Hello everyone,
New here, but not new to pools. I worked at a Leslies some time ago for a couple years and had a manager who actually understood water, so I had a good teacher. I purchased my first home here in Arizona last year, and it has a large pool with a diving board. Specs are down below. All equipment, including a pool resurface and new water, was installed in 2021 by the previous owners. At least that's what they told me (date on the filter is 2021).
I was confident I could handle it myself and spend the 30 minutes/week it required, especially since there's a Leslies Pro 1/2 mile away. Last summer was great, water got cloudy once or twice but nothing I couldn't handle. I was only adding a couple bags of shock and some acid every week (following weekly testing), and it saw maybe once a week use with a few parties over the course of the season. Summer came to a close and I backed off on the chems as it cooled down. I started a new job at the end of last year and admittedly got too busy to even think about the pool. So, when this summer came around, my lack of winter attention came back to haunt me via an extreme algae problem. Like, I've never seen an algae issue that bad.
With a relatively large pool at 30k gallons, it was quite a lengthy and expensive war to fight. Upwards of 30 pounds of cal hypo, a couple bottles of copper algaecide, vigorous brushing and vacuuming, needed some conditioner as well. Eventually the water turned back to blue, but was extremely cloudy. As in, maybe 1 foot visibility cloudy. I assumed it was remains of calcium due to all the shock I added and would clear up after some time running the pump at 2800rpm 24/7. Well, it didn't. I decided that it would be better to just hire a highly rated (on yelp) pool service to clear it up for me and maintain from there as I clearly don't have the attention to give it. After a month of them coming by, zero change in the clarity. I asked them about it and we decided to do a flocc treatment. I added the bottle and pump sat off for 4 days. I could very nearly see the bottom drain, as well as the caked on Crud at the bottom. Then after the pool guy came and vac'd it up, I went to about 2-3 feet visibility. Assuming during the vac process a lot of it got pushed back up into the water.
I've also noticed a lack of chlorine retention. They added 4 gal of liquid chlorine and 4lbs of trichlor yesterday morning, and this morning I'm only at 1ppm TAC. No green that I can tell. My most recent Leslies test (6/4) has my CYA at 71ppm, TDS at 2100ppm, and hardness at 344ppm. TDS maybe a bit high but nothing outrageous in my opinion. Pump currently runs for 4 hours at 2800rpm, 6 hours at 2200rpm, and 6 hours at 1300rpm.
After getting a little angry with the pool service because I told them mid last week that I have a party this weekend and it needed to be cleared up, they had the GM come out (the one who came yesterday) and added some stuff. Still no change this morning, so I emailed with some pics. They told me that my filter is "extremely undersized" and that switching to a cartridge filter would solve my problems. I think I need another flocc treatment since the first one helped a good amount, but they said that is not the right course of action.
My reason for posting here is, what do you guys think? Is my filter undersized? Do I need to swap out some water? Should I just do another flocc treatment (or two) and all will be well? This thing has been stressing me out for months, and its getting hot here in the desert, so I just want to use my pool without having to spend another $500+ on fixes or $1000+ on a new filter. I think I've provided all relevant information, but if I've forgotten something please let me know.
Thanks in advance and happy 4th weekend!
New here, but not new to pools. I worked at a Leslies some time ago for a couple years and had a manager who actually understood water, so I had a good teacher. I purchased my first home here in Arizona last year, and it has a large pool with a diving board. Specs are down below. All equipment, including a pool resurface and new water, was installed in 2021 by the previous owners. At least that's what they told me (date on the filter is 2021).
I was confident I could handle it myself and spend the 30 minutes/week it required, especially since there's a Leslies Pro 1/2 mile away. Last summer was great, water got cloudy once or twice but nothing I couldn't handle. I was only adding a couple bags of shock and some acid every week (following weekly testing), and it saw maybe once a week use with a few parties over the course of the season. Summer came to a close and I backed off on the chems as it cooled down. I started a new job at the end of last year and admittedly got too busy to even think about the pool. So, when this summer came around, my lack of winter attention came back to haunt me via an extreme algae problem. Like, I've never seen an algae issue that bad.
With a relatively large pool at 30k gallons, it was quite a lengthy and expensive war to fight. Upwards of 30 pounds of cal hypo, a couple bottles of copper algaecide, vigorous brushing and vacuuming, needed some conditioner as well. Eventually the water turned back to blue, but was extremely cloudy. As in, maybe 1 foot visibility cloudy. I assumed it was remains of calcium due to all the shock I added and would clear up after some time running the pump at 2800rpm 24/7. Well, it didn't. I decided that it would be better to just hire a highly rated (on yelp) pool service to clear it up for me and maintain from there as I clearly don't have the attention to give it. After a month of them coming by, zero change in the clarity. I asked them about it and we decided to do a flocc treatment. I added the bottle and pump sat off for 4 days. I could very nearly see the bottom drain, as well as the caked on Crud at the bottom. Then after the pool guy came and vac'd it up, I went to about 2-3 feet visibility. Assuming during the vac process a lot of it got pushed back up into the water.
I've also noticed a lack of chlorine retention. They added 4 gal of liquid chlorine and 4lbs of trichlor yesterday morning, and this morning I'm only at 1ppm TAC. No green that I can tell. My most recent Leslies test (6/4) has my CYA at 71ppm, TDS at 2100ppm, and hardness at 344ppm. TDS maybe a bit high but nothing outrageous in my opinion. Pump currently runs for 4 hours at 2800rpm, 6 hours at 2200rpm, and 6 hours at 1300rpm.
After getting a little angry with the pool service because I told them mid last week that I have a party this weekend and it needed to be cleared up, they had the GM come out (the one who came yesterday) and added some stuff. Still no change this morning, so I emailed with some pics. They told me that my filter is "extremely undersized" and that switching to a cartridge filter would solve my problems. I think I need another flocc treatment since the first one helped a good amount, but they said that is not the right course of action.
My reason for posting here is, what do you guys think? Is my filter undersized? Do I need to swap out some water? Should I just do another flocc treatment (or two) and all will be well? This thing has been stressing me out for months, and its getting hot here in the desert, so I just want to use my pool without having to spend another $500+ on fixes or $1000+ on a new filter. I think I've provided all relevant information, but if I've forgotten something please let me know.
Thanks in advance and happy 4th weekend!
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