Doughboy Liner Damaged by Chlorine?

[CarlD]

Yes. I see nothing wrong in what you did, and now see this as an attempt by DoughBoy to cheat on their warranty. Let Ben advise you but I'd be prepared for a fight.

[PoolDoc]

@CarlD: What D-boy apparently said was, "We'll honor the warranty this time, even though we don't think we're obligated. But we won't do it again."

@rajung: Extremely high chlorine will damage some liners. Unfortunately, low chlorine will damage other liners. And there's no way I've been able to find that allows you to tell -- in ADVANCE -- whether you have a liner that will be damaged by extremely high chlorine, or one that will be damaged by even low chlorine.

Perhaps more importantly, even pool manufacturers like D-boy can't tell the difference. Vinyl sheet varies greatly in quality, but a low-grade sheeting may LOOK and FEEL identical to a high-grade sheeting, at least when new.

My guess is one of two things happened:

1. You inadvertently raised the chlorine VERY high while the stabilizer was very low.

OR

2. D-boy got a batch of liners made from low-grade, possibly Chinese, sheeting.

And from where we're sitting, there's no way to even guess which one it was!


You report that D-boy wrote:

I write this to encourage you in proper maintenance of your pool. We suggest you maintain chlorine levels of 1-3 ppm and immediately brush up any powder residue after shocking your pool. This will help maintain the color and the life of your liner.

The problem is that FC=3 ppm -- a level approved by D-boy -- will damage a LOT of liners, if the CYA is less than 10 ppm. But FC=10 ppm is unlikely to damage any liners if CYA is > 150 ppm.

American conventional AG pool makers are under a LOT of price pressure from soft-side pool sales. The temptation to use imported custom-pattern Chinese liners is HUGE. If you look at these Alibaba listings:
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/vinyl-pool-liners.html
you'll see vinyl pool sheeting offered for as low as $1/sq meter. That translates to a manufacturing cost for sheeting for a 27' round pool of $100 vs $1,000 for US or Canadian goods!

In contrast to the Japanese market ethics, the Chinese market places NO value on product quality or integrity in business dealings. Where Japanese might feel justified in ripping off "gaijin", Chinese companies rip off local customers with even more eagerness than they do the "gwai lo" or (gweilo). A close friend of my son's has been training for a number of years to work in international marketing, focusing on the Chinese ex-im market with the US. He's confided to my son that virtually all the Chinese he has met value ONLY high profits. The ONLY concern they have with quality is, "Can we get away with it?"

US companies that successfully import Chinese made goods have Chinese dialect fluent engineering and product TEAMS whose sole job is to make sure that Chinese makers deliver the product quality they've agreed to deliver.

Companies like Doughboy are probably NOT likely to be big enough to have a qualified and dedicated import product quality team . . . and without one, they WILL get ripped off.

Over the past 5 years, I've seen more and more evidence of this happening with plumbing goods, with equipment, and with pools. Intex US enforces moderately good product quality on the cluster of makers that supply their products, but the company supplying Walmart's "Pro Series" has delivered intermittently TERRIBLE product quality, coupled with even worse product support.

I don't know if they'll tell you, but ask D-boy who made the sheeting used in your liner. If the answer is in Chinese, I think you've found the problem!

[PoolDoc]

Examples of *serious* Chinese product quality problems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall

Melamine (related to CYA) in Chinese made baby formula:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/refere...ine/index.html

And, in dog food:
http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/.../ucm129575.htm

Chinese expired meat sold to McDonalds, etc (2014!)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...ndal/12929885/

Smithfield Hams now Chinese
http://www.dailyprogress.com/opinion...a4bcf6878.html

Chinese pharma fakes are killers
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2...eries/6374451/

Chinese tires are risky:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32899266/n...-buyer-beware/

Chinese construction and electrical counterfeits:
http://research.ufl.edu/publications...re.html?mobile

[CarlD]

Ben, from my reading, I believe the letter was written by the pool dealer not Doughboy, "Pool ####".

[PoolDoc]

Could be. But either way, it doesn't affect my evaluation (that EITHER the liner was subjected to high FC + low CYA OR that the liner was made from a low-grade, possibly Chinese, liner sheet material.)

This is a VERY frustrating situation, since the liner sheeting material is not necessarily the same, even on "identical" liners (same liner company, same print, same specs) are not necessarily made from the same vinyl sheeting. In a conversation I had with a Canadian General product engineer some years ago (http://www.cgtower.com/), he told me that even he couldn't always tell 'good' sheeting from the junk, without lab testing.

This means that there's NO way for the pool dealer or pool consumer to tell. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to test or confirm liner durability in advance! It's a product tailor made for Chinese market sharks, since they can cut quality without getting caught for years.

[CarlD]

Could be. But either way, it doesn't affect my evaluation (that EITHER the liner was subjected to high FC + low CYA OR that the liner was made from a low-grade, possibly Chinese, liner sheet material.).

Nor should it.

[CarlD]

rajung:
You are not nuts.

Since this is a vinyl pool and your CH is fairly low, while your T/A is high, I don't think you have a big risk. The two risks of high T/A are: pH continually trending up; and of cloudy water and scaling if CH gets high as well (400ppm or greater).

You MAY want to go through our T/A lowering process, but never let your pH go below 7.0, and don't pour a giant slug of Muriatic Acid into your pool as that can damage your liner. Instead, either mix M-A into a 5 gallon bucket of pool water and add THAT to the return stream (always add the acid to the water, not the other way around), or you can add M-A directly into the return stream so it cannot settle. In either case, I wouldn't add more than 1 cup at a time and work pH down slowly, which brings T/A down with it.

You can use dry acid instead, but I STILL like to dissolve it in 5 gallons of pool water first.

Then aerate your water with splashing kids, a sprayer, etc, to raise pH without raising T/A. Lower pH again as above to bring T/A down again, and aerate to raise pH. Repeat to "ratchet" T/A down without putting your pool in danger by too low pH, or by a slug of M-A settling on the liner and weakening it.

[rajung]

thanks
when the liner was replaced, my TA was in the mid 300 range.
I slowly added the acid in front of the return stream,usually no more than 32oz. at a time,around 4 hours apart if I remember without looking at my log sheet I now have
Then I would brush the area where added and use 2 pond pumps attached to the steps and shoot a jet stream across the pool surface for what seemed like a week, never letting the ph drop below7.2.
My return diffuser just doesn't seem to do enough alone and I cant turn it up to the surface due to a light in it without getting under the deck and loosening the whole unit to turn it.
took about 7-10 days to go from 380 to 110 and somewhere around 5 gal of acid? on 13,700 gal pool.
I guess I will slowly go back to work on the TA issue,and continue with the chemical balance I have been doing lately and assume my 50ppm stabilizer with 6ppm FC is fine and adding bleach or 12.5% chlorinator in front of return stream.The PH always for the most part stays at 7.4,maybe 7.2 after 3 weeks with totally clear water.
I do brush the pool once week but rarely vacuum,every 2 weeks,no real trees, just fake palms.
So I guess I am getting ripped and have no recourse after doing more than anyone else other than the folks on this board and others like this one that do proper down to the bones maintenance.And if I go back to my very first post on this, what I thought would happen actually did
thanks all for your suggestions and input.

[PoolDoc]

1. Any solid chlorine or acid compound that comes into DIRECT contact with the liner can damage it.

2. Question: were the liner and the filter Doughboy OEM products?

[CarlD]

rajung:

It sure sounds like you did very little, if anything, wrong. I know it's depressing but you STILL want to have a pool so you have to do it.

FantaSea sold me their "Space Age Lifetime Walls". What I didn't know was it was the "lifetime" would turn out to be 12 years--a dog's life. Even with discounts the regular water walls would cost me $2000 with shipping. I'm expecting it to cost me less than half that, but with a lot of extra sweat equity. I'm using underlayment grade P/T 3/4" ply, priming it with Kilz premium outdoor primer, then I'm going to let it sit for 3 months before I try painting it. The inside, facing the liner, will be covered with wall foam to protect the liner, but I wasn't planning on painting over the primer. The outside will be painted.

They did give me a deep discount on a discontinued pattern for the liner in heavier gauge.