Looking for some advice on what to do.

Greetings,

I'm assisting my father with getting his in ground pool ready for summer and we seem to have quite a mess on our hands. It is an in-ground pool that I believe was installed when the house was built in the early 80's. He purchased the home in 97 and never really had any issues with the pool until a few years ago. It became harder and harder to keep clean and he finally started to just drain it every spring and refill it, rather than try and keep the water clear all year round. Last year it was very bad, the water was a deep green and it stank to high heavens. We decided to acid wash it and it came out looking much better.

Comparative picture from the acid washing:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...l%25202013.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-y...2013detail.jpg

This year it has seemed to come back with a vengeance:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-6...25202014-1.jpg
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w...25202014-2.jpg


He's out there with a pressure washer, but it is not really making a dent. I do not want to acid wash it again, I heard that doing it too often can really damage the plaster. Can anyone offer me any tips or at least let me know where I can find some information on how to get this cleared up? Thank you in advance!

OK.

1. You've got severe copper (green, greenish-blue) stains visible in all pictures. If you want to remove those, it's gonna take a major effort -- either an acid wash or erosive pressure washing.

2. The copper stains are most likely caused either by low pH damage to a pool heater OR use of copper containing products or devices. Very rarely, copper piping is present on some very old pools, and occasionally, people have well or tap water containing copper.

3. Most of the staining looks organic. It will mostly come up once the pool is filled, if you sustain high chlorine for a week or so.

4. Acid washing damages surfaces and makes them MORE prone to stain, and harder to clean. It gets worse, each time you acid wash.

5. Probably the only thing that will make your pool look pristine quickly is an acid wash, but see #4 above.


So . . . you got choices, not easy answers.

Sorry.