New to this site and to pools

[jscholl411]

I just moved into a house with a pool and have never had a pool in my life. The pool is an in ground fiberglass approx 33'l x 15'w 8'-6"at the deep end 3'-6" at shallow end, or so im told because cannot see the bottom shallow or deep end. The filter is a cartridge filter(when started psi was 8). The pool guy came and opened it last week and told me the previous renters of the house did not take care of the pool and it was closed dirty.

The filter has been running since Sunday, I have vacuumed it everyday, cleaned the trap and have been keeping an eye on the pressure not to go above 18. yesterday at 3pm the psi was 18 and I cleaned the cartridge and the psi went back to 8, at 11pm last night the psi was at 16 or 18. Is this normal? How long does it take to even see the bottom. Right now when the vacuum goes in i lose sight of it at about 2'.

[Charlie_R]

Yes, it will take a while to get the algae out of the water.

Are you planning to take care of your pool yourself, chemically speaking? If so, you will need to get a good test kit. The mods here recommend the Taylor K-2006 or K-2006C, available from Amazon. Check the links in the Testing and Adjusting Pool Water Chemistry section. In the meantime, you can get the HTH 6-way kit from your local Walmart to get you started. Believe me, these guys and gals know what they are talking about on the K-2006. It's the best investment you will make for your pool. Pool store testing is flaky at best, and is designed to sell you all sorts of expensive (often unneeded) chemical concoctions.

Best bet for an easy to maintain pool is to follow the BBB method as outlined here on the forums and at the sister site Poolsolutions.com.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask them here. It may take a day or two for a reply, as this is the beginning of the busy season here.

Good luck with your pool!

Charlie

[BigDave]

I agree with Charlie_R and would like to add a couple more observations. Since this pool is not yours, is it clear in your lease that it's your responsibilty to maintain it and that how you maintain it is up to you? I ask because the method of poolcare you'll learn here is not always compatible with pool store advice or pool service providers. Trying to reconcile advice you get here with pool store or pool guy advice and your desire for a clean pool and your landlord's interest in the property will very likely prove unsuccessful. That said, if you are free to maintain the pool as you see fit, the poolcare methods discussed here and at poolsolutions.com are efficient and reliable, tested by time and proved by science.

Your post doesn't mention any sort of chlorination. Did the pool guy add "shock" or anything like that? Does the pool have some type of automatic chlorinator?

Yes, it's normal to quickly clog a pool filter with live algae. In fact without killing it first (we recommend chlorine and lots of it) you may as well shutdown the pump and save yourself the trouble of cleaning the filter. Please read the stickies in the Dealing with Algae forum.

If you are free and able to do this yourself (it's really not hard) then order a K-2006 and buy the HTH 6-way kit from wall mart and as much bleach as you can fit in the cart. You'll need at least three gallons to start and then quite a bit to keep going. Please note that when cleaning up a swamp, letting it slide a little takes the process a huge step backwards.

Let us know - we're happy to help.