp some of the issues and/or questions I was still having, so thanks in advance for anyone who cares to comment:
- Due to the shortness of the swim season, the pool guy who opens and closes my pool, suggested I construct a "poor man's heater", consisting of a sump pump, which sits on one of the pool steps in the shallow end and a good length of black garden hose that snakes onto the pool deck and then coiled up onto a concrete retaining wall before before returning warmer water (sun-baked by the black hose) back into the pool in the deep end, via a slow trickle to presumably build up as much heat as possible in the garden hose. It seems to work, at least on particularly sunny days, where the water returning into the pool is actually hot to the touch. My question regarding this is that, originally I had the hose suspended out of the water as it trickled into the pool. Was I unknowingly giving the pool unwanted aeration, because my PH is ALWAYS drifting up? I have since submerged this garden hose to see if that will help with PH issue. (The sump pump in the shallow end also has some minor air bubbling at the surface- could that also be a culprit?)
- Which leads to most of my issues, considering that I haven't had much trouble with any of the other key readings , except for PH, which seems to only stay in the sweet spot like it's just passing through town, as it makes its inevitable way from 7.0 up to 8+. This season I have taken the TFP advice and lowered my TA even further (down to 80) to see if that will harness my ever-rising PH. But in case it doesn't, is it just normal to have PH always rising? (The people who sold us the house made it seem like they were constantly adding muriatic acid, but I doubt they were paying much attention to certain things, such as their eyeballs were all pointed at the surface, which with all those 4 return jets was creating quite a gurgling effect!) And if this is normal and I'm resigned to buying muriatic acid every week, don't I run the risk of eventually lowering my TA even lower than recommended (or will that drift upwards also with the PH?)
- Given if I'm able to reach a certain stability with TA of near 80 (or perhaps lower) and can't control my PH, I've also been reading into using Borax to help even further to regulate the PH. However, even though it's somewhat advertised as "far cheaper than the alternative" it still amounts to, by my calculations, something like 27 boxes of Borax and 8 gallons of muriatic acid to bring Borate level to 50 ppm, that's over $200- is this a viable and worthy option? Can I do this gradually and still get the final results, instead of the all-or-nothing hoarding approach (plus it's rather difficult at the current time to even get Borax, much less 27 boxes of it...)
- Finally (for now) I've done a fair amount of research on some additional skimming- lots of trees, pollen, shifting winds and bugs here in NH and combined with lackluster skimmers, I find I'm fighting a losing battle most of the time in keeping the surface clean, and the only product that might seem to possibly work is the "PoolSkim"- not sure if there's a forum on here regarding that (I apologize if I haven't looked into it yet- I just discovered the product yesterday
- Does anyone here have any thoughts? Mostly positive reviews, but I would definitely value someone's opinion here. Does it work like indicated? How obtrusive is it? Is there a reasonably easy way to get it in and out of the pool if there are people swimming?Sorry so long-winded- I told myself that I wouldn't be- but maybe that's just the nature of the beast on an initial post- thanks again for all the wisdom- you've taken the maddening part out of this
Don
