Hi!
I'm just checking in to say hi and tell y'all where we are so far.
I am in the middle of a (aren't they always) messy divorce and bought a house with a pool in December. I know absolutely NOTHING about pools and honestly didn't want one, but the house had the bedrooms/space I needed and it was time to get out of the old place.
The pool was covered and I ignored it until the weather got warm.
One of my daughters has a friend who works for a pool company. He said that he could open the pool for me and charge less than a service. The problem is that he showed up a couple of times, lowered the level of water in the pool, dumped the leaves off the cover into the water and disappeared.
About two weeks after that, I realized that I better do SOMETHING if we're going to actually be able to use the blinking thing! So, the children and I started scooping out the leaves. We made considerable progress with that and I have been Googling the brand names of all the equipment out there looking for owner's manuals and advice. I have a Raypack heater, a Triton II sand filter, and a Resilience PSC4 salt water system.
Yesterday, I took a sample of water to my local pool store for testing, and to get their take on the situation, and this morning I found your forum.
I haven't finished reading the pool school pages, yet, but I'm so excited to find a place to get unbiased advice!! Although, so far, I'm pretty pleased with the advice I got from my local store. The expert there told me not to buy anything right now.
Here's where we are right now - I don't know the size, but will be measuring the pool today or tomorrow to at least get the outside dimensions. It's a rectangle so I know y'all will be able to help me make an accurate estimate. It is an inground pool with a vinyl liner. The pool was put in about 30 years ago. I don't know how old the current liner is. It has a salt system that was added at some point. I think that was pretty recent since they are just beginning to get popular in my area. We have a sand filter. The previous owners had moved out of the house a year before I bought it. I do not know if the pool was opened last summer, but I'm pretty sure that they used it regularly through the summer of '08.
The water testing results:
Free chlorine 0.0 ppm
Total Chlorine 0.0 ppm
pH 6.5
Hardness 85 ppm
Alkalinity 30 ppm
Cyanuric Acid 1 ppm
Cooper 0 ppm
Salt 200.00
The water is brown and nasty looking and we have dragon flies, but I have not seen any frogs. Yet. We have lots of lovely mature trees in the yard, which means we get lots and lots of leaves.
The expert at my store said to add water back up to above the skimmers (since the disappearing pool boy had taken the level down a foot) then turn on the pool and let it run 24/7, backwash at least once a day, continue to scoop out the big stuff and vacuum the pool with the system on "waste" while adding more water. She also said that once the water is clear we'll need to add a bunch of salt. She also said that the sand in the filter will probably need to be replaced once we get the pool water clear.
Yesterday we started adding water and the pool is just about full. This morning I turned on the (do you say pump? filter? what?) and we can see the water circulating around.
Here's the first set of questions:
Do you think the advice from my pool store was good?
What would you do differently?
How long does it take to clear out a swamp?
I'll add signature stuff momentarily
Thanks for your help!!
I'm just checking in to say hi and tell y'all where we are so far.
I am in the middle of a (aren't they always) messy divorce and bought a house with a pool in December. I know absolutely NOTHING about pools and honestly didn't want one, but the house had the bedrooms/space I needed and it was time to get out of the old place.
The pool was covered and I ignored it until the weather got warm.
One of my daughters has a friend who works for a pool company. He said that he could open the pool for me and charge less than a service. The problem is that he showed up a couple of times, lowered the level of water in the pool, dumped the leaves off the cover into the water and disappeared.
About two weeks after that, I realized that I better do SOMETHING if we're going to actually be able to use the blinking thing! So, the children and I started scooping out the leaves. We made considerable progress with that and I have been Googling the brand names of all the equipment out there looking for owner's manuals and advice. I have a Raypack heater, a Triton II sand filter, and a Resilience PSC4 salt water system.
Yesterday, I took a sample of water to my local pool store for testing, and to get their take on the situation, and this morning I found your forum.
I haven't finished reading the pool school pages, yet, but I'm so excited to find a place to get unbiased advice!! Although, so far, I'm pretty pleased with the advice I got from my local store. The expert there told me not to buy anything right now.
Here's where we are right now - I don't know the size, but will be measuring the pool today or tomorrow to at least get the outside dimensions. It's a rectangle so I know y'all will be able to help me make an accurate estimate. It is an inground pool with a vinyl liner. The pool was put in about 30 years ago. I don't know how old the current liner is. It has a salt system that was added at some point. I think that was pretty recent since they are just beginning to get popular in my area. We have a sand filter. The previous owners had moved out of the house a year before I bought it. I do not know if the pool was opened last summer, but I'm pretty sure that they used it regularly through the summer of '08.
The water testing results:
Free chlorine 0.0 ppm
Total Chlorine 0.0 ppm
pH 6.5
Hardness 85 ppm
Alkalinity 30 ppm
Cyanuric Acid 1 ppm
Cooper 0 ppm
Salt 200.00
The water is brown and nasty looking and we have dragon flies, but I have not seen any frogs. Yet. We have lots of lovely mature trees in the yard, which means we get lots and lots of leaves.
The expert at my store said to add water back up to above the skimmers (since the disappearing pool boy had taken the level down a foot) then turn on the pool and let it run 24/7, backwash at least once a day, continue to scoop out the big stuff and vacuum the pool with the system on "waste" while adding more water. She also said that once the water is clear we'll need to add a bunch of salt. She also said that the sand in the filter will probably need to be replaced once we get the pool water clear.
Yesterday we started adding water and the pool is just about full. This morning I turned on the (do you say pump? filter? what?) and we can see the water circulating around.
Here's the first set of questions:
Do you think the advice from my pool store was good?
What would you do differently?
How long does it take to clear out a swamp?
I'll add signature stuff momentarily
Thanks for your help!!