Hi everyone,
Happy to be here and thankful for such a great resource on the web! I've been following along for some time throughout our pool build and now that we're officially "on our own" so to speak as far as maintenance, I'm looking for your help and guidance.
Background: We filled the pool ~30 days ago and the builder fired it up and balanced the water and got us going for the first four weeks. Salt cell was added about week 3 and then salt a week later. Water has been and still is crystal clear and amazing. Maybe a slight chlorine smell on your skin after you get out and that dry feeling when you take a shower, but nothing major (I'll come back to this later).
So last week my salt was added and mixed very well with that special machine that goes in the water and stirs everything up the pool guys have. We live in Florida and also decided to turn on the heater after the 30 day mark they told us we could. Brought the water temp up to 88 and enjoy! Last Wed was the last day for the pool guy to take care of it and now here I am this week doing my first tests and making sure levels are maintained. I confirmed with the pool guy he didn't add any acid last week, despite getting a 8.1 pH reading and he said because we added all that salt he didn't add the acid.
My stats:
Pool type: Plaster, mini pebble finish
Gallons: 15000
Single speed Pentair pump
Pentair IC20 SWG
Thermeau 125K BTU electric heat pump
Pool is caged
Test kit: Taylor K-2006C; digital salt meter / pH meter from Amazon; Taylor smart stir -- I'm not using the digital pH tester yet because I need distilled water to calibrate it. I did use the digital salt tester
Over this past weekend (1/21), I noticed some white flakes floating around and getting stirred up as I was brushing walls and benches, etc and I wondered if I was getting some scaling, but it just wasn't really visible to the naked eye yet?
Today (1/23): I tested everything for the first time and got the following readings...
FC: 7
pH: 8+ (via taylor color match)
TA: 120
CH: 350
Salt: 3270
CYA: 55 (I believe... I kept seeing the black dot depending whether or not I did the test in the sun or not. I have to retry this one)
I plugged everything into PoolMath and of course I know my pH and TA are too high and given I know these two factors are susceptible to scaling I said let's lower that. I was thinking what's the most MA I could add to lower my TA as much as possible, without jeopardizing my pH and came up with 64oz of MA which equated to lowering my TA by 17 and my pH by 1.0. I let this mix for about 90 mins and then tested again and got pH 7.2 and TA around 100-103 ish. The sample water turned light red on drop 10 and then darkened with drop 11 which is between 100 and 110. Boom, I got the exact results I was hoping and am on track to get my CSI and all levels balanced according to PoolMath.
A couple of questions and would be open to anyone sharing their input on my actions above and what I might/could do better.
1. What's this smell I could smell throughout the pool cage still 3hrs after I added the acid?
2. I still need to get my CYA up to target of 75, correct?
3. My plan is to continue to raise my pH through aeration from my bubbler on the sun shelf back to around 8 and then rinse and repeat to continue to lower my TA another ~25 points for a target level of ~75... and then hopefully stabilize pH around 7.6 (as recommended by PoolMath).
4. Am I on the right track or any potential flaws or things to look out for you could point out?
5. Also, I'm trying to minimize all chlorine smells as much as possible... i.e. in the water, on my skin etc. What's the best way to achieve this? Just follow PoolMath? I feel like my FC level of 7 is wayyy too high, especially for these "winter" weeks we have in Florida where it's in the 50s-60s overnight and 70s-80s during the day (plus the pool is caged).
Thank you all in advance and looking forward to many successful days ahead!
Happy to be here and thankful for such a great resource on the web! I've been following along for some time throughout our pool build and now that we're officially "on our own" so to speak as far as maintenance, I'm looking for your help and guidance.
Background: We filled the pool ~30 days ago and the builder fired it up and balanced the water and got us going for the first four weeks. Salt cell was added about week 3 and then salt a week later. Water has been and still is crystal clear and amazing. Maybe a slight chlorine smell on your skin after you get out and that dry feeling when you take a shower, but nothing major (I'll come back to this later).
So last week my salt was added and mixed very well with that special machine that goes in the water and stirs everything up the pool guys have. We live in Florida and also decided to turn on the heater after the 30 day mark they told us we could. Brought the water temp up to 88 and enjoy! Last Wed was the last day for the pool guy to take care of it and now here I am this week doing my first tests and making sure levels are maintained. I confirmed with the pool guy he didn't add any acid last week, despite getting a 8.1 pH reading and he said because we added all that salt he didn't add the acid.
My stats:
Pool type: Plaster, mini pebble finish
Gallons: 15000
Single speed Pentair pump
Pentair IC20 SWG
Thermeau 125K BTU electric heat pump
Pool is caged
Test kit: Taylor K-2006C; digital salt meter / pH meter from Amazon; Taylor smart stir -- I'm not using the digital pH tester yet because I need distilled water to calibrate it. I did use the digital salt tester
Over this past weekend (1/21), I noticed some white flakes floating around and getting stirred up as I was brushing walls and benches, etc and I wondered if I was getting some scaling, but it just wasn't really visible to the naked eye yet?
Today (1/23): I tested everything for the first time and got the following readings...
FC: 7
pH: 8+ (via taylor color match)
TA: 120
CH: 350
Salt: 3270
CYA: 55 (I believe... I kept seeing the black dot depending whether or not I did the test in the sun or not. I have to retry this one)
I plugged everything into PoolMath and of course I know my pH and TA are too high and given I know these two factors are susceptible to scaling I said let's lower that. I was thinking what's the most MA I could add to lower my TA as much as possible, without jeopardizing my pH and came up with 64oz of MA which equated to lowering my TA by 17 and my pH by 1.0. I let this mix for about 90 mins and then tested again and got pH 7.2 and TA around 100-103 ish. The sample water turned light red on drop 10 and then darkened with drop 11 which is between 100 and 110. Boom, I got the exact results I was hoping and am on track to get my CSI and all levels balanced according to PoolMath.
A couple of questions and would be open to anyone sharing their input on my actions above and what I might/could do better.
1. What's this smell I could smell throughout the pool cage still 3hrs after I added the acid?
2. I still need to get my CYA up to target of 75, correct?
3. My plan is to continue to raise my pH through aeration from my bubbler on the sun shelf back to around 8 and then rinse and repeat to continue to lower my TA another ~25 points for a target level of ~75... and then hopefully stabilize pH around 7.6 (as recommended by PoolMath).
4. Am I on the right track or any potential flaws or things to look out for you could point out?
5. Also, I'm trying to minimize all chlorine smells as much as possible... i.e. in the water, on my skin etc. What's the best way to achieve this? Just follow PoolMath? I feel like my FC level of 7 is wayyy too high, especially for these "winter" weeks we have in Florida where it's in the 50s-60s overnight and 70s-80s during the day (plus the pool is caged).
Thank you all in advance and looking forward to many successful days ahead!
