Keebert
02-26-2015, 10:25 AM
Hello everyone. We just moved into our house in January which has a nice pool but complications (such as not having power to the pool for 3 weeks) and me knowing nothing about a pool meant that it was left untouched until last week!
There was a nice build-up of dirt in the bottom of the spa and I was really confused as to why this was happening as I was running the pool filter and cleaner every day. Anyway, I finally got a guy to come and give me a pool school so now I know how everything in the pool works. I have ordered my Taylor text kit and have DE & shock on hand. I need to buy some salt and acid at the local pool store.
I found out that running the filter pump takes water from the weirs and main drain and puts it back into the raised spa (for a nice fountain effect) but there is no suction from the spa drain unless you put it on "Spa" mode. There is a nice AquaLink system which was pretty easy to figure out. Also, during pool school I discovered that the filter was set to bypass so all the time the pump has been running, there was no filtration going on! We added DE and set it to filter but the water started to go slightly green.
I'm waiting for my test kit but the previous owners had some test strips so I tried them last night and got the following results:
Salt 1100 (the Aqua Rite reads 1400)
Free CL - around 0
Alkalinity 80
pH 7.8 ish
CyA looks to be zero or very little.
Pool is about 16,000 gal salt water.
The Aqua Rite says the salt needs to be around 2500 so I'll definitely need to add salt - probably about 100lbs. The water is looking mostly clean but there is a green tinge and a thin layer of green gunk at the bottom which I'm brushing. It's pretty cold at the moment (the freeze protect turned on last night) so I'm thinking this is probably the best time to treat and get the pool back to normal without having to fight algae growth.
So, what can I do right now, before the test kit arrives, to help her along? Add some salt or shock or both?
There was a nice build-up of dirt in the bottom of the spa and I was really confused as to why this was happening as I was running the pool filter and cleaner every day. Anyway, I finally got a guy to come and give me a pool school so now I know how everything in the pool works. I have ordered my Taylor text kit and have DE & shock on hand. I need to buy some salt and acid at the local pool store.
I found out that running the filter pump takes water from the weirs and main drain and puts it back into the raised spa (for a nice fountain effect) but there is no suction from the spa drain unless you put it on "Spa" mode. There is a nice AquaLink system which was pretty easy to figure out. Also, during pool school I discovered that the filter was set to bypass so all the time the pump has been running, there was no filtration going on! We added DE and set it to filter but the water started to go slightly green.
I'm waiting for my test kit but the previous owners had some test strips so I tried them last night and got the following results:
Salt 1100 (the Aqua Rite reads 1400)
Free CL - around 0
Alkalinity 80
pH 7.8 ish
CyA looks to be zero or very little.
Pool is about 16,000 gal salt water.
The Aqua Rite says the salt needs to be around 2500 so I'll definitely need to add salt - probably about 100lbs. The water is looking mostly clean but there is a green tinge and a thin layer of green gunk at the bottom which I'm brushing. It's pretty cold at the moment (the freeze protect turned on last night) so I'm thinking this is probably the best time to treat and get the pool back to normal without having to fight algae growth.
So, what can I do right now, before the test kit arrives, to help her along? Add some salt or shock or both?