Bleached out liner - What did i do wrong?

[pigbat]

Do you use a solar cover? If you have a solar cover and chlorinate with it in place you can bleach the liner. You should also remove the cover for at least a couple hours per day.

[Watermom]

I'm not sure this is true. If you shock the pool you would want to uncover the pool at least partially to allow fumes to escape but as far as a solar cover causing a liner to bleach, I'm not sure that is accurate. I add bleach with my solar cover on at times and there are some days that I never remove the cover. When I add bleach (slowly through my skimmer), I always make sure my eyeball is aimed down to send the bleach into the body of the pool water. If my eyeball is aimed up, I think it would cause the bleach to be more concentrated at the top of the water, so I always lower it when adding.

[Timmy]

I have been using bleech for the past 6-7 years now and have my solar cover on a majority of the time when doing so without any issues. We have a dark blue liner and have not noticed any fading (yet). I also shock with non-chlorine shock every Sunday night with the solar cover on as well.

I too aim the eyeballs down when the cover is on. When it is off, I aim them up.

[CarlD]

12 + years out of a liner? (and figure it's at least 14 or 15 years old in reality) It's still sound and good? Your only problem is it's bleached out?
You have done very well!

As Ben says, some liners and patterns are more prone to bleaching than others. In unrelated discussions we have learned that the liner industry is very, very inconsistent in its manufacturing standards and norms. Sheet vinyl comes to them from all sorts of sources and is made by a zillion different formulae.

Sunlight and UV light is a major bleaching agent, even when chlorine isn't around. My SuperPump has gone from gold to silver. The plastic rails around my pool's edge have yellowed, as have the returns and drains.
Your pool has seen 12-15 years of sunshine, and, given it could have been made from less uv-resistant-to-bleaching materials, there's nothing you could have done.

I hope I get 12 to 15 years out of MY liner and I don't care how much it bleaches. In 9 years it's bleached a lot and it's most apparent when the steps are out before going in at opening.

Look at the bright side! When you open in the spring you can really hammer the water with bleach to clear out any algae without fear of bleaching the liner! That's what I did. I opened late to green slime, no chlorine, and no CYA. In theory, for that CYA, I should shock to 10 or 12, with a maximum of 15, beyond which I risk bleaching. Instead, I dumped in 4 gallons of 12.5% LC raising my FC to at least 25ppm. In 24 hours my green slime was a blue cloud, that then had to be maintained and filtered out.

When you finally have to replace your liner, you'll have to be careful all over again not to go TOO high when you shock it.

Carl