Hey all,
I am an Aussie currently in Thailand. For those who have never been here, it can be very frustrating to get anything done, and people who know what they are doing, whether it be cars, motorcycles or pools !!
In the past I have had "salt water" pools with cartridge filters, an auto pool cleaner and it was as easy as owning a pool (or boat for that matter) can be. Come swimming season I would take a sample of the water and go to my local pool shop, they would tell me how much salt, how much other chemicals and that would be it for another year (besides cleaning filter).
Back home it was fairly easy to find a competent person to help, but alas it alludes me here. I am staying at a friends house and he knows even less about pols than me. It has a sand filter and we manually add chlorine powder / granules as required. Also, the climate allows all year swimming, so there is no down time as such. We are currently coming to the end of 'wet' season, and it has indeed been very wet.
Having said all that the pool was doing ok, but our little test kit for PH and Chlorine kept saying the Chlorine was very high, and that we needed to add ash. This is where it all started to go pear shaped.
Believing the test kit, I started adding ash, wait a cycle and keep testing... No matter how much we added it did not change. Note we were not adding chlorine and it was still consistently high. I went away for a few days an when I came back the pool was cloudy and green. The test still told us to add ash. It was at this time I thought perhaps we had got a dodgy batch of ash, if it was ash at all... Fake stuff is abundant here.
Went to the local pool shop (they don't test like back home) and bought a new bag of Ash from Germany, apparently. Their pool expert suggested I needed to put about 5kgs in the pool....Of course this did not end well, not only was the pool even cloudier it had 'bubbles' on the surface, which I had never seen before, ever.
Hit the internet in search of a 'pool person' and someone came, added some blue crystal looking stuff and he has been back several times, back flushing, vacuuming etc and we had had the pump running 24/7 for about 8 days. We can now see the bottom of the pool and is not green, but still a little cloudy. Through translation he now says we need new sand, but this is only about 2 yrs old, and it is clear when we back wash, the pressure is good, so I am not convinced of this.
Our little kit still says the chlorine is a little high (we have not added any during this time) and PH is still very red at 6.4 or maybe less.
I am going to take a water sample and see if I can have it analysed somewhere (like I used to back home), but I am not that hopeful.
I am an Aussie currently in Thailand. For those who have never been here, it can be very frustrating to get anything done, and people who know what they are doing, whether it be cars, motorcycles or pools !!
In the past I have had "salt water" pools with cartridge filters, an auto pool cleaner and it was as easy as owning a pool (or boat for that matter) can be. Come swimming season I would take a sample of the water and go to my local pool shop, they would tell me how much salt, how much other chemicals and that would be it for another year (besides cleaning filter).
Back home it was fairly easy to find a competent person to help, but alas it alludes me here. I am staying at a friends house and he knows even less about pols than me. It has a sand filter and we manually add chlorine powder / granules as required. Also, the climate allows all year swimming, so there is no down time as such. We are currently coming to the end of 'wet' season, and it has indeed been very wet.
Having said all that the pool was doing ok, but our little test kit for PH and Chlorine kept saying the Chlorine was very high, and that we needed to add ash. This is where it all started to go pear shaped.
Believing the test kit, I started adding ash, wait a cycle and keep testing... No matter how much we added it did not change. Note we were not adding chlorine and it was still consistently high. I went away for a few days an when I came back the pool was cloudy and green. The test still told us to add ash. It was at this time I thought perhaps we had got a dodgy batch of ash, if it was ash at all... Fake stuff is abundant here.
Went to the local pool shop (they don't test like back home) and bought a new bag of Ash from Germany, apparently. Their pool expert suggested I needed to put about 5kgs in the pool....Of course this did not end well, not only was the pool even cloudier it had 'bubbles' on the surface, which I had never seen before, ever.
Hit the internet in search of a 'pool person' and someone came, added some blue crystal looking stuff and he has been back several times, back flushing, vacuuming etc and we had had the pump running 24/7 for about 8 days. We can now see the bottom of the pool and is not green, but still a little cloudy. Through translation he now says we need new sand, but this is only about 2 yrs old, and it is clear when we back wash, the pressure is good, so I am not convinced of this.
Our little kit still says the chlorine is a little high (we have not added any during this time) and PH is still very red at 6.4 or maybe less.
I am going to take a water sample and see if I can have it analysed somewhere (like I used to back home), but I am not that hopeful.
