New pool owner here

Hi I would just like to say that this is a great site and I have already learned alot. So I have a new pool that I am getting filled tomorrow. Because of my poor planning I wont have the taylor test kit for another few days. I have decided to use the BBB method. I have no doubt it will work great, and it better cuz I got into a small fight with my wife about doing it this way. Anyways, my questions are these....Is there any way to give me a ball park figure on how much of everything to put in before I actually test the water?? or is it better to wait till the kit arrives and I can test the water before I add anything? It is a 24' round pool. I am having it filled mostly by the water man. I have bleach, baking soda, borax, and cyanuric acid all ready to go. (FYI I found the CYA at my local walmart, but that was after I went to the dreaded pool store to get it)I used my well water to put 2" in the bottom to set the liner, which brings me to my next queston. I have a good amount of iron in the water. To the point that I can see it all over the bottom. Will this be bad for the liner or anything? and will I be able to just vacuum it out? Thanks in advance, Andy

Hello Andy, somehow I completely missed this thread until now...I am so sorry!!! Is your pool filled? Is everything working out okay for you, or is thre something we can do, now that I'm going to bump this thread up so we can all see it?

Not only did Jan miss it, but apparently we all missed it. Andy, I'm so sorry that you didn't get any replies. I checked your profile and it appears that you haven't logged onto the forum since the 22nd. I don't blame you. If i I joined a forum and never got a reply, I wouldn't come back either! Hopefully, you have your options set to email you when your thread gets a reply so that you will see that there are some posts and you'll be back.

We have recently discovered that sometimes when posts are modded in, they don't appear for us as unread once they hit the forum and thus we have missed some. Now that we are aware that the forum software is doing that, we know to watch for posts that slip through as 'read' even though they haven't gotten replies. Hopefully we won't miss any more posts.

Again, sorry. Hope you come back.

Well thanks for responding. I thought I was on the do not reply list for a second there. Haha. Well thanks to all the info I read on this site my pool is up and running perfectly. Couldn't be happier with the BBB method. I have been real busy building my deck around the pool. Pretty soon I will actually be able to enjoy the pool. What I thought was iron on the bottom ofthe pool actually turned out to be mostly sand so that was a pretty easy fix. The one question I still have is that my TA is pretty high. Its hovering @200. Im wondering if I should be worried about it or not. I read on here somewhere not to lower it just to get to a number. The water is perfectly clear and everything else is where it is supposed to be. I know how to lower it if I need to, I'm just wonderig if I need to. Thanks in advance

If it were my pool, I'd go ahead and lower the TA. But, if your pH is stable, you're probably ok with not worrying about it.

Hi andy, and welcome back!!

Glad the pool is up and running, hope you're getting a chance to enjoy it. As far as the TA goes, if the TA of your fill water is 200, and your pool isn't having any problems (i.e. your pH is stable), I wouldn't bother to lower it, because it'll be an endless fight-- every time you have to top off with fresh water, you'll be raising the TA again. However, if your fill water is lower in TA, then it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and drop it some.

Janet

So I guess the next step would be to test the water coming out of my hose to see what the TA levels are. If they are high there's not much I can do, but if it's low I might as well lower the TA of my pool. My PH did go up .3 in one day but that was after a heavy rain. Not sure if that matters or not. What would be a normal ppm per day/week change in PH in the perfect world? Thanks

Yes, test the TA of your fill water. As far as what would be normal change in pH in a day ---- pH, for the most part, should be pretty stable if your TA is adjusted appropriately. (Unless you have a new plaster pool or a SWCG, both of which will see pH rise.)

Just to add to what Watermom said, if you had a really heavy rain, that could have aerated the water enough to bring the pH up a little bit. The TA in my pool is 110, and my pH rarely moves from 7.8, unless I do something (like add acid) to move it. In most cases, though, it's right back to 7.8 within a day or two, because that's the pH of my fill water. I tried to fight it for the first couple of years, but then I realized I was just wasting time and acid! :)

Janet

So I finally checked the TA of my fill water and it is over 300. Knowing that, is it worth trying to lower the TA or leave it where it is? It is still hovering @200. My PH does fluctuate somewhat, so will that cause any problems? Thanks

How much is your pH fluctuating and how often are you having to add water to the pool?

I checked the PH yesterday afternoon-7.4. At 10:30 today its 7.5. So not that much change today. I guess I will have to check it daily and see how much change there is. Actually since I filled the pool originally about 3 weeks ago I havent added any water, but its getting to the point where in a few days I will have to if it doesnt rain. I am still in the process of adding CYA at this piont and I am almost there, so could that be contributing to my problem of high TA? Also I was wandering around on the internet and stumbled across this filter contraption that would go on the end of the hose for my fill water, and supposedly it would filter out metals in the water. Has anyone ever tried one of these? or know of anyone that did? and if so what were the results. I would be happy to shell out the $40 or so to get one if it works, but I am a little bit skeptical. Thanks

There are several posts in the Metals forum by people who have made homemade filters and run their fill water through to filter out the metals. The theory is that if you run the water past a high chlorine source right before it hits the filter, it will cause the metals to drop out on to the filter. The ones who have posted about it in this forum all have had varying levels of success with it. Might use the Google search link in Watermom's sig to search the forum for metal filters...