I think I stained my new plaster, any solutions?

[fatdogsdaddy]

I had my pool replastered in April with plain white quartz. I noticed some staining coming from my pop up heads and running down towards the deep end around the same time I did a boneheaded move. I poured about 35oz of what I thought was chlorine into the skimmer basket with the pump running, nice and slow, pencil sided stream and everything. Then I noticed to my horror I had grabbed the wrong bottle and had been pouring in acid. I don't know if that leached something from the heater or what or if it's something all together different. Am I screwed? Is there a fix?




Also the plaster looks lightly marbled or splotchy. Is this normal and am I crazy for expecting pure white?





FC 2.5 (normally runs 6 but I was lazy yesterday and didn't add)
PH 8 (normally 7.6 again lazy yesterday)
CC 0
CH 450
TA 80
CYA 70
Borates 50

 

[Jaimslaw]

For clarification purposes, is that first picture the staining streak before th inadvertent adding of acid? In other words, do any of the picture depict changes in the plaster following the addition of acid?

 

[fatdogsdaddy]

Sorry, should have been more clear. The first picture is of staining I discovered after the acid but cannot say 100% it wasn't there before the acid but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. The water was still a little cloudy from plaster dust at the time

 

[Jaimslaw]

That stain streak has very well defined edges..so doubt it would be from the acid if acid was added at the skimmer ...even if there was a pool water output port there, it would be an unlikely cause of both streaks. You mentioned pop up heads. Do you mean from irrigation pop up heads? if so, fertilizer in landscaping being irrigated by the pop up heads would indeed cause staining (as I found out when careless broadcating some granular fertilizer to my planter that borders my pool).

Its less likey that that the stain can be addressed with water in the pool...not saying it can't be but better chance of addresing it with pool drained.

Some mottling in your type of plaster can be expected, tho it is not clear from pics whether this is only showing in scattered areas. If it is uniformly showing up across the entire surface and didn't show up just after adding acid, more likely its a normal attribute of the quartz finish. Check the fine print on your contract as most PBs will refer to these conditions to give you a heads up as to their non liability for same.

 

[fatdogsdaddy]

Thanks for the replies Jaimslaw.

I was referring to the in floor cleaner pop up heads. That is where all the streaks come from then they run down towards the drains in the deep end.

The mottling is uniform across the entire pool. Just added the photos and secondary question in case it was related to the streaks. I can live with the mottling but the streaks bug the heck out of me. Especially if I did it to myself

 

[Jaimslaw]

I assume no staining occurred at the plaster around the pool returns. I would think that adding acid at the pool skimmer basket as you did (slowly, 35 oz, pool running) would showup as a problem, if at all, at the pool returns, not just in those two pop ups. In any event, there dies seem to be a strong relationship to the acid and the appearance of this oddly well defined margined streak.

One suggestion would be to lower the pool water by enough just to expose a foot or so of that staining. Then have your PB see about addressing that test area with appropirate treatment. I do not want to suggest what that treatment should be as that is best left to PBs who work with quartz finishes. Of course, you would do no harm if you were to use a stiff pastic bristle brush and some tsp or similar to see if that diminishes the stain on that part of the plaster that you can get access to via lowering water level. Some other seeming harmless efforts would be to get a chlorine puck and run it over the stain; and as another option, get some Vitamin C tablets, place them in a sock, tie it off, and give it a couple whacks of the hammer. Then let the sock sit against the stain for a few hours. In both instances, use the stiff plaster bristled scrubber as the final step (BTW, the Vitamin C worked wonders for a stain I had - freaked out that it might be permanent).

edit...you can try the Vit C/chlorine puck application without first lowering water level.

[Note: If you can drain it enough to expose some of the stain, don't be fooled if it disappears when it dries out, as it most likely will reappear once exposed to water].

Hopefully, others here will weigh in as well on this odd staining situation.

Good luck.

 

[pooldv]

First, we do not recommend adding anything to the skimmer. No need to subject your pool equipment to concentrated chemicals. Here is how we recommend adding chems, Pool School - Recommended Pool Chemicals

Take a look at this and see if it helps to diagnose the issue. Diagnosing Pool Plaster Problems