Gabe's Dallas Pool Service

Attack of the worms! They seem to crawl out of the ground when the ground is saturated with water. Only problem is they tend to fall in the pool and die leaving a stain on white plaster. I remember cleaning some swimming pools here in Dallas and when I was done there was a pump basket full of worms from vacuuming that looked like raw hamburger meat. Some shock will usually take the stains off from dead worms that have been laying on the bottom. Its good to pre-dissolve the shock in a bucket and then add it to the pool.

You can find out to what degree these stains might be organic by shocking the pool. Your weekly swimming pool service company should be able to do that for you if you want them to. After shocking keep running the equipment like you normally would and see if the stains go away within the next day or two. Make sure the pool is clean during this time so that you don't get new organic stains from the shock causing debris to bleed out new organic juices. If the shock does not bleach out the stains then they are likely due to metals... as was mentioned already. If you have a high TDS that can point towards metals. However I should mention we've had a couple of examples of swimming pools we service that had metal stains without a high TDS at all. I would suggest getting a Jack's Magic Stain ID kit to test for metals as well as a few other things and see if any combination of their products will remove the stain for you. The good news is we have found most metal stains can be removed with the Jack's Magic products. There are other products out there that work as well but Jack's has simplified the diagnosis with their stain ID kit. If you find you have metals and use a Jack's Magic product or other metal-stain removal product to remove them from your surfaces back into the water I would also suggest a partial or full drain depending on severity to remove the metals from the water when you are finished getting them into solution. I wrote a little piece about the benefits of a draining a swimming pool in regards to this previously. I would like to point out that Jack's Magic (and others) tend to recommend a sequestrate product (which they also sell) to "sequester" (or keep in solution) the metals that you pull off your surfaces. This is helpful (and many times necessary) to use if you have natural stones or landscaping that is introducing the metals on an ongoing basis. However, I think you would do better to "remove" the problem as much as you can with a partial or full drain as well after you get the metals back into the water rather than just spending money on product to hold them in solution in the water. I'd be glad to help you more if I can. I would love to know how this gets resolved for you.

<quote>I'm not bashing salt -- I just feel there should be a true balance of pros and cons for any system instead of an "it's perfect" type of sales pitch. Most people are very happy with their SWG pools, but to pretend that there isn't increased risk of corrosion or that some pools haven't had problems would be deceitful. </quote> That's a really good reply Spa Guru. I did a little post on swimming pool saltwater system trade-off's a few months ago. I agree with your point that we should be talking about some of the less than perfect issues with a salt system as well.