Doughboy Liner Damaged by Chlorine?

[rajung]

Well I thought all was good and I know this is an older post but just received this email.

[Related to: http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php/22676 - PoolDoc]

I trust you are finding opportunity to enjoy your pool this summer in spite of the cooler temperatures. I’m writing to let you know that although we are honoring the warranty discount you were given on your liner, Doughboy has denied the claim internally. This has no affect on our transaction with you as I’m choosing to maintain our position.



The reason for their denial is that the liner has evidence of over-chlorination. Oils inherent to the vinyl are pulled from the material when over-chlorination is present. What remains is a brittle material that in this case cracked at the seam. A warranty liner replacement defective from manufacture would actually separate at the seam.



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.



Please note that any claims in the future which are indicative of over-chlorination will not be honored by Doughboy or by Pool ####. I trust you will understand this position and please let me know if you have any questions.



We are very grateful for your business!

I was using 2 bioguard sticks in the skimmer per week as instructed by my pool store salesman, and it did fade the liner around the return after 9 months which I thought was normal since it was coming out a short distance away from skimmer.
At the time my CYA levels were at 90 and I was keeping my FC at 8-9ppm.
This year in March after liner replacement I had and have had a stabilizer level around 50ppm and have been keeping the FC around 5-6ppm.
Should I dump a bunch of water out water to get the CYA level down to 20ppm as to get the FC level to 3ppm as they say, or is this a bunch of you know what as to get out of warranty?
Totally confused now as to stabilizer/FC relationship.
I thought the higher CYA the higher FC had to be and lower CYA the lower FC?
Also, after liner was put in I tossed the bioguard stuff and have been using bleach,not adding into the skimmer but about a foot out in front of the return stream to avoid any fading ad the return area of liner.
I am thinking since the liner was faded around the return about 2 inches around it they were quick to assume to much biocrap and not knowing what the stabilizer levels were and why FC level was at the level it was due to that.

[Watermom]

I have asked Ben to read your post.

[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.

[rajung]

yes the email was from the pool store service dept.
I left out the last half of business name.
At the time of replacement,the C.S rep said they " the store" would also cover a 2 year labor warranty if it happened again, bought that was verbally over the phone, nothing in writing.
So it now appears I have no warranty.
It also to me is a good indicator that the reason they may have such a low failure rate is that many claims are denied.
I have no way to prove my side and dont think there could have been then and now.
One thing I have been doing for the last 5 months is keeping a daily record on what chemicals I have been adding and why and what rainfall we have had and if fresh water was added.
I cant possibly know of anything else I can do differently?
I also had my sand filter replaced by the same store last week after it split at the bottom seam and I was losing a lot of water ,it was on back order for 3 weeks so I had to keep adding fresh water every 2 days and now my TA is at 200.My tap water is at 350PPM Ta.
So I had a big battle at the start of this new liner lowering it with MA.
I always stored filter in a garage?
currently my readings
PH 7.4
CC 0 one day-- 0.2 sometimes
FC 6
TA 200
CH 150, don't check very often
stabilizer 50
borate 30
should I just stay the course and am I safe with the 200ppm TA? or add acid and aerate again to get it back to 130ppm TA?
Pretty bummed thinking I had the process nailed down just to find out it they don't think so.
Before I switched to the BBB method, I talked to quite a few people what they use to maintain chemical levels.
Most said , just throw in some pucks, some said if it smells like a pond I throw in some chlorine,others say I check the chlorine level and ph and that's all and we never had a problem in 5 years.They look at me like i am nuts when they see the M acid and my Taylor kit
I don't get it!

[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.