POOL MAINTENANCE DURING SUMMER

[LeahEox]

Ideally I want to use the pool heavily during the weekend, and I guess I do... but by mid week, it is turning green. I am having to do chemical treatments every Wednesday/Thursday, and sometimes the pool is not ready by Friday night, or even Saturday noon. So I basically have a nice pool on Sunday/Monday (but I can't use it monday) and then cycle repeats every week.

I wanted to ask if you have pointers for summer pool maintenance. Any links or tips welcome.

 

[Donldson]

All of the advice you have given the last two months is still valid:

Treating the pool for almost a month now, with little to no results.

I have a pool. It turned green after the pool company did not service it for a week. After I noticed, I went to a pool supply store, took a water test, and bought some chemicals to treat it myself. Week 1: Added chlorine as needed (doing test strips or testing with them). With virtually no...

www.troublefreepool.com

A pool is like a pet: you have to take care of it all the time, not just when you want to play with it.

 

[LeahEox]

All of the advice you have given the last two months is still valid:

Treating the pool for almost a month now, with little to no results.

I have a pool. It turned green after the pool company did not service it for a week. After I noticed, I went to a pool supply store, took a water test, and bought some chemicals to treat it myself. Week 1: Added chlorine as needed (doing test strips or testing with them). With virtually no...

www.troublefreepool.com

A pool is like a pet: you have to take care of it all the time, not just when you want to play with it.

I get that... but I have followed that so I am still unsure why. I even hired someone to come take a look, no leaks, they checked the levels on phospates, and did algicide and phospate remover, cleaned with vaccumm, bought new filter, and ensured me main drain and skimmer are good. And yet, no change. Keeps happening. I bought the special test kit, and check chlorine levels regularly... sometimes even 7 times a week. But I keep loosing chlorine. If I do the treatment, like I said I get 1-2 days of good pool, and then 4-5 days in treatment/recovery. So I am at a point where I don't know what else is needed.

Any tips for special summer maintenance? I am in Florida so the pool guys told me rain and sun could be affecting it too...

 

[Donldson]

There's nothing special about summer maintenance. I'm suspicious that something isn't being done quite right during the SLAM Process if your water turns back that quickly. The FC shouldn't even drop back down enough for algae to grow for several days if done properly.

What are your current test results?

 

[Newdude]

+1 and perform an Overnight Chlorine Loss Test to see what is going on.

 

[BadDogPSD]

It sounds like you might not be maintaining your free chlorine levels correctly. Chlorine gets used up daily. Our pool loses between 3-5ppm of chlorine daily, more on the weekends when we use the pool.
The key to keeping the algae away is to maintain the proper FC level for your pool. For most of us this means adding liquid chlorine daily.
With our CYA level of 80, we need to maintain a FC level of 7-9ppm. I shoot for 9ppm. That is between 2 quarts to over a gallon that needs to be added every day.
If you test & add chemicals on Wednesday & Thursday only, use the pool on the weekend, and wait until the following Wednesday or Thursday to test again, you are not maintaining your pool correctly and will have algae and possibly other bad stuff in your water.
TFP is a process that works extremely well if you're willing to take a little time each day. I spend 10-20 minutes each evening looking at the pool, evaluating the water, testing, and adding chemicals based on the test results.

 

[JJ_Tex]

I saw where you said you ordered the test kit... please post your results. We see a lot of people focusing on leaks, filters, pool store magic potions, etc. 99% of the time what they need is chlorine.

 

[wireform]

I think the order of the day is to read POOL SCHOOL and understand what it really means to take care of a pool. Secondly you have to decide NOW if you're ready to give up pool stores for good and heed the advice given on this site. Mostly everyone here experienced what you have only to realize pool care has a whole other meaning. TFP will work very well once you're committed.