Stains no quite coming out with Vitamin C, maybe not enought POP?

[dmcwhinnie]

The interesting thing is the water isn't cloudy. I am starting to think that the stain isn't completely treatable with AA. I have ordered a stain test kit, and it is on they way. .. I guess I should have done that first.

[waterbear]

I am going to assume you ordered the Jack's Magic stain kit. It is a good one and the products work but they are expensive. Some of their stain treatments can acutally take weeks to complete so you might also need a jumbo bottle of POP (Pool Owner Patience)! You never did reply if you tested the stain with a vitimen C tablet? If that cleared the stain where it sat then ascorbic acid WILL work. If it didn't then you might need oxalic acid or even more drastic measures.

[dmcwhinnie]

Well, I don't have any vitamin C around the house.... so I can't say for sure. I did order Jack's Stain kit so we will see what it says. If it may take weeks, then I guess I will get the water back to balanced, and then tackle the stains once I know what I am dealing with.

[waterbear]

check out this post
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showpos...38&postcount=7

[dmcwhinnie]

I put a trichlor puck on the stains, and it definately lightened them. So I guess based on the other thread, my next steps are to get the water back in shape, and raise the chlorine to 30ppm? Should I proceed to get my water back in shape in all aspects CYA, pH, Alk, etc. and then raise the chlorine, or should I just go about raising Chlorine? I've ordered Ben's Test kit to get me started in proper water chemistry.

I guess the advice, "just get some test strips and just watch your pH once in a while and keep the chlorine just high enough so it doesn't turn green", I recieved from others wasn't quite enough.

[mbar]

I would get my ph up to 7 - 7.6, then add the chlorine. You can get a bad reading on ph (your ph will test much higher than it actually is) if your chlorine is really high. After the chlorine is high, you should see the stains start to lighten - it may take a while. It is hard to advise when we don't know what your numbers are - because the level of chlorine you need depends on the amount of cya you have in your water. since your pool is plaster, you also need to have calcium in your water at a level of 200-400. You need to have your alkalinity between 80-120. If you have a very acidic pool, your plaster can get eaten away, and your equipment can too. Just using test strips and worrying about ph was very bad advice you got - I'm so glad that you found this forum, the best thing that ever happened to me was to take control of my own pool, and this forum helped me to do it, and it will help you too. I recommend that you get a good test kit, the one sold on the Pool Solutions web site is the one most of us on this site use. However, there are others that work too. I am very happy with the kit I got here. Hope this helps, feel free to ask any questions you may have.