Bad Water Test Need Advice

[anomale]

Hi here is the story I had a pool guy for about a year or so and within the past couple of months i started to get leaks in the copper pipes that are connected to the filter, I also had some discoloration on the walls of the pool. The pool is roughly 40,000 gallons uses DE filters and has a fiberglass liner. I felt the pool guy wasnt doing his job so i bought a test kit at walmart and checked the water the clhorine was ok but ph was too low to get a reading using the test kit I went to a pool store and bought 10 lbs of ph-up and put it all in the pool the water turned a cloudy blue but after a day the cloudyness went away and I took another test the ph was still yellow but got a few shades lighter still too low to register on the tester. I took a sample in to the pool store and here are the results

FAC 2 ppm

TAC 2 ppm

CH 420 ppm

CYA 100 ppm

TA 60 ppm

pH 7

BASE 45

COPPER 5 ppm

IRON 3 ppm

TDS 700

PHO 500 ppm

he sold me two 1 liter bottles of metal free and said to dump them in the pool and wait a week then bring in another water sample he also said i would need about 60 lbs of soda ash to get the ph up to the correct levels but not to add anything to the pool until the metal issue is resolved.

can anyone give some reccomendations to get the water back to par? is there a cheaper alternative to soda ash from the pool store? I was reading about baking soda wash is that just as good?

incase you cant tell already, im fairly new at all this and dont want to get taken advantage of at the pool store as it gets quite expensive. any help is appreciated

also i noticed a couple cracks in the fiberglass liner could this have been caused by the low pH and is there any way to repair them without draining the pool? i have one very close by the main drain and 40,000 gallons of water is also a little expensive.

Thanks for your help

Adam

[waterbear]

Hi here is the story I had a pool guy for about a year or so and within the past couple of months i started to get leaks in the copper pipes that are connected to the filter, I also had some discoloration on the walls of the pool. The pool is roughly 40,000 gallons uses DE filters and has a fiberglass liner. I felt the pool guy wasnt doing his job

I would say he was borderline negligent based on the test results! Don't know how much good it would do but you might want to talk to a lawyer since the low pH for an extended period of time while he was caring from your pool has caused some real damage and metal stains n the water. BOTH your iron and copper are WAY TOO HIGH and you really need to replace the water, which is not a trivial task with a fiberglass pool. The copper levels are certainly from the water being out of balance and acidic and the leaks in the copper pipes are further evidence. Copper levels over .9 ppm are totally unacceptable and levels over .3 ppm should only be tolerated if you have an ionizer or mineral system or you use a copper based algaecide (none of which I would recommend.)

so i bought a test kit at walmart and checked the water the clhorine was ok but ph was too low to get a reading using the test kit I went to a pool store and bought 10 lbs of ph-up and put it all in the pool the water turned a cloudy blue but after a day the cloudyness went away and I took another test the ph was still yellow but got a few shades lighter still too low to register on the tester. I took a sample in to the pool store and here are the results

FAC 2 ppm

TAC 2 ppm

CH 420 ppm

CYA 100 ppm

TA 60 ppm

pH 7

BASE 45

COPPER 5 ppm

IRON 3 ppm

TDS 700

PHO 500 ppm

he sold me two 1 liter bottles of metal free and said to dump them in the pool and wait a week then bring in another water sample he also said i would need about 60 lbs of soda ash to get the ph up to the correct levels but not to add anything to the pool until the metal issue is resolved.

can anyone give some reccomendations to get the water back to par?

IMHO, you are going to need to replace the water and have the damage repaired. Sorry.

is there a cheaper alternative to soda ash from the pool store? I was reading about baking soda wash is that just as good?

Washing soda (sodium carbonate) IS soda ash, just a different name. You can find it in the laundry aisle of the grociery as Arm and Hammer Super Washing soda. However, 20 mule team borax is better for raising pH since it will not cause your total alkalinity to go though the roof!

Baking Soda (sodium bicarbonate) IS total alkalinity increaser. Another chemical name it goes under is sodium hydrogen carbonate. They are all the same thing and the cheapest place to get it is in the baking aisle of the grocery store!

incase you cant tell already, im fairly new at all this and dont want to get taken advantage of at the pool store as it gets quite expensive. any help is appreciated

also i noticed a couple cracks in the fiberglass liner could this have been caused by the low pH and is there any way to repair them without draining the pool? i have one very close by the main drain and 40,000 gallons of water is also a little expensive.

Thanks for your help

Adam

[anomale]

Thanks for telling me what I didnt want to but expected to hear aside from replacing the water do you think that the Metal Free chemicals will do the job and get the metals down to an acceptable level? I'd rather spend a couple hundred on chemicals than a thousand + on water and a pump rental or is the chemical route not going to cut it?

as for the lawyer... the pool guy was a close friend of my dad's and I'd rather turn the other cheek and let it go but trust me I wont take the lazy route anymore and definately will be taking care of it myself

as for the alkalinity going up at the moment it is low at 60ppm if i go with the baking soda wash will it raise it too much or bring it up to an acceptable level? It wou;ld be nice to kill two birds with one stone here if possible.

can you also reccommend a good tester or is the cheapo walmart one good enough? or do you suggest taking samples to the pool store and if so how often?

thanks for your help

Adam

[waterbear]

Thanks for telling me what I didnt want to but expected to hear aside from replacing the water do you think that the Metal Free chemicals will do the job and get the metals down to an acceptable level? I'd rather spend a couple hundred on chemicals than a thousand + on water and a pump rental or is the chemical route not going to cut it?

Metal seqeustrants do not remove the metals from the water. They just temporarily inactivate them chemically.If you have staining then it is important to remove the stainsing first before replacing water and filte media. With your levels of metals you will have sonstant staining problems and the very real danger of hair turning green until you replace the water.

as for the lawyer... the pool guy was a close friend of my dad's and I'd rather turn the other cheek and let it go but trust me I wont take the lazy route anymore and definately will be taking care of it myself

as for the alkalinity going up at the moment it is low at 60ppm if i go with the baking soda wash will it raise it too much or bring it up to an acceptable level? It wou;ld be nice to kill two birds with one stone here if possible.

BAking soda will raise the TA and might cause a slight increase in pH. Use The Pool Calculator to determine dosing.

can you also reccommend a good tester or is the cheapo walmart one good enough? or do you suggest taking samples to the pool store and if so how often?

Get yourself a Taylor K-2006 test kit and let the pool store test for metals. Disregard their other tests and believe your own. Ignore phosphate and TDS tests. They mean nothing.

thanks for your help

Adam

Fianlly, your CYA is too high. Water replacement will help with that also. You want it around 30-50 ppm in an outdoor pool for starters, a bit higher in hot climates that get a lot of sun and have an extended swim seaon such as Florida or Arizona and need to compensate for the higher CYA by keeping a FC a bit higher.

I assume you use trichlor tabs for chlorination (this would explain the high CYA and very acidic water). I would not use trichlor with copper pipes. Period! This means if you have an erosion feeder for the tabs you have to stop using it. Period.

I would suggest chlorinating with either liquid chlorine or laundry bleach.

[PoolGuyNJ]

The draining won't be quite as bad as I think waterbear though. A F/G lined pool is not a fiberglass pool but rather is usually a gunite pool with fiberglass epoxied to it and gel coated or painted. The clue is that it's 40,000 gallons, much larger than any F/G pool shell.

There is also a product called CU Later that does absorb metals from the pool. The pouches are not cheap but neither is sequesterant over time. From the reports I have seen, it works.

Test the fill water too. Important are the iron, copper and calcium hardness levels.

The CYA may be higher. If the pool store didn't dilute with distilled water, 100 is as high as most are able to accurately check.

If you go the bleach route, keep the TA level where it is as bleach tends to bring up pH over time. Its much easier with the alk where it is. Use the Borax to bring up the pH.

When you do dilute the pool, do it in 1/3 increments.

Scott