Wow thanks so much for this information! I am actually down in Los Angeles so in the Southwest as well with insanely hard water. Our softened water is around 400 and I definitely use it. However, with me being on the road a ton lately, the acid was not happening and my TA was a mess so my pH was all over the place.
I’m working to fix it now, but my neighbors who have non-SWG never have this scaling like I do and I figured it was because of the SWG needing more acid TLC. I know they barely test their pools, so I was frustrated this was happening to me after just 9 months of mistreatment haha.
Our hardness is now at around 1500, which I have had happen before when we first moved in.
I have a couple of questions.
1) You say you bought something for acid. May I ask what you’re using?? I honestly had no idea something existed. That changes the game for me!
2) Only if you’re comfortable sharing, what did it cost for you to resurface your pool?
3) So far that bubbling seems to be happening only on that landing. Any idea why there? Just curious if you had thoughts on it.
4) While we are in CA, our swimming window is short (no heater) so it’s now through early October for us. Can this wait until after then? What do I risk waiting on something like this? Curious if you know based on your experience getting yours redone!
Thanks for all of your information and advice!
1) I have all Pentair equipment, so a Pentair IntellipH was the best choice for me. But it relies on (requires) a Pentair SWG, which I already had. They work together and control each other. For a non-Pentair setup you might be better off with a Stenner pump solution. I didn't research that at all, but many here know all about them.
2) $9K total for full chip-out, replace step marker tiles ($900), sand-blast calcium off edge tile ($450) and "normal grade" mini pebble (PebbleTec knockoff). Subtract those extras from the $9K if they don't apply. Did not include water, salt or any startup services or chemicals. Regular plaster (no pebble) would have been about $2K less. I went with pebble to get another 5-10 year lifespan out of this finish. Pebble is definitely not as comfortable as plaster.
3) I know that blisters can happen when you empty a pool, especially an older pool. The weakness is already there, but the release of the water pressure (weight) "sets them free." There would be less weight on your steps, so that's a possible explanation. (Just guessing, there.) And they can be weakened further by a bad acid wash (that's what triggered my pool's blisters). When my plaster guy took one look at the blisters he declared my plaster "done." It was from him I learned they were a symptom of end-of-life plaster, and caused by poor water chemistry. He claimed the acid wash didn't help, but that the blisters were already "waiting to happen." He told me he was some big mucky-muck in the National Plasterers Council. He was sent to my pool by the contractor who destroyed my plaster. So at the time, he wasn't advising me as my plaster guy (I hadn't hired him yet.), but supposedly as a disinterested third party sent to assess what caused the damage to my pool. So that's my primary source of info. He didn't offer any info about patching blisters, which led me to believe doing so is not worth the effort. And the few the contractor tried to patch, popped out anyway, while others formed along side them. So that confirmed that, for me. That's the sum total of my knowledge base. So I can't say for sure why they would be forming only on the steps. I learned elsewhere that installation and curing is very important to plaster lifespan, and so maybe your symptoms are due to bad mix or installation only on your steps? I suppose it's possible that the rest of your pool is fine. But nine years is the other clue. Like I said, it's not rare that plaster can poop out at that age. My plaster guy has replaced 2-year-olds. He's the one that claimed water maintenance the primary factor, which supposedly was determined by a 7-figure study conducted by the NPC. The NPC doesn't get a lot of respect by some here at TFP, so you can make up your own mind about what they, or I, have to say about any of this. There are others here far more educated about plaster and its tendencies. Hopefully they'll chime in to support or dispute my hypotheses.
4) Another guess, but I think the blisters are primarily cosmetic. At least for now. You've still got a lot of plaster between you and the gunite. Gunite is not water proof. It's the plaster that's making your pool water tight. My stone guy summed it up this way: once the plaster is compromised like that, with a chip or blister or scratch, whatever, then water does what water does. I took that to mean that eventually the water would work away at the blisters in some way, but he's not a pool guy so he didn't indicate how long that would take or even if it would eventually cause a leak. The contractor's worker, who came out to patch the blisters, said something disturbing. When I asked him if he thought he could fix the damage, he said "Hey, we're going to be lucky just to keep this pool from leaking." But he was the same idiot who destroyed the pool with the acid wash, so who knows what that meant. Bottom line: you can do a leak test at any point to determine your shell is still water tight, and if it is, then the blisters are not causing any harm (except to your feet!). I lived with mine from about this time last year until October, when I had the pool resurfaced. My logic: I didn't want to lose any swim season, and I didn't want my new surface installed during the heat of summer. I also didn't want the pool emptied after the first rain (paranoid about the shell floating up on ground water), so I picked October. I figured it was the coolest month of the year before rain and ground water could be an issue. Of course it rained that week anyway, but no harm. October turned out to be OK. That gave me all summer to swim and all winter to cure the new pebble without salt, which I didn't add until this spring.
That's one guy's story...
Keep researching. You could probably match the color and patch the blisters with some sort of cement product, with additives to help it stick. You could conceivably get many more years out of your surface before redoing it, if you don't need your steps to be pristine, and it that's the only place it happens. It's not a given you have to chipout the whole pool... If it's holding water, and you can swim in it, it's a pool!
