What surprises me most as a new pool owner

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bertschb

bertschb

Bronze Supporter
Dec 11, 2021
392
Arizona
Pool Size
13600
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I became a new pool owner in January and these are the things that surprise me the most as a new pool owner....
1- How little time it takes to maintain the pool
2- How little chlorine my pool uses
3- How cool my water is during the heat of summer

I probably spend ten minutes a week maintaining my pool and without OCD, it would be more like five minutes.

My neighbor with a similar sized pool and similar pump run time has his IC40 set to 62%. Mine is set to 20%. My pool is using about 1.5ppm per day.

My water this morning was 82 degrees! The highs here in the Phoenix area have been 110+ with lows in the upper 80's. I thought my water would be at least 90 by now. Crazy, but crazy good!
 
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Glad your pool is staying nice and cool! Our pool water temp is hovering in the low 90s during the day now. It almost feels like the spa, so strangely enough now that it's so hot we rarely want to go in there lol. It's nice at night, though.
 
Jimrahbe said:
Brian... What color is your plaster?
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It's kind of a grayish blue Pebble. My neighbor's is white plaster. One thing I started doing a week ago was running my little aerator (as shown in the photo below). I think it's actually helping drop temps by maybe 1-2 degrees? Just a wild guess as it's difficult to eliminate all the variables that are in play. I also started putting up the umbrella over the seating area. This shades the shallower seating area for part of the day. I know that helps keep the temps a little lower too.

IMG_4825.jpg
 
Jimrahbe said:
dfwnoob... What color is your plaster.
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Same as OP, a grey blue-ish color. I think it originally had more blue in it, but 15 years of poor water chemistry thanks to the prior owners hasn't left it looking too hot.

Running the spillover will cool ours down some, but it also massively increases evaporation I've noticed (which makes sense, there's lots of surface for it to evaporate from). Ours gets direct sun from morning until about 5 in the afternoon so I'm not too surprised it's miserable in there.
 
Love that built in table. I don't think I'd want to ever get out!

I too am amazed at how simple it is. Intimidating at first but this forum has been infinitely helpful, and everyone's willing to walk you throug each step of the process. Like you, I spend very little time actually maintaining it. The majority of my time is spent testing water and replacing chlorine. My robot does a lot of the work for me as far as cleaning goes. Filter cleans took a little more time, but not bad. My pool is hovering around 92ish degrees right now, but that'll change on Friday when I kick on the chiller for the weekend :)

Overall, WORTH IT!

Does your pH not go up a lot with that aerator?
 
zimdogg said:
Does your pH not go up a lot with that aerator?
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I haven't noticed a change yet. In fact, I've been decreasing the output of my IntelliPH recently in an effort to increase pH.

That aerator sprays pretty good from 3-6am when the cleaning cycle is running (and pump rpm increases). During the day it's pretty whimpy with pump rpm at 1,250.
 
6 years in my house with pool. People before had a 100% shade cover over the pool almost fully enclosed as well. Looked neat, kids were young so NO sunblock. Had to run my heater for people to be comfortable. 84° w/o heater and no sun and slight breeze, people were freezing. So we would heat to 86°-88° seemed to be the magic number for refreshing yet comfortable. I never payed much attention to any chemicals except ph and occasional chlorine. Shade made the chemicals last for-ever. This winter we decided to remove it. Pros and cons for having and not. But now I’m dumping almost a gallon of LC (12.5) every day and with aerator running is around 92°.
 

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bertschb said:
Wow! I've never seen a cover like that on an AZ pool. Impressive!
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It really was. Not sure what the motivation in getting it was. (Not cheap). Maybe skin cancer or trying to hide from the neighbors 😉. Don’t know what you have till it’s gone but needed to move on. The blessing really was the sunblock issue. But now we can play volleyball! And dump tons of LC in….
 
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bertschb said:
I became a new pool owner in January and these are the things that surprise me the most as a new pool owner....
1- How little time it takes to maintain the pool
2- How little chlorine my pool uses
3- How cool my water is during the heat of summer

I probably spend ten minutes a week maintaining my pool and without OCD, it would be more like five minutes.

My neighbor with a similar sized pool and similar pump run time has his IC40 set to 62%. Mine is set to 20%. My pool is using about 1.5ppm per day.

My water this morning was 82 degrees! The highs here in the Phoenix area have been 110+ with lows in the upper 80's. I thought my water would be at least 90 by now. Crazy, but crazy good!
Click to expand...
You sure your thermometer is a accurate…?
 
re: cooler water temps

I think there are a couple things working in my favor. One is our back yard and pool face west. Sooo, in the early morning our one story house provides some partial shade. Late in the afternoon our fence starts to provide some shade as the sun sets. I've also been leaving the seating area umbrella up and that shades part of the seating area for part of the day and actually shades part of the pool early in the morning. Finally, I recently started using that little aerator which adds to the evaporation. So far in July, I'm averaging 79 gallons of evaporation per day.

It's still VERY baffling because my water temperature is COLDER than the lowest air temperatures we have. When I did all my pool research before we bought this house, I read that water temperature would be the average of the high and low ambient temps. That means my water should be in the mid 90's right now. Nope!
 
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bertschb said:
re: cooler water temps

I think there are a couple things working in my favor. One is our back yard and pool face west. Sooo, in the early morning our one story house provides some shade. Late in the afternoon our fence provides some shade. I've also been leaving the seating area umbrella up and that shades the seating area for part of the day and actually shades part of the pool early in the morning. Finally, I recently started using that little aerator which adds to the evaporation. So far in July, I'm averaging 79 gallons of evaporation per day.

It's still VERY baffling because my water temperature is COLDER than the lowest air temperatures we have. When I did all my pool research before we bought this house, I read that water temperature would be the average of the high and low ambient temps. That means my water should be in the mid 90's right now. Nope!
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Shade is key! I will be putting up some shade sails in my back yard. 1 over seating area. And 1 at one end of the pool( it won’t help for any of this but more as relief for people to get out of the Sun.

Sounds like you’ve got a “good” problem. Wish I had more of those. Lol
 
bertschb said:
Hah! Yeah, I actually use two thermometers. One that floats in the pool and the other from the Pentair EasyTouch system. They match.
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Do you use a solar cover? (It is like bubble wrap that floats on top of the water, if you aren't familiar.) That would warm up your water, pronto. It raises the water temp, on my pool anyway, 3-4 degrees a day. Right now it is hovering at 90F, which is just a bit lower than the daytime air temp. I don't find 90 degrees to be too warm to be comfortable, but wouldn't want it much higher or it gets to be too "hot tub" like.

Then again, maybe you don't WANT it warmer.....
 
Lois said:
Do you use a solar cover?

Then again, maybe you don't WANT it warmer.....
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I used a solar cover in the spring. No way I'd use it now!

83-85 water temp is just right for us with 105-115 air temps. Upper 80's for the water works for us when the air temp is cooler (like 70's and 80's).
 

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