New NPT Mini Pebble & Glass - Startup Questions

[golfski]

Hi There,

I recently had our plaster pool resurfaced with NPT Mini-Pebble. I used a reference from my pool guy who takes care of the water/equipment and it was a good price (8k for 15k gallon pool) including startup. The pool turned out great the spa not so much (glass spread very unevenly - will start another thread). I have done a ton of reading on my own to understand this process and my pool guy seems too be doing everything wrong.

The water filled up last night and this morning he came by and put in Calcium Hardness, Muriotic Acid AND CHLORINE! Everything I read in startup said not to add chlorine until after 48 hours. I am really ****** off that the person who does this for a living can't follow simple directions.

What are my options here? Is this going to ruin the surface? Do I need to add something to offset the chlorine he added? Any advice on next steps is helpful - it goes without saying I am looking for a new pool guy. He is a great person but I don't understand why I have to micromanage the person who does this for a living.

 

[kevinskii]

Fortunately the pebble finishes are pretty resilient. We didn't do everything exactly right in the beginning but ours cured flawlessly and has been fine for the past 2 years. I'd be really surprised if the chlorine hurts anything in the long run.

Your best option is probably to manage the pool yourself. It sounds like you have a pretty good handle on things already.

I had the same experience with our pool person when we started up, and since then I've decided that this lack of basic knowledge is unfortunately the norm where we live. People have pretty low expectations, and when something goes wrong with their pool (algae blooms, scaling, etc.) they tend to assume that it's an unavoidable part of pool ownership.

 

[ajw22]

The reason for not adding chlorine for 48 hours is to give the plaster time to cure and not bleach out the color in the plaster. Chlorine will not bleach out the color in the pebbles. You probably don’t have a big problem with the plaster that surrounds the pebbles. Depending on the starting color the plaster may be a bit lighter.

Not much you can do about it at this point. Any damage is done.

 

[kevinskii]

I'd like to know if it makes any noticeable difference. My guess is that a year from now, when your plaster is 1/50th of a shade lighter than it otherwise would have been, you will look at your otherwise perfect pool and thank goodness that your pool guy screwed up as early as he did, and that you were able to fire him before any real damage was done.