Pool-newb

Hi Tony I have an extenda-swim and I discuss it here: http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27383&st=0&p=123053&hl=extenda&fromsearch=1entry123053 http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11234&st=0&p=79958&hl=extenda&fromsearch=1entry79958 Everything I said there pretty much still stands - although I haven't used it this year at all because my work suddenly to a turn for the busier. If you still have questions, let me know.

That was probably my post that you read and while I don't post much here, I do monitor from time to time. I guess this is a good time to update my experience. I've had it for a few years now and I now better understand the laws of physics. The point is that it takes a huge amount of energy to move that much water from cold to warm despite mine being a small pool, and so, in the Atlanta area, the word "Extenda-Swim" really is appropriate. Since my pool is in a lot of shade, about all I can do with the heater is extend the season - open early and close late. Some of the finer points I've learned: - This particular brand of heater is not very efficient. While it is well insulated, I think a huge percentage of the actual heat goes up the chimney. If I had enough time and energy I would make some design changes to this one that involved a small fan of some kind blowing air in to the fire box through a lot of well distributed small holes, and then routing the gases in a zigzag around all of the heat exchanger using some steel plating in between the heat exchanger layers. I would also set it up so I could open the fire box and clean the pipes without having to reseal it with caulk each time. - I ordered the middle sized heater for a small (7800 gallon) pool and that was certainly not overkill. I'd guess it takes about a day to get a 10 to 15°F rise, depending on wood. - Cover the pool when you're heating but not swimming. I have two solar covers on it on cool days, and I'm not going to do much off-season heating until I can build some kind of building around the pool making it "semi-indoor". Heat lost to the ambient air is huge and fast. - Type of wood will make a large difference in how fast the temp rises and how often you need to add. Since you heat your home with wood I'm hoping you know more than I do about the BTUs contained in different types of wood, but of the several large trees worth of wood I have, I've noticed that a white wood (I think it's white oak) burns a lot hotter. So I tend to try to put several smaller pieces of white wood to get things started, then one or two pieces of white wood with large chunks of the slower stuff for the long burn. - I don't recommend doing this if you don't have a cheap to free source of wood. If you have to pay someone to cut, season, haul and stack, you'd probably be better off paying the $500/month to I've heard it costs to run a gas heater. - They do generate smoke so doing this in a suburb subdivision is not as smart as in the woods. I've learned how to keep the smoke to a minimum, and I am also constantly asking my very nice neighbors if they are having any problems. They have been banned in some suburban areas. Sooo.... - Do you have the facilities and desire to work with steel to improve the design a bit? - Do you really enjoy hauling, stacking, cutting, etc wood? - Do you have a cheap to free source of fire wood? - Is your pool indoors or will you keep it well thermal covered when not in use? - Are you in the boonies where wood smoke won't make the mall shoppers cough? The more emphatic yeses you answer, the better the fit. Hope this helps, let us know what you decide!

Thanks for the bump and sorry it's taken so long. This is my third attempt due to various PC problems - gotta love modern technology. My initial conclusions remain pretty much the same, here are some random thoughts after a year of using this heater. We made the decision in late February or early march to go ahead with the liner replacement so I stopped heating at that point. The liner was done in April and except for a brief initial period, the weather heated the water enough so that burning wood was not necessary. The heater available at woodstovepools.com was not available when I purchased mine and it may be better in several aspects: - The door is insulated and from the description it sounds like the rest is insulated better than mine. This will of course help efficiency. - The exterior is stainless steel and besides making it look nicer (matter of taste) that will also eliminate the routine sanding and spraying with black spray paint to remove surface rust on mine. Caveat; while stainless steel is normally rust resistant, it can still rust and if it does I'm not sure how much effort would be involved in removing the rust. - Also from the description it looks like they did a much better job designing the heatbox and burn area. The air intakes appear more finely tunable and they talk about baffles to reduce unburned gases. However, they also claim that one bush cord will heat the entire season and that is a blanket statement that simply cannot be made without considering other variables like wood type, desired water temperature, weather, pool cover, etc. But their website doesn't state how much it costs and that would be an important factor deciding whether to buy on or the other. They also haven't solved the problem of what to do if the water stops. Groo, I like your idea of having the heater below water line but with the size of these heaters I think that would be impractical. Still, I wonder if the heat exchanger could be installed vertically or at an angle to allow at least some convection powered flow - not for normal use but enough to protect things when the water stops. Maybe even a simple hand pump built in to keep the water flowing while the fire cools off. Either way I think any solution to this would require expensive engineering which given the low numbers of these heaters will probably not happen. I found and bought at a local chain hardware store (Lowe's and Home Depot did not have them, Ace and Gilroy's did) an 8" cast iron flu damper and a 2 pieces of 8" stovepipe. While the assembly was not as straightforward as I hoped (problems caused by the male/female matching), it was an easy and not too expensive way to make it look a bit better and provide better draft & draft control while also moving the smoke up a few feet higher. Was not a very impressive change. Most important for maintaining a pool at a warm temperature is keeping it covered. I was in the pool in February with it over 80° but I was under an oversized solar blanket and my main goal at the time was to find some way to support the cover high enough so it could remain on the pool while we swam. I was unsuccessful at the time but I'm not done tinkering with that yet. The point is that an outdoor uncovered pool in the Atlanta area will cool off so quickly in the winter that it makes no sense to bur the wood unless someone is spending several hours daily in the pool. I will continue looking for some kind of cover solution but most of the commercial products (removable in summer, swimmable and insulated in winter) I've seen so far are just too expensive. The best way to look at this kind of heater is really in the name; "Extenda-A-Swim". Without additional protection it will simply extend the swimming season. I still believe that for those communities that have outlawed these there must be a better way to prevent local air pollution. Mine would probably deserve a restriction too but I am as careful as possible. I never burn anything but wood (paper and cardboard to get the fire started) and I always ask all of my nearest neighbors if they are having any problems with the smell or smoke. So far, not even the elderly person on constant oxygen whose kitchen is about 12 ft from the heater has had any problems. I also now have enough experience (and my wood pile is a bit more seasoned) to keep the worst of the smoke down and it usually burns fairly cleanly - albeit very inefficiently. One topic that is rarely broached in the emissions discussions is the source of energy. Oil is solar energy that was deposited on the planet a long time ago and consuming fossil fuels converts that stored energy into heat, warming our current environment. Solar thermal, photo voltaic, and wind are all solar energy sources that were deposited on the planet recently and are energy balance neutral. Wood is a form of solar energy that was deposited on the planet generally within the last hundred years and it is renewable. Not as good as direct solar but certainly much better than fossil fuels. While this new heater model may change things and I don't have any experience with it to be certain, my primary conclusions remain the same. The appropriate installation for a wood-burning pool heater is one in which the owner/user: - doesn't mind the manual labor involved with burning wood - doesn't mind spending time to feed and care for the fire - has a cheap or free source of wood - has a large enough area around the heater or is conscientious enough to ensure that no neighbors are bothered by the emissions - is willing to keep a thermal cover on the pool except when swimming - wants to extend the season by a month or two on either side

I don't own a spa (yet) but I agree with many of the posts above including ... - large, easily readable controls and display reachable from inside the tub - maybe a wired remote? - LCD Monitor(s) for DVD, tv or PC - built-in PC which monitors water quality, allows web surfing, music playing, DVD playing, tv watching, etc. Also weighs and dispenses required chemicals, provides alerts for water quality and can change it automatically when needed, has a power usage meter, and can control all aspects of the tub including room lighting - Underwater sub-woofers and good quality speakers - Easy access to the pumps and other hardware - QUIET! - foot wash as described above - repositionable seats/recliners - repositionable jets - warming storage for towels - dry storage for everything that needs to stay dry - fogger for effect and mister for cooling - refrigerator accessable from inside the tub - maybe even complete bar with small microwave for snacks. - some kind of aroma generator (Actually it sounds like a pool already) And of course price. If I found a hot tub with all this I would be willing to pay $200 - maybe even more if it was the right color.

I also have a multi speed pump and I can really recommend it. If larger diameter piping doesn't cost much you can save but make sure you get some sort of variable speed pump to realize the savings.

Sounds about right to me. If you want to make sure it's not the main drain, cover it up with something so no water can drain through and see if the leak goes away.

Another possibility is an electronic pH meter. I have one that measures pH and ORP very quickly (just dunk it into a sample of the water and the reading stabilizes in a few seconds). ORP generally gives an indication of how well the chlorine is working but there are a lot of factors that that go into ORP. Still, just for the pH (and temperature) values alone it's great, and even reads down to ±0.01 with an accuracy of ±0.02. Google "handheld pH meter" and you'll find a pletheora of these small instruments at a range of prices.

My nearest pool store is Leslie's and I am happy with them, but I think there is great variability among the individual stores. I saw someone mention that a pool store is like a boutique - you can get some really fancy, expensive, high-heeled shoes there but we generally head to one of the discounters if we need several pairs of cheap jeans. Sometimes it just has to be the fancy shoes and you can't get them anywhere else but the pool store. This includes things like stain removers, pump parts and complicated water testing. For the bulk chlorine, bags of salt, or anything in large quantity the local discounter is probably a better deal. I also agree about the TF-Test kits. That's a good source of the testing reagents.

Are you certain there is nothing blocking the return lines anywhere? Check and make sure none of the outlets eyes have turned in their sockets. Also make sure you have all the valves opened to the correct position. A back-pressure that high with no normal explanation isn't good. I have an over-dimensioned pump (1.5 hp for an ~8000 gal pool) and mine starts high and goes higher, but not that high. Another possibility - the gauge. I replaced mine last year but this year on opening it showed a base pressure of ~10 - with no pump running - so I had to replace it again. It was only about $8.00 and an easy fix.

I have a similar situation and I've learned to just live with it. On my system I believe that the water is cavitating because there are some bends and turns a bit too close to the intake side of the pump. However, I have a two speed pump and when running on high speed, no water collects in the pump basket because it is all passed through to the sand filter. On low speed it takes a day or two but eventually the pump basket fills with air. And like you, I notice a big difference in how much air comes in if the filter is clean or dirty. There is also more air if the pump basket gets leaves in it, or if the skimmer or drain gets a little plugged with leaves or debris. I'I have 2" above ground and 1.5" below ground.

That gets my vote also - definitely go with 2" plumbing. The cost difference is minimal but it can add up to a lot of savings over the lifetime of the pool. I recently installed an over-dimensioned two speed pump and I really wish the builder had used the 2" pipe because I now get cavitation (bubbles appear in the water without a leak present). I am able to use the high speed to have a fast turnover - good for mixing or quick filtering on dirty conditions. For daily filtering I leave it on low speed and that reduces energy usage and pump noise. I also recommend putting ball valves, disconnects and labels on every pipe coming out of the ground. Helps a lot with troubleshooting, holding prime when cleaning pump basket, and other cleaning tasks. I would also recommend the variable or multiple speed pump. High speed on mine is 1.5 hp, low speed is perhaps .75 hp but it uses less than half the electricity because flow resistance drops exponentially as flow speed drops. I found mine online for perhaps 10% more than my local pool store would have charged for a replacement single speed pump.

Another easy test would be to turn off or disconnect the heater and flip the pump to high. If the breaker still trips it will probably be the pump.

See my answer to your other post.

Seems to me it's probably going to be your pump, but the circuit breaker could be at fault too, and that is probably the easiest and cheapest to change. If you know what you're doing with electricity, I believe a lot of home improvement stores would have a replacement breaker. Another thing you could do is measure the actual current draw, and if you aren't handy around electricity then getting an electrician out would probably be the best bet. He should be able to measure the current, diagnose the problem and fix it immediately if it's the breaker. If it's the pump he'll at least be able to tell you that. Let us know what it turns out to be.

Probably not. Take a sample of your pool water AND your well water to your nearest pool store and have them test it for everything, including metals. Let us know what they say - and what they think you should do.

I think the problem here is using an inline chlorinator at all. I and many others here on the forum have had terrible problems using the erosion feeders. They release too much CYA into the pool, and lower the pH too much too fast. There are situations where they work but it's not the most cost-effective way to get the pool sanitized. As far as the back-pressure goes, are the solar units connected in parallel or series? If they are in parallel that will increase the back-pressure, if they are in parallel the back-pressure should drop. I'm no professional on this but it seems to me that you would want them all to be in parallel - that is, the water pumped to the cells only travels through one cell before it returns to the pool. Not only should that be the lowest flow resistance, that should also produce the greatest heat gain. The next question is the pipe diameter and length. If you are using 100' of flexible 1/2" garden hose you will have much more resistance than 20' of 2" solid PVC. The only other thing I can think of is if the system is elevated (on a roof?) and it is not entirely airtight and any remaining air removed. If everything is tight, the only energy required would be to move the water through the plumbing, not to pump it up to the roof; that would be compensated by gravity pulling it down the return side.

Recommendations? Yep. You're here. I started my pool career about a year ago with a vinyl lined swamp. While I am by a long shot no professional, after reading through the Pool School and using the Pool Calculator (links in my signature) I was soon able to understand and control my pool water condition. I had exactly the same problem you do with the CYA, plus another problem with pH being constantly too low (previous owners completely rusted out the heater and lead in/out pipes) , and it was all caused by using the pucks in a feeder. The pucks are very low pH but anything I added to raise the water ph also raised the TA. Pretty soon I had such high TA that the pH wouldn't do anything but stay low, and by then the CYA was higher than the test kits can measure. I got the CYA down to about 60 by draining a foot or two on closing, and replacing that with rainwater on opening. The CYA then suddenly crashed - apparently due to a soil bacteria contamination when a plumbing failure had stopped all circulation for several days. I lowered the TA by aeration - I put the blower side of a clean shop-vac on a weight so the end blew huge bubbles into the pool, and kept the pH low while the bubbler was running. That causes the TA to outgas as carbon dioxide. To make it stay right I removed the erosion feeder from the plumbing and began using bleach from Walmart or Home Depot. This method required a little bit of muriatic acid every few weeks or so, and it was irritating to add the bleach every few days, but it is effective and probably the best cost solution there is. I recently converted to an SWG but I have no special plumbing, hardware or stonework that will be damaged by the salt water. I paid about $900 for a basic, high output SWG but if you want something very automated and still want to use bleach, there are pumps available with ORP sensors that can automate the job quite nicely in response to demand. I've seen completely automated systems for bleach and muriatic acid for $2000 - $3000.

I think there's a typo in rs' post: It should be: If the pressure is 5 when the filter is clean, backwash it when the pressure reaches 15. - Or if you have 10 as an initial value, backwash it when it's at 20.

Thanks njpoolbuyer. When I hear "...those things are incredibly carcinogenic..." I have to ask what evidence there is to support that. I also think it's too bad they were banned but I also completely understand why. I also understand what they were referring to about the small huts. I've seen those on the web and since they are heating the entire house in deep winter I imagine they can be much more problematic. I think a better path to have taken would be to require some sort of EPA testing or emissions requirement instead of forbidding them outright. I seem to recall that Washington State came up with some very tough laws for normal wood-burning stoves and that got the manufacturers to start engineering and then advertising how clean burning the stoves can be. Still, if someone has s a roaring fire behind a gaping hole, I can imagine the garbage burning that happens. Too bad, really. Well, congratulations, I hope. Can you tell me if the heat exchanger is stainless steel or copper? I think they were making them from copper first but they had too many problems and have now switched to stainless steel. I also have not yet been able to find the goo they used to seal the top (and expect me to use to seal the chimney). I found some fireproof mortar at HD and Lowes, but that stuff turns crumbly and brittle. By now you're probably swimming in 90° water if you haven't had any of the problems I've had. I can only say make sure you have as much water pumping through it as possible when there is any heat in the fire box. If the pump stops (mine was power outage) use a garden hose to put it out as quickly as possible - without flooding the fire box of course. It worked well for me I just didn't think to do it fast enough and I had problems. - It depends on what you mean by "seasoned". I had 7 or 8 trees removed and the wood left in the yard. They were different types of hardwoods and some were taken down last fall, and the last two were done this spring (April). I am still using the older stuff but I notice a huge difference in the way the different types of trees burn. One type is very light colored - nearly white, and burns well and hot. The other pile is a bit darker and has some wood that is very splintery and burns well though not quite as well as the white stuff, and the third type burns very slowly and cool. I am constantly adjusting the lower damper and it does work but I still feel they could have done a much better job of air flow control. If I put only white stuff I have to close it almost to zero to keep the chimney temp from overheating. If I'm using the third type alone I need to keep it wide open and even then it just barely coasts along at the bottom range of the chimney thermometer. I usually mix the two or three types of wood, and I often split it as I go so by managing the log size and wood type I can fine tune it for what I want to do. A typical burn lasts two or three days and starts with mostly the white and splintery stuff. Once it's going well I'll mostly add the third stuff with a few small white pieces to keep up the temp. To keep it going overnight I stuff it as full as I can with a mix of splintery and slow stuff, then close the draft to almost nothing, then let it slumber till I get up the next morning. If I can't tend it for a while (like if we leave the house) then to revive it I grab some more of the white stuff. Let us know how it's going with you on this.

Wow, good to know and I'll keep my eye n the stuff I've done with it.

Ok, I think I get it. There are two basic sanitation paths; one by the bound chlorine as it is released from the Cyanuric Acid as soon as the rest of the FC is consumed, and the other, perhaps weaker path is that of CYA combined with chlorine. I didn't "forget" about the equilibrium reaction - I wasn't aware of it and that makes the use of CYA much more logical, thanks for the clarification (pun intended :-). I also understand that values well under 1 ppm are effective sanitizers without the presence of CYA, but in the real world of pools, even the best test kits have a resolution of only 0.5 ppm (though I sometimes push that by doubling reagents or halving the sample with distilled water), and I'm just accustomed to refering to chlorine levels in terms of 1 or more ppm. I googled the DIN19643 and while I didn't find the entire standard online I did find some excerpts and references to it (I am fluent in German). Apparently (according to the German Wiki article) they are planning to change it this year to add a section 6 which will allow "Ultrafiltration", using a membrane with 0.05µm porosity, which means not even viruses and bacteria get through. However, in the 30+ german pulic pools that are using this system they are still using chlorine. I guess you just can't get around the fact that not all water will get sucked into the filter and there can always be pockets of crud. But I digress. None of the articles I read even mentioned CYA. I have also spent many hours swimming in German pools (I lived there for 16 years) and neither my wife (who IS German) nor I noticed any huge difference in the swimsuit failure or hair frizzyness. Of course we didn't go every day but we were in many different pools, and they do have a huge selection of water temperatures and contents. One pool I lived near for several years was based on Bali. It had several pools including one with very warm water, and all of the pools had an intentionally very high salt content - from the taste I would say even as much as sea water. The most recent swimming adventure over there was around Christmas at this large complex near the Munich airport. They claim the longest indoor slide in Europe and have 14 different slides, and probably 12 different pools (including one with Dead Sea minerals) plus a huge sauna area. I wonder if they use any CYA because while we didn't notice ruined bathing suits ore frizzy hair, we were pretty tired afte a 15 hour day there.

In my research I found an exterior whole house wood fired heater which also had an option to heat the pool. If you can connect the pool to your house heating system, that would be ideal because that opens the option for using oil if you think it's appropriate.

Hey, I just came up with the idea, you get to put the bell on the cat. The reason I even thought about this was that when it happened to me it happened very quickly - probably over a day or two, and while I believe I did get algae at the same time, I don't think it was a really serious infestation. My theory was based on keeping the pool well covered while this is going on, and having a very strong bacteria - and maybe even a of these bacteria. And while I did use a lot of bleach getting back to clean, I can still imagine it a viable solution at least in some situations, for example: - Where water is scarce and/or expensive - For really large pools to save water, or really small pools where things would move fast anyway - Where the pool can be kept tightly covered while without chlorine and does not have much problem with blowing in leaves or other vegetation. When I was having my CYA problem I could not find the melamine based product anywhere, or, if so, I seem to remember that it would have cost more than refilling the pool. So what about using sulphuric acid as a floculant and then vacuuming it out? Would the sulphuric acid cause too many other problems?

I have a new SWG and I want to understand why we even need any CYA at all. I do understand that without CYA the cell will be running much longer but I'm not certain why. I also understand that CYA will bind to free chlorine in pool water and protect it from breaking down in sunlight. However, this binding will also prevent or at least reduce sanitizing action performed by the chlorine. Therefore our CL levels are highly dependent on the CYA level in the pool. I also understand that in an indoor pool, zero CYA is needed, and chlorine at somewhere below 1 ppm would be plenty to achieve a sanitizing effect. This tells me that CYA is only necessary to protect from sunlight. Understanding those two items, it seems to me that the chlorine only needs to be maintained about 1 ppm above the CYA level at which the rest is bound. If in a test tube, 50 ppm of CYA resulted in a need of 6 ppm to achieve an arbitrary sanitizing effect, then ±5 ppm cl is bound to the CYA and the rest , ± 1 ppm is available to do the sanitizing. Extrapolating then, at 100 ppm CYA we would have ±10 ppm cl bound to the CYA, and the rest, again about 1 ppm is free to perform the sanitizing work. These numbers seem to jibe roughy with the median values from the pool calculator. My conclusion from all this would be that any measurable free chlorine available for sanitation would would be consumed by the sun very rapidly (< half hour half life), and while we would have a clearly measurable free cl level, none of it would be available in the water for sanitation because it would all be bound by the CYA. Therefore it seem to me that the best CYA level would be zero, and while we would use much more chlorine, it would all be available for sanitation and would provide a much higher sanitation level. Obviously this is not how things work in the real world so where did I mess up? Where does the sanitizing effect come from in a pool that has been in the direct sun long enough to burn off all the non-CYA-bound chlorine? - Does CYA actually release some of the free chlorine to be available for sanitation as the sun burns it off? - Does the CYA-bound chlorine actually have a much weaker sanitizing effect and therefore more is needed? - Something else?

One other thing I wanted to mention/ask with the Chemilizer is whether or not it shifts dosage during a run. I had set up a drip system using a 5 Gal camping water bag from Walmart and some tubing and connectors from Home Depot. The whole thing cost maybe $20 but I discovered that as the weight of the bleach in the bag decreased, so too did the drip rate. I wonder does the Chemilizer change feed rate if the pump drops output (as the filter backpressure increases), or if there are any other dose shifting problems. I think if I had a large pool and no budget limits and still didn't want an SWG, Inyo pools has assembled a complete system including sensors for pH an ORP (to measure cl) that will dose bleach based on measuring, and using two each of those pumps as dosers for muriatic acid and bleach and two tanks for the chemicals. On a budget I would use the one pump, a 5$ camping water bag from Walmart (btw, this bag collapses when empty so when properly connected to the feeder pump it keeps the air out of the bleach, and 5 gallons is a lot of bleach). Once I got the flow rate figured out and set I would use a pH tester to monitor the acid demand as needed.