New pool inheriter with crazy 1st 9 months

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BasicTek

BasicTek

0
Bronze Supporter
Oct 9, 2016
870
Lake Mary, FL
Hi all,

I recently bought a home in FL that included a nice screened in pool. I joined up here a while back and have read some of the info. It's been an eventful 9 months owning my 1st ever pool.

I started with a pool cleaning service that I dismissed after 2 months as he wasn't showing up, and he didn't help at all when we had a Hurricane (as far as prep, or cleaning after)

As the pool got colder I invested in a new solar panel system 280 sq ft and when that failed to keep my pool in warm enough in December I added a bubble cover and reel.

Thing seemed ok using the pool store (too lazy to use the top of the line test kit I purchased) then in February things went awry.

The pool motor flow was so restricted that even at high RPM my solar had little effect, my fountain and vacuum stopped working, and over a weekend my pool started developing a yellow sheen (I believe this was a mustard algea) Well I ended up breaking my inline chlorinater, and replacing it, as well as figuring out the flow issues were caused because the cartridge filter (left from the previous owner) while looking clean on the outside was gunked up heavily inside. I replaced it and voila! my flow returned.

I fought with the yellow algae for over a month (kept coming back) I now suspect CYA might have been an issue based on reading other threads. I was finally able to get rid of all of it when I doubled my chlorine flow, scrubbed the walls daily, and cleaned the filter every other day for about 2 weeks. The issue was complicated because my intelliflo 011018 control panel had gone out and I only had my motor available during the preset schedule of 9-6:30 at 2300 RPMs (this deterred me SLAMMING or shocking my pool since I couldn't run the motor 24 hr) . Through this process I replaced my auto suction vacuum, my net, my brush, chlorinator and probably some other things I can't think of right now. Nothing like learning the hard way. I didn't even have enough information (I felt) to accurately post a problem in these forums.

Well Last month I replaced the pool motor with a nice Intelliflo II, I replaced the chlorinator with a nice SWG, and now my pool is crystal clear! Even better is the salt water is much nicer on my skin and I don't need to rapid shower every time I jump in to prevent being itchy.

Well the next project is refinishing the pool and I'm looking at refinishing my pool probably with wet edge pebble but still taking quotes (I can see the damage very clearly as it's quite overdue). Since April my pool is always in the 90's I no longer need to use the cover, and soon probably not even the solar as we enter Florida summer. I absolutely love the Hayward SWG, and as I've read through these forums it seems dumping the inline chlorinator for SWG was an awesome choice. Anyway I have a pic of my pool at night and I look forward to participating more in the forums as I gain more experience. I can say owning this pool has been a lot more than I bargained for in work, frustration, and $$$$$. However I use it almost daily and wouldn't give it up for anything (right now, we'll see how I feel in a few years lol)


2016poolatnight.jpg
 
B,

Welcome back to TFP... A Great resource for pool owners that have tired of the Pool $tore way... :shark:

I'm glad you are back with us.. The sad part about your whole story, is that if you had just used the test kit you bought, you might have saved yourself a lot of aggravation.. :(

I can't tell for sure from your write up, but are you now using your new test kit to monitor your pool water?

I have a SWCG and love it, but you still need to test and keep things in the right range.

If you want some feedback, post a set of test results as follows...

FC
CC
ph
TA
CH
CYA

Thanks for posting,

Jim R.
 
Thanks! Glad to be here.


I still have the brand new test kit in the closet, and still using the pool store for testing. The results from there are from them. I'm going to be validating their accuracy and the test kit soon, but from what I hear they have a very good guy running this store and many people trust him. The issues I ran into were really my fault for not knowing what I was doing more than them, I was only testing once a month in the winter, and they did notice a super high phosphates issue around the time of the problem, as well as CYA of 90 when I was using the inline chlorinater. I just didn't know what that meant until I started to see yellow. To note the water was still pretty clear, the yellow was only on the walls.


FC 5
CC 0
ph 7.8
TA 80
CH 220
CYA 60
Click to expand...


From the last test I had
FC 5 (seems ok)
TC 5 (seems ok)
salt 3200 (my SWG says's it's dropped to 3000 now)
CH 220 (I think I want to increase this a little)
CYA 60 (leslies says this is good, but the chart on this site says I want to increase it) I'm not sure what to do here
TA 80 (I think this may need to go up a little)
ph 7.8 (I just added cyanuric acid and haven't retested yet but going to this weekend, looking for 7.2 here I think)
copper, iron and phosphates are 0

I'm watching the pool much more closely now, have some test strips that I don't have much faith in, will dust off the test kit soon, and the SWG seems much easier to control chlorine with.

Regards,


Tim
 
Tim,

Assuming the pool store numbers are correct, then they look pretty good to me.

I would leave your TA alone. It will go down as you lower you pH Your TA can get down to 60 without any issues...

A CYA of 60 just means your SWCG has to work a little harder, it won't hurt anything.

Since you already have the kit, you really should break it out and play with it... Once you see how easy it is, you might rethink your pool store testing...

Thanks,


Jim R.
 
A CYA of 60 just means your SWCG has to work a little harder, it won't hurt anything.
Click to expand...

My SWG is currently set at 24% should I turn this up (I figured with FC at 5 confirmed by Leslies and my strips) that I wanted to leave it there. I bought the extreem 40,000 SWG even though I only have an 11K pool. I was told in FL itr was better to oversize it and that way it wouldn't have to work as hard and the cells would last longer (seemed like valid logic but what do I know)

Regards,


Tim
 
Tim,

With a CYA of 60, I would just leave the SWG output just where it is... you really want to try to keep your FC around 4 or 5 ppm...

If the FC starts to go down, you can turn the SWG up, and obviously if the FC starts to go up above 6 then I would turn the SWG down..

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
Wow, what a difference 3 months makes... I was so far off the mark on this post. I don't know exactly but an educated guess would be

My FC was probably 10 not 5 Leslies was always off by 3-5 on FC
My CYA was 200+!!! lol I was thinking about raising it due to Leslies telling me 60 back then
My CH was about 320 leslies seems to always be off here by 100
My TA was about 120+ not 80 (after several MA adds when I started testing in June it was 110)

Leslies has always been pretty close on salt and PH so I'll give em those two. That's crazy how far off I was just 3 months ago!
 

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After I finally drained my pool in maybe mid to late June it was holding steady at 80. Due to a massive amount of rain in late July it actually dropped to 60 funny enough. I've been floating a couple pucks I had leftover (actually have about 30 more) to build the CYA back up.

Current real numbers as of this week

FC 6.0
CC 0.0
PH 7.8
TA 60
CH 400
CYA 60 (last reading but the two pucks probably popped it up to 70 by now)

I love the way the pool looks at night, but usually use it in the day a lot more often. There's a funny reason though... Even though the screen is kept pretty clean I've had wolf spiders fall on or near me almost every time I've gone in that pool at night (probably 4 out of 5 times). I see them in the day occasionally but the ratio is about 4 out of 200 or so times. So I'm a bit freaked out to get in the pool at night. I'm not afraid of spiders but I don't want wolf spiders dropping in my head either...
 
I have one... maybe as good as my old pool guy or pool store lol but he takes care of the inside of the house and perimeter, I've poisoned the whole backyard have no trees or plants, wolf spiders just sneak in there to die apparently and freak me out of nighttime swimming ;)
 
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