Hi! I have been lurking for a few days, reading and trying to learn as much as I can before opening my mouth and proving beyond a doubt how clueless I am.
We rented a house with an in ground fiberglass pool, and the owner opened it for us 2 weeks ago, dumped a few chemicals in, and departed. She told me to shock it on Sundays and make sure there was always a chlorine tab in the skimmer basket. (My best friend shrieked at that, and I now have a duck chlorinator floating around.) The water initially cleared up, but I bought a test kit and found to my horror that I couldn't keep chlorine in it, and that the ph was well below the bottom of my test kit readings (< 6.8). So she stopped by, and dumped some soda ash in it when we weren't home. (The bottle was in the trash.) And there was still some green from opening it, so she added algaecide. The same day the landscapers came through and fertilized and ended up with a bunch of iron bits in the pool, and overnight I have metal stains - lots of them. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the cartridges were way old, so one failed and blew a mess back into the pool. (All 4 are now replaced and mess cleaned up.)
I have been reading, and I did the vitamin C test, and I have a lovely clear clean perfect blue spot where I tested that. So, OK, I am sure it's metal staining, based on what I read here.
I have a Basic 5 test kit, need to get a better one, but here is what I get:
FC 2
CC 2
PH < 6.8 (sickly yellow)
TA 20
Can't test for CH or CYA with this kit. Will go to pool store with a sample ASAP, but likely Saturday am. I hate to walk in there clueless, knowing they will push a ton of expensive stuff at me.
So where do I start?
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Kris
We rented a house with an in ground fiberglass pool, and the owner opened it for us 2 weeks ago, dumped a few chemicals in, and departed. She told me to shock it on Sundays and make sure there was always a chlorine tab in the skimmer basket. (My best friend shrieked at that, and I now have a duck chlorinator floating around.) The water initially cleared up, but I bought a test kit and found to my horror that I couldn't keep chlorine in it, and that the ph was well below the bottom of my test kit readings (< 6.8). So she stopped by, and dumped some soda ash in it when we weren't home. (The bottle was in the trash.) And there was still some green from opening it, so she added algaecide. The same day the landscapers came through and fertilized and ended up with a bunch of iron bits in the pool, and overnight I have metal stains - lots of them. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the cartridges were way old, so one failed and blew a mess back into the pool. (All 4 are now replaced and mess cleaned up.)
I have been reading, and I did the vitamin C test, and I have a lovely clear clean perfect blue spot where I tested that. So, OK, I am sure it's metal staining, based on what I read here.
I have a Basic 5 test kit, need to get a better one, but here is what I get:
FC 2
CC 2
PH < 6.8 (sickly yellow)
TA 20
Can't test for CH or CYA with this kit. Will go to pool store with a sample ASAP, but likely Saturday am. I hate to walk in there clueless, knowing they will push a ton of expensive stuff at me.
So where do I start?
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Kris