We have a hole in the ground! New O/B in Queen Creek, AZ

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So I am basically one week into the bicarb startup. After running the robot a couple of times, I’m not getting much, if any dust coming off of the plaster when I brush it. Honestly, when brushing before using the robot, the dust was a brown color which makes me think I was actually just seeing normal Phoenix dust in the pool while brushing and it was getting stirred up, but not getting filtered out.

My question is, can I begin using the heater if I am not seeing any dust while brushing or should I wait another week or two? Obviously, it is a matter of my willingness to compromise my heater, but my thinking is it’s probably safe to run the heater if I’m not getting any plaster dust. The other part of the equation is that I’m still only around 0.2ppm of chlorine and likely a negligible amount of CYA. That makes the water not necessarily sanitary for swimming. Will the high pH (7.8) hurt the heater or is it basically safe to run the heater at this point? My back needs some therapy after moving around 27 of the 37 tons of gravel I had delivered.
 
It's not the pH being 7.8 that will damage the heater, its the CSI. Take your current numbers and change the water temp to 100 degrees....your heater will basically become a scale factory

Any measurable chlorine with little to no CYA is perfectly safe and sanitary, hence my suggestion to not even test either of them right now.
 
That makes sense. So, in theory, I could drop the pH to something like 7.4 and run the heater for a bit, but then my CSI would be low enough to start leaching calcium out of the plaster. Is that kind of the corner I’m backed into? In other words, I pretty much need to wait until my TA comes down and I drop the pH and balance the chemicals for an ideal CSI, right?
 
Sad to say it but yes..............You will see water temps REALLY impacts the CSI. CSI really impacts overall life of the plaster and "picky" equipment like heaters and such.

Now you can play with the numbers in pool math and see at what point your CSI will be within "safe" level. How high/low can the TA, pH, CH, etc + water temp be and work towards this.
 
Copperhed51 said:
That makes sense. So, in theory, I could drop the pH to something like 7.4 and run the heater for a bit, but then my CSI would be low enough to start leaching calcium out of the plaster. Is that kind of the corner I’m backed into? In other words, I pretty much need to wait until my TA comes down and I drop the pH and balance the chemicals for an ideal CSI, right?
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Water's effect on plaster is a very slow process. If you want to use the spa then go for it, just lower the pH beforehand. You seem like you have a grip on what you're doing and truthfully the short-term risk is very low.
 
bdavis466 said:
Water's effect on plaster is a very slow process. If you want to use the spa then go for it, just lower the pH beforehand. You seem like you have a grip on what you're doing and truthfully the short-term risk is very low.
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You’ve just made my wife a very happy girl. I think tonight will be a spa night. I’ll just run the water features and aerator to bring the pH back up reasonably fast. We are at the 9-day mark since startup day. 10 days since starting up the spa.

Today’s numbers were:
pH: 8.0 this morning but dropped to 7.8 after MA addition
TA: between 230 and 240, so dropping as expected
 
Arizonarob said:
What you see here folks, is the kid that got a new bike for Christmas and wants to ride it soooooooo bad, but there’s 3ft of snow on the ground!! “But mommmmmm, I’ll just ride it in the driveway”. :laughblue:
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Haha, little do you know that bikes are one of my other major hobbies, so you’re dead on there. Replace the kid with me and the mom with my wife and this story has probably happened in my house.
 

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Quick update for the day. The plaster company came out on Wednesday and repaired the rust spot. It looked like a bristle from a wire brush, which I definitely have not used on the pool since the plaster was applied. They dug out the spot and think they got all of the metal out of the surface. They patched the spot and I can't see the patch at all, so they did a good job matching everything. With any luck, they got all of the metal out and that will be the last of that problem. If not, they said they'll come out and fix it again. I'm very happy with the service. They've done exactly what they said they'd do. In other news, my next door neighbors have started their own OB pool and began digging on Thursday. The robot (named TIM for Totally Immersed Machine) has been very busy picking up the dust. TA is dropping nicely and the pH is becoming much more stable. Things are looking good!
 
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Bad day for the pool that could have been much worse. I was at work and my wife wanted to use the spa. I told her to turn the heater bypass valve so that “off” was facing to the right as she looked at it. I had set up that valve so it was not possible to block the filter outlet, which is to the left. She proceeded to turn the handle so hard that she broke the tab that stops the valve from turning past the stops and set it so the filter outlet was turned off.

I can’t be contacted for hours at a time while I’m working, so I found out a couple of hours later. Luckily, she just turned everything off when the spa wasn’t heating up. The filter didn’t blow up and the pump seems fine. Frustrating, to say the least. I had run through how to turn the spa on a couple of weeks prior, but she still apparently had no idea what to do. I need more valve actuators to make things more foolproof. She blames me, of course!
 
Guess she is stronger than you thought??? Okay lets makes this even easier.....pictures, laminated pictures, step by step pics. Labeled pics. "Normal Pool" "Spa heated" "Spa and pool heated" kind of pics and labels. This will take all guess work out of it. I will tell you my hubby does not have a clue about our valves and I have a VERY simple system so...............

Kim:kim:
 
Create videos and have an outdoor enclosure built for an iPad. And if you really want a divorce, add a video of how she can get you a drink.
 
bmoreswim said:
Create videos and have an outdoor enclosure built for an iPad. And if you really want a divorce, add a video of how she can get you a drink.
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Hahahahahaha. She’s up to speed on how to pull a beer out of the fridge. Things should be even easier once the beers we’re brewing are done and in the kegs. I’ll definitely be making some pictures for her until I buy the new valve actuators. On another note, $20 for a plastic valve handle seems like highway robbery. A 3D printer seems tempting right now.
 
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