famousdavis
07-19-2011, 11:55 AM
No question - just a life experience from a new pool owner.
I'm a new pool owner, and am learning to take care of my own pool. Our pool is crystal clear and nicely balanced...or so I thought.
I'm currently taking our pool water to two pool stores to be evaluated. I'm trying to get a sense of which pool company I want to work with. The two companies routinely report different values for my water (not too different usually, but different). Chlorine is an exception; the two companies report wildly different values. One company has consistently said my free chlorine is 4.0, whiile the other says my free chlorine is between 6.9 and 10! I can see that their testing methods are different. The first company uses drops, the second uses a test strip and a computer.
This second pool company told me last Thursday that my chlorine was almost 0 (though my OTO kit showed 2.0). They did some further testing, said my phosphate level was too high, and was eating up all the chlorine (500ppm). They said to put this $25 chemical into my pool to remove the phosphates, so I did.
What happened next was my crystal-clear water went very cloudy! Then, over the next 24 hours, my DE filter worked hard to remove the cloudiness, but then the DE filter got all gunked up and I had to backwash it.
I thought to myself: Did I really need to worry about phosphates to be troubled like this? Interestingly, the next day I took a water sample to the other pool company and, like always before, they said I had 4.0 ppm of chlorine.
So I searched the Internet for answers. Before phosphate-removing chemicals were invented, people dealt with algae by just ensuring that their chlorine levels were correct. It doesn't matter as much that one's pool has phosphates if the chlorine is killing all the algae (I also use a weekly dose of algaecide, too).
So, I feel like I was duped out of $25 to fix a problem that I suspect I really don't have. Once I get my K-2600 kit, I'll just trust that kit instead of either pool store to get my correct readings (maybe use those two stores just for sanity checking if I spot something amiss).
Anyway, I'm concluding from hereon not to worry about phosphates in my pool. People don't worry much about nitrates, either...but that's because there's no nitrate-removing chemical on the market (you have to empty pool water to remove high levels of nitrates).
Your thoughts?
I'm a new pool owner, and am learning to take care of my own pool. Our pool is crystal clear and nicely balanced...or so I thought.
I'm currently taking our pool water to two pool stores to be evaluated. I'm trying to get a sense of which pool company I want to work with. The two companies routinely report different values for my water (not too different usually, but different). Chlorine is an exception; the two companies report wildly different values. One company has consistently said my free chlorine is 4.0, whiile the other says my free chlorine is between 6.9 and 10! I can see that their testing methods are different. The first company uses drops, the second uses a test strip and a computer.
This second pool company told me last Thursday that my chlorine was almost 0 (though my OTO kit showed 2.0). They did some further testing, said my phosphate level was too high, and was eating up all the chlorine (500ppm). They said to put this $25 chemical into my pool to remove the phosphates, so I did.
What happened next was my crystal-clear water went very cloudy! Then, over the next 24 hours, my DE filter worked hard to remove the cloudiness, but then the DE filter got all gunked up and I had to backwash it.
I thought to myself: Did I really need to worry about phosphates to be troubled like this? Interestingly, the next day I took a water sample to the other pool company and, like always before, they said I had 4.0 ppm of chlorine.
So I searched the Internet for answers. Before phosphate-removing chemicals were invented, people dealt with algae by just ensuring that their chlorine levels were correct. It doesn't matter as much that one's pool has phosphates if the chlorine is killing all the algae (I also use a weekly dose of algaecide, too).
So, I feel like I was duped out of $25 to fix a problem that I suspect I really don't have. Once I get my K-2600 kit, I'll just trust that kit instead of either pool store to get my correct readings (maybe use those two stores just for sanity checking if I spot something amiss).
Anyway, I'm concluding from hereon not to worry about phosphates in my pool. People don't worry much about nitrates, either...but that's because there's no nitrate-removing chemical on the market (you have to empty pool water to remove high levels of nitrates).
Your thoughts?