I had a gunite/marcite pool finished last October. The pool was filled with two truckloads (18,000 gal) of city water as we are on a well. I did add about 4,000 gal (22,000 gal total) from softened water inside my house. This is my first pool so this is all new to me. But over the past couple weeks I have read your site pretty thoroughly and have learned a lot. We had the kid’s birthday party right after it was finished in the fall and then closed it up. It is a SWCG pool, but the Intellichlor system wasn’t installed until this spring so the marcite had time to set. When the pool was closed up it was clean and when it was opened it had some minor algae, but pretty clean – no leaves or organic matter. The pool builder got rid of the algae with chlorine I presume as I wasn’t around when they opened it to add the Intellichlor unit. When opened there seemed to be some dirt staining on the 10’ wide Roman steps (darker brown, irregular pattern, worse on the top two steps). In addition to that there is a fainter intermittent bathtub type ring about a foot or two up from the floor. The water was never drained down to that level. Lastly there is spotty staining sporadically spread on the floor of the shallow end. That is grayish green in color and could be minor algae.

None of the stains will brush out and the stains on the steps are not metal as I did the absorbic acid test. I haven’t tested the wall or floor stains yet. I had Leslie’s perform an iron test on the water and there was nothing detectable. The good news is that the water is perfectly clear and I believe the chemicals are in good shape.

The builder has come out to look at the stains and said he could drain the pool and acid wash. Since I just paid $700 for the water in the fall and the builder just dumped in 600#’s of salt, I want to avoid that if possible. Not to mention the damage it causes to the surfaces. He is looking into other options, but I’d like to get the groups feedback and suggestions as well. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted t o be through as it is very frustrating to have a brand new pool that is dirty! Thanks for any ideas you may have.

22,000 gallon free form gunite/marcite, with sand filter and SWCG
FC – 3, CC- 0, PH – 7.6, CYA – 55, CAL – 250, ALK – 120, CU/Iron – 0/0, Phosphates - 0