Re: Metal in the water (Fiberglass 35K pool)
I don't know what may have caused the spots, I really can't see them too well, but the shock for vinyl pools shouldn't have done it unless there was copper in it. I know that the trichlor pucks they carry now have copper added - they do this because they want copper to act as an algacide along with the chlorine. I have found that whenever I use anything but regular unscented bleach in my pool to get high chlorine levels - especially calhypo, I get some staining. I can ususally get rid of this by lowereing the ph to 7 and adding more sequesterer. All of your other numbers look good, so I think it was just the high chlorine levels that brought the stains. If you have any ascorbic acid, I would put some in the pool and let it circulate - you don't have to do the whole treatment - just wait till your chlorine level goes down, put some in where the spots seem most prevalent, and add some more sequesterer. They should go away. Fiberglass pools tend to stain real easily. Therefore I try to keep a constant level of chlorine in the water so that I don't have to shock. Once you realize how to manage the stains - getting rid of them as soon as they appear, it isn't hard to keep a stainfree pool. It just takes a while to get to know your own water, and how it reacts to your pool - everyone's is a little different. As you can see in the post above about metal plating - they say that the fibergflass is magnetic, attacting any metals that get in the water. Metals are always in the water - it comes from dust, fertilizer, calium is also a metal and who knows what else is in the air. So if it isn't obvious of where the metals are coming from, then it is just easier to deal with it than to drive yourself crazy trying to figure out where the metals are coming from. I gave up on mine - I just deal with it as best I can, and when the stains show up I zap them! Hope this helps, feel free to ask any other questions you have.
I was just reading over all the posts, and this is my theory. You had a lot of metal in your water. When you did the metal treatment the treatment reacted with the cya (like it does with a big algae bloom) and that is why it disappeared. You used enough ascorbic acid to get rid of the stain, but not enough to sequester the metals. I know that you used a lot, but if there was stain on the whole pool, then there was a lot of metal that was lifted off and needed to be sequestered. Your metal is still in the water and as soon as you add high chlorine levels the metal that is not sequestered is falling out onto the pool. There is the new product by proteam Metal Magic that is supposed to turn the metals into salt crystals so that it can then be filtered out. You supposedly can use this, and not anything else (ascorbic acid, or sequesterer). It may be worth a try for you to get rid of the metals once and for all. If when using the metal magic, some of the stains remain, then add some ascorbic acid to lift them, and the metal magic should then be able to bind to them and get rid of them. This is only a reccomendation - I have metal magic, but have not had to use it yet. But this is what I would do if it were my pool.
Last edited by mbar; 08-18-2006 at 11:45 AM.
Northeast PA
16'x32' kidney 16K gal IG fiberglass pool; Bleach; Hayward 200lb sand filter; Hayward pump; 24hrs; Pf200; well; summer: none; winter: mesh; ; PF:7.5
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