Greetings all! I'm new to the forums today looking for some advice of course. Thought I'd be polite enough to introduce myself. My name is Sim. We bought our first home about 4yrs ago and it came with a nice 24ft above ground pool. This is the first pool I've ever owned, and the previous owners just said, "Oh, it's pretty easy to maintain" (famous last words). It actually has been a good experience though. I'm an ace of all trades and love learning new things, so I did a lot of online research and we've enjoyed beautiful clear water every summer...mostly. It's been getting a bit harder to maintain each year, and I think I may have finally figured out why. Aqua Smarte.
The pool came with an Aqua Smarte Plus sanitizer installed, and I have loved having it. It took awhile to figure out why the levels never quite matched what the suggestions say, but after learning a bit more about how it works, and enjoying clean water with easy maintenance, I decided to just work on keeping my levels stable rather than trying to match what everybody else says. That was working well, but then we started having problems with algae. No problems year one - beautiful water all summer. One algae bloom year two, but I had slacked on maintenance so I called that my fault. It cleaned up easily. Year three (last summer) was much worse. The water was noticeably more cloudy all summer no matter how much I shocked it, and we had algae problems several times even though the system was running the same and I was adding algaecide from time to time. It was rough.
Towards the end of the season, I noticed a pretty considerable leak from the control knob on the Aqua Smarte, so I disassembled it to put new seals in it this year. Before I even turned the pump on, it was leaking still really bad just from having water in it. So, I disassembled it again and found the whole control shaft was cracked about 3/4 around, about to break in half - that explains the leak. I can't find anywhere to order parts from for it, so we decided to just replace the whole thing (plastic is all brittle - installed in 2012). Our local pool store sells Pool Frog, not Aqua Smarte cartridges (99% exact same system made by the same company), so I went searching online to see if there's a reason to pick one over the other.
I ended up stumbling across and article here on TFP where several people said to stay away from those systems. The common thing I noticed was that it leads to a build up of CYA over time because of the way the chemical is formulated, and that lines up with the issues I've had with odd levels. I've always had a hard time having anywhere near the recommended level of FC, and way too much CYA. I'm now thinking that since it broke anyway, maybe I want to go with something else.
So, the big question I'm here for is...what should I go with? I really would rather not have to have a floater in the pool. That's just something in the way when people are having fun, and it's common for us to have 5-10 people in the pool at once with neighborhood kids and friends. Is an inline chlorinator what I need? Is there a suggestion on a particular type? I'm afraid I'm at the extent of my knowledge, and we're already well into pool season and the kids are nagging me to get it fixed. I got really comfortable with the sanitizer system and would like something that is similarly simple. Can anybody help with some suggestions? Even if it's just pointing where to find that already talked about here on the forums, I'd appreciate it. If I did it right, my pool details should be in my signature, and I'm an information nerd so I can probably answer any other questions that may be important.
The pool came with an Aqua Smarte Plus sanitizer installed, and I have loved having it. It took awhile to figure out why the levels never quite matched what the suggestions say, but after learning a bit more about how it works, and enjoying clean water with easy maintenance, I decided to just work on keeping my levels stable rather than trying to match what everybody else says. That was working well, but then we started having problems with algae. No problems year one - beautiful water all summer. One algae bloom year two, but I had slacked on maintenance so I called that my fault. It cleaned up easily. Year three (last summer) was much worse. The water was noticeably more cloudy all summer no matter how much I shocked it, and we had algae problems several times even though the system was running the same and I was adding algaecide from time to time. It was rough.
Towards the end of the season, I noticed a pretty considerable leak from the control knob on the Aqua Smarte, so I disassembled it to put new seals in it this year. Before I even turned the pump on, it was leaking still really bad just from having water in it. So, I disassembled it again and found the whole control shaft was cracked about 3/4 around, about to break in half - that explains the leak. I can't find anywhere to order parts from for it, so we decided to just replace the whole thing (plastic is all brittle - installed in 2012). Our local pool store sells Pool Frog, not Aqua Smarte cartridges (99% exact same system made by the same company), so I went searching online to see if there's a reason to pick one over the other.
I ended up stumbling across and article here on TFP where several people said to stay away from those systems. The common thing I noticed was that it leads to a build up of CYA over time because of the way the chemical is formulated, and that lines up with the issues I've had with odd levels. I've always had a hard time having anywhere near the recommended level of FC, and way too much CYA. I'm now thinking that since it broke anyway, maybe I want to go with something else.
So, the big question I'm here for is...what should I go with? I really would rather not have to have a floater in the pool. That's just something in the way when people are having fun, and it's common for us to have 5-10 people in the pool at once with neighborhood kids and friends. Is an inline chlorinator what I need? Is there a suggestion on a particular type? I'm afraid I'm at the extent of my knowledge, and we're already well into pool season and the kids are nagging me to get it fixed. I got really comfortable with the sanitizer system and would like something that is similarly simple. Can anybody help with some suggestions? Even if it's just pointing where to find that already talked about here on the forums, I'd appreciate it. If I did it right, my pool details should be in my signature, and I'm an information nerd so I can probably answer any other questions that may be important.
