New Pool Build Fort Worth TX

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Thank you both soooo much!! I added chlorine and after 20 minutes my husband did the muriatic acid. I will test the levels in about an hour. And see what needs to be adjusted.

We are picking up our German Shepherd and Great Dane/catahoula/greyhound mix from board and train today. They haven’t seen the pool with water yet, so this will be interesting. [emoji3]

Where can I pick up stabilizer and calcium chloride?
 
Stabilizer aka CYA can be bought at Walmart or Lowes.

I am going to do a copy from one of our articles as the CH is not one I have any experience with :

"CH - Calcium Hardness

Calcium hardness can be raised with calcium chloride or calcium chloride dihydrate. They are available in some areas as Peladow, Dowflake, Tetra Flake, or Tetra 94, often sold as a deicer by hardware stores, and some big box stores, in colder climates. Pool stores will carry either calcium chloride or calcium chloride dihydrate under a variety of names, including Hardness Plus, Balance Pak 300, Calcium Hardness Increaser, etc. Calcium products should be spread across the surface of the deep end of the pool."

I have heard of several people using road deicer for this. Do a search and see what you find as to where you can buy it. IF your wallet can handle it you can buy the "pool" kind from the pool $tore.

You need to baking soda to push your TA up a bit as well. You can buy the big bags at Walmart as well. Sams carried them as well.

Kim:kim:
 
kimkats said:
Stabilizer aka CYA can be bought at Walmart or Lowes.

I am going to do a copy from one of our articles as the CH is not one I have any experience with :

"CH - Calcium Hardness

Calcium hardness can be raised with calcium chloride or calcium chloride dihydrate. They are available in some areas as Peladow, Dowflake, Tetra Flake, or Tetra 94, often sold as a deicer by hardware stores, and some big box stores, in colder climates. Pool stores will carry either calcium chloride or calcium chloride dihydrate under a variety of names, including Hardness Plus, Balance Pak 300, Calcium Hardness Increaser, etc. Calcium products should be spread across the surface of the deep end of the pool."

I have heard of several people using road deicer for this. Do a search and see what you find as to where you can buy it. IF your wallet can handle it you can buy the "pool" kind from the pool $tore.

You need to baking soda to push your TA up a bit as well. You can buy the big bags at Walmart as well. Sams carried them as well.

Kim:kim:
Click to expand...

Thank you Kim!! Here are my numbers after adding 75oz of chlorine and 96ozs of muriatic acid. And I added 64ozs of baking soda.

We just added another 46ozs of chlorine (the rest of the jug... heading out to buy more now) because the FC level didn’t budge.

481c14570cea7cdc3c06a6cfe3dcb13c.jpg
 
Look at your PH number as well. The test only goes to 8,0 or 8.2 depending on which brand you have. I am hoping you meant to type 7.9 for the pH.

Check the date code on the bleach/chlorine. You do not want any older than 3 months. It degrades over time and even faster if in the sun/heat.

Here is what your shopping cart should look like:
dbtgallery.php


Kim:kim:
 
kimkats said:
Look at your PH number as well. The test only goes to 8,0 or 8.2 depending on which brand you have. I am hoping you meant to type 7.9 for the pH.

Check the date code on the bleach/chlorine. You do not want any older than 3 months. It degrades over time and even faster if in the sun/heat.

Here is what your shopping cart should look like:
dbtgallery.php


Kim:kim:
Click to expand...

Hi Kim

Ph number is correct. It’s darker red than the 8.2 mark. Also, I have the electronic ph tester with the deluxe kit I bought from the site. And it’s been very accurate.

I’ll look for the dates on the bottles. I had no idea I would need that much bleach, lol
 
To get you up and going you might LOL I have been waiting to use that pic. I would get 4 jugs at a time and see how it goes.

We need to get that FC up and pH down.

How is pool math going for you? It was quite a learning curve for me as math is not my friend so I was "scared" of it at first :roll: After I used a few times we became better friends!

Kim:kim:
 
kimkats said:
To get you up and going you might LOL I have been waiting to use that pic. I would get 4 jugs at a time and see how it goes.

We need to get that FC up and pH down.

How is pool math going for you? It was quite a learning curve for me as math is not my friend so I was "scared" of it at first :roll: After I used a few times we became better friends!

Kim:kim:
Click to expand...

Boy, ph is all over the place! But we finally have some FC!!

New numbers

6170f78d5855571ee7fcb94696748472.jpg
 
Your pool looks so great! I think I mentioned how much I admired the spillway on the spa and it only looks better with water!

So you asked about plants earlier! I absolutely love little gem magnolias I have 3 of them. They are beautiful year round, bloom all summer and smell great. One issue is they do pretty much drop leaves all year round. The good thing is they are heavy so pretty much drop straight down and the leaves are big so would be easy to clean out if they got in your pool. Relatively fast growers a 6' tree could double its size in few years. They seam to like a little break from wind so along a fence will probably help.

f6f231f34eba8a5840e87edfe20a8289.jpg



Other options Texas Mountain Laurel. I'd pick this over cherry laurel as they are much more drought tolerant. They have amazing blooms in spring of purple and smell like grape soda. They are relatively slow growing only about a foot a year. I planted two behind my pool.

f2400f40742d932f9a1f421e2bee094c.jpg


Olive trees are also great around pools. They are evergreen and drought tolerant also a little slow growing.

5826ea9dd29376ac0f5d71f71c160a95.jpg
 
Go to Walmart if you have one close and get the bleach (regular Walmart bleach, no additives, no easy pour just bleach). When I started my pool i was buying 8-10 jugs a week but it was hot and its cooling off now. I would get 6 to start...

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Great small tree/bush selections...I really like the little gem's and going to get a couple of Texas ML's.
 

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One other note, I don't know if it's the measuring tool you are using or not. It shows that CYA should be between 70 and 80. If I'm not mistaken, that's for a salt water pool. For a chlorinated pool (using bleach) it should be lower. I keep mine between 30 and 40. As CYA gets higher it can lock up the chlorine in the pool, if it gets high enough you will have to drain a portion of the pool to resolve the issue of the high CYA. My neighbors pool had a CYA of 200 which makes the free chlorine pretty much useless, he had to drain a portion of his pool.
 
Mcow said:
Your pool looks so great! I think I mentioned how much I admired the spillway on the spa and it only looks better with water!

So you asked about plants earlier! I absolutely love little gem magnolias I have 3 of them. They are beautiful year round, bloom all summer and smell great. One issue is they do pretty much drop leaves all year round. The good thing is they are heavy so pretty much drop straight down and the leaves are big so would be easy to clean out if they got in your pool. Relatively fast growers a 6' tree could double its size in few years. They seam to like a little break from wind so along a fence will probably help.




Other options Texas Mountain Laurel. I'd pick this over cherry laurel as they are much more drought tolerant. They have amazing blooms in spring of purple and smell like grape soda. They are relatively slow growing only about a foot a year. I planted two behind my pool.



Olive trees are also great around pools. They are evergreen and drought tolerant also a little slow growing.
Click to expand...

Awesome ideas!! And it's funny because those are most of the trees/shrubs we have picked out :) Except I want to do a mix of Cherry Laurel and Texas Mountain Laurel :) The landscaping in your yard is gorgeous!

ctrav said:
Go to Walmart if you have one close and get the bleach (regular Walmart bleach, no additives, no easy pour just bleach). When I started my pool i was buying 8-10 jugs a week but it was hot and its cooling off now. I would get 6 to start...

- - - Updated - - -

Great small tree/bush selections...I really like the little gem's and going to get a couple of Texas ML's.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm starting to see that I need to stock up on bleach until I get the SWCG going.

Marlahoutex said:
The date on the bleach will be something like this:
17 264 which means
17 - year
264 - day of the year

That how you can tell how fresh it is.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for the tip! I got lucky and all of our bleach is fresh, thank goodness.

ctrav said:
How is your water doing? Any issues with testing?
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Testing is going great. I have the hang of how to do it now. I already need to re-order some of the reagents, lol. Still struggling to get the levels where I want them, but most of it is because of the holiday weekend and having so many people in the pool. Plus we had an issue with our spa valve, and when we would shut the pool stuff off, the spa would drain down to the level of the pool and then the water would go out the overflow thing. So we would have to add water when we started everything up again. That just got fixed yesterday, so hopefully things will level out now.

scott.lopez said:
Lowes typically sells chlorine and acid by the case (3 pack). I don't think the price is any cheaper for buying the three pack, but it's definitely easier to move and store (vertically).
Click to expand...

We found muriatic acid at lowes in 2 packs, so we picked that up. I haven't found any cases of bleach there, but I will ask this weekend when we go.

scott.lopez said:
One other note, I don't know if it's the measuring tool you are using or not. It shows that CYA should be between 70 and 80. If I'm not mistaken, that's for a salt water pool. For a chlorinated pool (using bleach) it should be lower. I keep mine between 30 and 40. As CYA gets higher it can lock up the chlorine in the pool, if it gets high enough you will have to drain a portion of the pool to resolve the issue of the high CYA. My neighbors pool had a CYA of 200 which makes the free chlorine pretty much useless, he had to drain a portion of his pool.
Click to expand...

We do have a SWCG, but we can't turn it on for 30 days... so my app is set for salt water since that is what we will be going to as soon as we can turn it on. I am not really trying to get the CYA higher than 30 or 40 right now. I will work on that one after I get the FC and pH to finally get somewhat balanced. :)
 
bleach is typically in the outdoor department with the pool chemicals. Usually along that wall shared with the store. If you found the 2 pack of acid, that's usually where it's at. Wal-mart is my fall back plan as well.

--> "Plus we had an issue with our spa valve, and when we would shut the pool stuff off, the spa would drain down to the level of the pool and then the water would go out the overflow thing"

This sounds like a check valve issue. We had a similar problem.
 
I would keep the cya lower also like you have it. Lower doses of chlorine needed that way. I would set ur chlorine to the higher range of the fc target with a lower cya so u don't fall out of the min range and run the risk of algea. Just in case you run late on testing one day or are out and forget or get home late. I like having that cushion. Plus says that are really hot and sunny you will burn off more. Concentrate on keeping that ph in range it plays a bIg part in ur csi number.
 
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