Scale on spillway

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Romoth

Silver Supporter
Sep 18, 2020
82
Houston, TX
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
I've had my pool running about about 6ish months now and, I'm trying to figure out how I got this calcium buildup on my spillway. It was ALL over this wall and took my wife and I something like four hours with (very gently) a screwdriver and muriatic acid to break all of this off. It seems like it just suddenly appeared. I literally test my pool daily and update as needed. Every once in a while my CSI will be a little high (as seen in the records), but I immediately bring my PH back down to manage it. The only thing I can think of that influenced it is we heated the pool up to about 90 for a couple days a few weeks ago to get some swimming done with the kiddo. It was about 40 outside, so a pretty substantial temperature difference. I know that heating it up increases PH, so I keep a pretty close eye on it. That's literally the only thing I can think of. We did that heat up twice in the past month for about 2 days each time.

My pictures are here: Pool Pictures

My Pool logs are here: Dropbox CSV Log

I'd really appreciate any insight into what I'm doing wrong so I don't do it again! Thank you in advance for any help.
 
Its hard to tell from the pictures, but could it be efflorescence where the water from the spa is leaking through the wall? Can you post a picture showing the full wall?
 
The entire wall is the second picture in the imgur link. let me know what you'd like to see on the whole wall and I can update it. If it is effloresecence, is this something I just deal with, or is there a fix to it? As I think this through, I don't have other pictures of the actual scale on the wall. I just took this one as it was the worst offender.
 
Thank you both for the thoughts. I think my primary concern is that I didn't chemically create the issue with either heat or CSI. I've been watching my CSI like a hawk, though, and I take literal daily tests because it's my baby!
 
High amounts of evaporation can cause scale build up regardless of how good you are on CSI. Heating up the pool water to much higher than the air temperature dramatically increased your evaporation.

Do you know if the builder sealed both sides of the spa wall prior to installing the plaster and tile?
 
Well that would certainly have been the case. We had the whole thing heated up, so I would anticipate that spillway would evaporate like crazy with those temperature differentials. Ok, going forward I'll stick to the hot tub for cold winters. If I heat the hot tub up, it's still going to spill over some. Is a good brushing either that night or the next day enough to keep the scale down from those instances or is there another best practice?
 
The short duration of the warmer water spilling over after the spa use should not be that much of an issue.

You should not be running your spillover all the time. I assume you have automation? You should schedule your spillover to run for 30 minutes or so a couple times per day to keep the spa water chlorinated.
 
As a follow-up on all of this, PB said that they waterproofed all the tile and that the spillway runs when the spa runs to keep circulation going. Exact quote is "no. Spa circulates when pool circulates and it needs it".
 

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What automation do you have? Let us know (add to your signature) and we can describe how to set up the Spillover mode.

Running the spillover all the time drives pH up. It is not necessary. A couple times a day for 30 minutes or so is more than sufficient.
 
I'm always happy to learn! I've updated my signature. I can't quite tell what exact version of the easy touch I have, but it has the screen on the left, 7 options across the top, etc. Here is a picture of it: Pentair Easytouch

So what I'm hearing is that I don't need that spillway running to keep both the pool and spa circulating? That would be awesome, because my PH does creep up quickly.
 
You do not need the spillway to continuously run. It needs to run a couple times per day to keep the spa water chlorinated.

With Screenlogic, you can set up the Feature called Spillway. You create a schedule for it during the time your Pool Mode is operating. Schedule it twice per day for 30 minutes each. When the Spillway is activated, the valve on the suction side will stay pulling from your skimmer(s). The valve on the return side will shift to returning the water to the spa. When the schedule is over, the return valve will return to Pool return.

You may have a 'makeup' line that sends water to the spa at all times. There should be a valve on that line. Shut it if you wish to use your Spillway function.
 
If there's a guide online how to do this, I'm happy to read it, but I didn't see anything that helped me in my google search. When I access SLCONFIG, I see that I have the option to set the spillway function under the circuits. Do I just pick an unused circuit and set it to spillway? It looks like Aux6 and Aux 7 are free. I set that to spillway and add two separate spillway schedules to my overall schedule?

Ok, next steps, I'm not sure I understand the last line about a 'makeup' line. These are pictures of my plumbing: Plumbing

Are you able to give me slightly more specific instructions, assuming I'm a moron? :p I'd love to not have to deal with the aeration and to help keep the spillway a little easier to maintain. I already have a 30 minute schedule for the waterfalls to keep it manageable.
 
Your make up line is in the second picture. You would turn off the valve to block the spa return.

You do not need to use an Aux relay. You use a Feature Circuit. Then you schedule that for twice per day, say morning and afternoon.

I do not have Screenlogic, so I just do it at the ET.
 
Thanks a ton. When you say the second picture, I'm assuming you mean the line on the far left that separates the pool and spa? I don't have a great understanding of my plumbing! Thanks for the other advice, I can set up a schedule for that on a feature circuit. If I want to turn the spillway back on for longer periods of time, I can just manually turn "spillway" on, correct? I really appreciate all the help.
 
It was your third picture. It is a manual Jandy valve. Turn the OFF paddle towards the Spa.

Yes. You can activate Spillway any time you like.

Once you have made the change, check that the system is doing as you like by seeing that the Spillway is operating at the time you have scheduled.

You can modify the RPM of your pump to lower in Pool Mode, and then bump the RPM up for Spillway.

Are you using trichlor as your primary chlorinating method? Be wary of that.
 
Thank you so much. I'll give it a shot and see how it goes! I'm not using trichlor. I have the inline chlorinator, but I've been using just liquid chlorine and muriatic acid as needed. I should probably add a "not used" after it.

Why would I want to change my rpms?
 
Romoth said:
Why would I want to change my rpms?
Click to expand...

You would typically run a VS pump at lower RPMs to save money since at low RPMs they use very little electricity. Do you have a VS pump though? I thought the whisperflow was a single speed.
 
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