New pool....few questions.

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H

howie70

0
Jul 7, 2015
9
Shenandoah Valley, VA
Just put up a Coleman 16' x 48" power steel frame pool. Set up was pretty easy after reading a lot on here. The ground work to level my hilly yard was a little bit of a job. My questions.... It came with the 1500 gph pump. I read a lot of negative posts about the supplied pumps for most all of these type pools. Has anyone stuck with the supplied pump and had good luck with it? As far as running the pump, I have it on a timer....should I let it run for say 8 hours straight or set it up for 3-4 hours a few times throughout the day?
uploadfromtaptalk1436276389584.jpg uploadfromtaptalk1436276477821.jpg
Will add more pics. Tapatalk stopped cooperating. The well head in the pic is inactive. That well went dry 1 year after I built my house. Had to drill a 2nd well. For that reason I had water hauled in. I wasn't chancing dumping 5100 gallons from the well in a short period of time.
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As long as you change the filter often you should not have a problem. When I had my pump that came with the pool, I ran it 10-12 hours a day. Basically almost the entire time the sun was up.

Did you order a recommended test kit and read articles in pool school?
 
It'll do a better job if you add a skimmer basket, or better yet a thru the wall skimmer like the Hayward Dyna-skim. If you can suck debris off the surface before it sinks, your pool will stay cleaner.



These little pumps aren't strong enough to stir anything up once it lands on the bottom. Once it's there, pretty much the only way to get it out is to vacuum it up.
 
Azgirl71 said:
As long as you change the filter often you should not have a problem. When I had my pump that came with the pool, I ran it 10-12 hours a day. Basically almost the entire time the sun was up.

Did you order a recommended test kit and read articles in pool school?
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I have a test kit & over the wall skimmer on my amazon wish list. I wanted to get the pool up and make sure I had no leaks/issues before sinking more $$$ into it. This little project has went over budget. The wife says its my fault....she's right. LOL I have read so much my head is spinning. Funny thing is I had an AGP in my early 20's and had very few issues with water clarity and I never read anything. Just kept a floater in it with chlorine tablets and shocked it once in a while and it was pretty much crystal clear. Dumb luck I guess. Now I read all this stuff about people having issues and I am just waiting for it to happen to me.
 







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Still have landscape work to be done. Still need to bury a permanent line for power. Still need to build a small deck/platform. Will need to take another tree down this winter when I take the pool down. Hopefully the wife & step-daughter will enjoy it while I'm working on it!

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Azgirl71 said:
As soon as you are ready to fill the pool, order your test kit. I assume you have the K2006 in your wish list. Then post a full set of results here and we can help get you going.
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Pool is full. I will be picking up a test kit locally now. Didn't think my water hauler would get here this quick!
 
How long should you run your pump/filter? As long as you need to. The "old" advice used to be enough time to turn over the volume of water in your pool in a day. I still think that is a good starting point. However, how much you will actually need to run it depends on your bathing load, the temperature, what is around your pool (such as trees) and a bunch of other factors. Me, I have a 17,000 gallon pool, and my filter is rated at 2,400 gallons per hour. I run mine for 4 hours a day, so that is 9,600 gallons per day, well less than the volume of my pool, and my water is nice and clear. But then we don't have a huge bather load, we don't get a lot of leaves/dirt, and for many hours there is a solar cover on the pool. I came up with 4 hours after starting with 7 hours, and backing it down by half an hour every so often. Frankly, I stopped at 4 hours - I never tried 3 1/2 - I might be able to, but I am happy with 4


As for straight hours, or multiple sessions per day. If you get a lot of floating things (i.e leaves) over the course of a day, it can help to run multiple times a day. That way you are skimming off the leaves every so often, and they do not get as much of a chance to sink. As I said, I don't get many leaves, so I run one cycle (6 AM to 10 AM - so it is running when I test and add bleach before work in the morning). If I really wanted to, I could spend the $5 or so to get some extra stops to add to my mechanical timer to enable multiple sessions, but I haven't seen the necessity.

-dave
 
howie70 said:







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Still have landscape work to be done. Still need to bury a permanent line for power. Still need to build a small deck/platform. Will need to take another tree down this winter when I take the pool down. Hopefully the wife & step-daughter will enjoy it while I'm working on it!

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Pool is full. I will be picking up a test kit locally now. Didn't think my water hauler would get here this quick!
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You will need the K2006 or the TF 100 to follow TFP methods. You won't find the TF100 locally. You may not find the K 2006 locally either. The next best one would be the K2005 and you can add the Additional part of the test on line to add it to the K 2005
 

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jeffchap said:
It'll do a better job if you add a skimmer basket, or better yet a thru the wall skimmer like the Hayward Dyna-skim. If you can suck debris off the surface before it sinks, your pool will stay cleaner.

These little pumps aren't strong enough to stir anything up once it lands on the bottom. Once it's there, pretty much the only way to get it out is to vacuum it up.
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If I add the over the wall skimmer basket, will a solar cover interfere with it?
 
Are you talking about the cover that goes completely over the rails and has a drawstring? Or a real solar blanket which is just a glorified piece of bubble wrap that floats on the water?









Either way, it will work with the over the wall skimmer. It's low profile enough that the drawstring cover just slips over it. And the solar blanket is slightly smaller than the pool diameter, so it will just lay against it a little. I keep my ladder in the pool with the solar blanket, and it just curls up slightly against it.





If you get an over the wall Intex skimmer, get the deluxe model. It's much better made, larger than the standard one, and does a better job.





Amazon.com : Deluxe Wall Mount Surface Skimmer : Swimming Pool Maintenance Kits : Patio, Lawn Garden





But I still recommend a thru the wall Hayward if you can swing it. My kids were bad about knocking off the Intex while roughhousing around in the pool, and then not putting it back.
 
Thanks for the reply. That skimmer is the one I had picked out. I'm talking about a real solar blanket. I have an 18' blanket ordered for my 16' pool. The 18' was $20 less than a 16'. I will be trimming it to size. Did the same with my old pool years ago. I was planning on trimming as close to the diameter as possible. So again I am curious if it will interfere with an over the wall skimmer?

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I would think yes, it will interfere. But I don't use one (blanket), I would think the skimmer may try to suck it in and cause problems with low water flow to the pump/filter. If you use the blanket, you may not need to skim much as the blanket will keep leaves and such from getting in the pool.

And for the pump, I have the 18x48 Intex and stock pump it came with. I run it 6hrs at night and it works fine. I do want to upgrade to sand, but that will be later on.
 
A solar blanket will cover up the skimmer so that it can't take in water. I would suggest taking out the floating ring when you put the blanket on.
 
Jeff405 said:
I would think yes, it will interfere. But I don't use one (blanket), I would think the skimmer may try to suck it in and cause problems with low water flow to the pump/filter. If you use the blanket, you may not need to skim much as the blanket will keep leaves and such from getting in the pool.

And for the pump, I have the 18x48 Intex and stock pump it came with. I run it 6hrs at night and it works fine. I do want to upgrade to sand, but that will be later on.
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You have a through the wall skimmer with your pump or the round inlet/outlet s? Also, are you using a salt system along with the stock pump? Glad to hear someone is using a stock pump without an issue. I was also thinking the same about the solar blanket helping to keep some debris/bugs out.

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I have the over the wall round skimmer that came with our previous pool, but I haven't used it this year due to the arm cracking from dry rot I suppose. I do have the Intex saltwater system which had been great for keeping the water nice and clear. All I do is run the pump for 6hrs at night and the saltwater for 5hrs at the same time and then shock once a week if needed. Then net the big stuff and vacuum before the kids get in.
 
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