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HouTex1962

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  1. So to summarize: 1, adjust CYA to 80 ppm (Very Important for pH stability) 2. adjust TA to 70 ppm (Very Important for pH stability) 3. Bring up CH to keep water balanced if needed (important for plaster, probably important for fiberglass) 4. Adjust cell output and pump run time to maintain FC at 4-5 ppm (lower will not work with the CYA at 80 ppm) 5. Monitor pH and do not lower it below 7.6. wait for it to climb above 7.8 before adding acid and dropping it again. Your pool should stay between 7.6 and 7.8, particularly if you have also added the borate buffer system, which is highly recommeded. I have very high CH levels (my test from my TF-100: 800, plaster contractor: 570, Leslie's: 400) with the following other results: FC 4.5 CC 0.0 pH 7.2 (only after adding 64 oz of MA) TA 90 CYA 70 Borates 80 Salt 3700 My plaster has developed some mottling that my pool contractor thinks should be fixed with a no-drain acid wash, then a full drain, a power wash, and then a refill. He thinks my water has been too "aggressive." I'm still adding about a gallon of MA per week due to the pool being new, spill over spa, SWCG, and a 2.0 hp pump. So my pH goes from say 8.2 down to 7.2 after I add acid. Lately, I've gone to adding less MA but more frequently to not let the pH rise above 7.8. So it's going from say 7.2 after I add about a quart of MA up to say 7.8 after 2-3 days. After the acid wash and refill, assuming I get the CA to around 300 or so, what are my target numbers? I've used the pool caclulator and it seems to say I should target 7.8. But this is contrary to what the literature from Wet Edge says I should target (7.2-7.4). What do you suggest?
  2. Here in Houston, our deck builder used Miracle 511 Impregnator to seal our travertine coping and limestone decking. Our pool/deck is new (only about four months old) so I can't say how well it works. Here is the website: http://www.miraclesealants.com/s_511_impregnator.html He told us we should re-seal the coping/decking every year. A little goes a long way. We used about half of the one gallon container to cover our 20 X 20 pool coping and about 550 square feet of decking. I have no do idea what it cost.
  3. Our French Grey Luna Quartz is now about 4.5 months old. It took a few days to clear/turn blue and my 2 HP pump is way oversized for my 9,200 gallon pool and it ran 24/7 for the first week. I'd give it some time. Also, follow the directions on the pool start-up. I can't recall, but it may say not to use chlorine for a few days.
  4. Our pool is plastered with WetEdge Technologies Luna Quartz and we like it. So far it looks great. It's still curing (installed in early December 2010) so we are adding acid fairly often (about 16 oz. every 3 days or so). Our pool is only 20x20 and 3.5 to 4.5 feet deep and the total cost was about $3,200--that's total, not the difference between white plaster and the Luna Quartz. We were told that WetEdge is similar in quality to Diamond Brite.
  5. I have a cartridge filter for my three month old in ground pool and it originally was designed to go with a SWCG. I decided against a SWCG midway through construction, but we stayed with a cartidge filter (the plumbing was not set up for backwash to the sewer). My problem was that the CYA level went to 100 ppm in just over two months using 3" tri-chlor tabs. I drained half of the water out of the pool and now I'm using liquid chlorine at least until summer. It hasn't been too inconvenient yet, but it's not really hot yet. I will probably install a SWCG this summer. And we love our cartridge filter. It's a pentair 480. The water could not be prettier.
  6. Now the CYA level is 100 and if I've counted correctly I've only used nine 3" tablets since the 12/4/2010 start up. The guys at the pool supply store acted surprised that it got this high this quickly. I'm draining about half of the water now and then I'll use liquid chlorine until that gets old. I'll probably end up installing a salt water system. On the acid front it continues to improve. I only have to add about a pint of acid every 3 days or so to keep the pH in the 7.4 range.
  7. This may be late, but we have Wet Edge Luna Quartz and we like it. The color is French Grey. It has a very nice blue color when the sun is out. I can't really speak to the other products.
  8. Cart filter would be my first choice with a SWCG and NO autofill either! Go with salt, you won't regret it. Just stay away from natural rock construction. Our coping and deck is limestone so it may be a problem. Unless I develop a problem during the summer, I plan to stay with a chlorine pool and use Tri-Chlor. If it's just a matter of draining a foot or so of water every 6 months that's not a big deal to me. Thanks for your insight. Let's do the math: for every 10 ppm FC added by trichlor you also add 6 ppm of CYA Given a starting CYA of 30 ppm (low end of recommended range for an outdoor pool to prevent degradation from sunlight and a FC level of about 3-6 ppm (I would shoot for 4-5 ppm) , which is what would be needed to prevent any problems AND assuming a FC loss of 2 ppm per day (pretty much average) THEN Every 5 days you would be adding 6 ppm CYA along with the 10 ppm FC you have replaced (2 ppm/day) In 50 days (less than 2 months) you would have added 60 ppm CYA bringing your CYA up to 90 ppm and now requiring you to maintain your FC between 5 to 10 ppm to maintain the same FC activity in your pool (I would shoot for about 8-9 ppm, which would now increase the speed at which you add CYA!). OR requiring about a 50% water replacement (to drop the CYA back to about 45 ppm, close to the upper limit of where you want to be and needing you to maintain a FC level of about 5 ppm). Even assuming a 1 ppm FC loss daily it would mean a 50% water replacement every 4 months! Sorry, Trichlor is not the best choice in a climate with a long swim season, has a cart filter, and that does not winterize. If you do not want to go with salt but would still like the convenience of automatic chlorine dosage so you don't have to add unstabilized chlorine (sodium hypochlorite or calcium hypochlorite, which can be a problem if your calcium is high) then you can look into a peristaltic pump for dosing the liquid chlorine or one of the automatic cal hypo feeders that are available. One of these system will cost about the same or a bit less then a salt system and you will still need to buy chlorine. I have limestone coping and decking. Will the SWG result in corrosion of the limestone?
  9. Cart filter would be my first choice with a SWCG and NO autofill either! Go with salt, you won't regret it. Just stay away from natural rock construction. Our coping and deck is limestone so it may be a problem. Unless I develop a problem during the summer, I plan to stay with a chlorine pool and use Tri-Chlor. If it's just a matter of draining a foot or so of water every 6 months that's not a big deal to me. Thanks for your insight.
  10. Thanks for the input. I guess I should have done a little more research before we went with a chlorine system. We were going to install a SWG at first, but after hearing about some problems with green water and the need to continually add acid as well as other issues, we decided to go with a chlorine pool. I still may convert to a SWG if the CYA becomes a problem. But what I don't get is that my family always had a pool growing up and it was always in great shape as far as water clarity was concerned and it never had an algae problem. My father did everything himself and he used chlorine sticks which must have had CYA (this was in the mid-70s to mid-80s)in them. I never recall that he had to drain any water to lower CYA and I don't even remember that he even tested for CYA. Pretty much all he did was make sure the pH was in range and that FC was in the 1-3 range. And he shocked the pool with a product called "Burn Out," as I recall, after a pool party. And that was it and the pool always looked great. Burn out is cal hypo, an unstabilized chlorine source. How often did he have to add algaecide and did you live in a climate that required winterizing. Also, I will bet yo had a sand filter. All these are factors that can make trichlor work in a pool (short swim season, winterizing and backwashing). However, if you live in a climate with a longer swim season and have a cart filter or large capacity DE filter and you don't winterize then the use of trichlor and dichlor wan and will lead to an overstabilized pool in a matter of months and will require special measure to keep it from turning green such as the addition of algaecides (which impart their own set of problems) or periodic drain and fills. Also, Burnout is made by Bioguard and I bet as are the sticks of trichlor your Dad used. Bioguard is a Chemtura brand and they are a major trichlor manufacturer. Their coperate stance for all their brands (which include Guardex, Omni, Sun, AquaChem, and Pool Time, among others) is that CYA doesn't matter since it would cut into their corporate profits if the truth were better known and also cut into their sales of algaecides, very expensive borax (Optimizer and Maximizer), and very expensive baking soda (which they label as sodium hydrogen carbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate so it looks like something special when it is just another name for the same exact thing you buy at the grocery!) FWIW a salt system IS a chlorine system. It's just a way to automatically add unstabilized chlorine to your pool. If the chlorine is maintained properly the pool won't turn green. It's usually a pool on trichlor that turns green. As far as acid use, that can be minimized by proper water balance. Trichlor is extremely acidic, which is why it does not require acid BUT it does require constant monitoring of both pH and TA because it depletes TA and when that happens pH can crash dangerously low so you need to keep adding soda ash, bicarbonate, and/or borax on a regular basis instead of acid. six of one, half a dozen of the other. We had a filter that was backwashed every 10 days or two weeks. So we were constantly adding fresh water to the pool after the backwash. We have always lived in the Houston area so we never winterized the pools. He rarely used algaecide--didn't have to. But the constant backwashing probably explains why he never had to do a major drain of the pool. I have a cartridge filter so it looks like I will either have to remove a foot or so of water from the pool every six months or so (my pool is shallow--3.5 to 4.5 feet deep) or else I should look into a SWG system. By the way, my pool builder designed the cartridge filter to go with a SWG system.
  11. Thanks for the input. I guess I should have done a little more research before we went with a chlorine system. We were going to install a SWG at first, but after hearing about some problems with green water and the need to continually add acid as well as other issues, we decided to go with a chlorine pool. I still may convert to a SWG if the CYA becomes a problem. But what I don't get is that my family always had a pool growing up and it was always in great shape as far as water clarity was concerned and it never had an algae problem. My father did everything himself and he used chlorine sticks which must have had CYA (this was in the mid-70s to mid-80s)in them. I never recall that he had to drain any water to lower CYA and I don't even remember that he even tested for CYA. Pretty much all he did was make sure the pH was in range and that FC was in the 1-3 range. And he shocked the pool with a product called "Burn Out," as I recall, after a pool party. And that was it and the pool always looked great.
  12. Then it would seem that the CYA should never get that high in the first place. I've never added any stabalizer. The CYA in the pool is what comes with the Trichlor. With a chlorine pool, what choices do you really have so that CYA does not continue to increase? Should I be using plain clorox every other day or so?
  13. UPDATE: It's been almost two months since start up and the ph has stabilized dramatically. I still need to add acid but it's down to about 16 oz. or so every second or third day. Here are my readings: FC 2.0, CC 0.0, pH 7.6, Hardness 375, TA 65, CYA 65, Total dissolved solids 1200. I'm adding baking soda to get the TA up to the 90-100 range. As far as looks, the pool water could not look better.
  14. I think that if you want to keep within their guidelines, you should aim for a pH of 7.4. I think that less than that is too aggressive. Increasing the calcium to 180 should help as well. For some reason my plaster installer crossed out 7.4-7.6 for the recommended post-start up ph and hand wrote "7.2-7.4" for the recommended ph. I can only assume that they did that with Wet Edge's blessing. For what it's worth, I think my plaster guy is a good guy and did a great job. I can't imagine him making that change without Wet Edge's approval. In any event, your recommendation of 7.4 is ok with either approach. I'll shoot for that. I may try adding acid in lower amounts, i.e. not a gallon at a time, to avoid the spikes I'm getting. But I still wonder how many gallons of acid it will take before the ph stabilizes. Any general idea? It sounds like your plasterer wanted the lower pH to remove more of the plaster to expose the aggregate. Perhaos they dod not clean it well when they did the initial acid wash. There are actually three ways to start a new plaster pool: Standard startup, which seems to be what you are doing more or less. Acid startup, which really should only be done by an experience professional but is often used with exposed aggregate finishes since it eliminates the acid wash step. Bicarbonate startup, which produces an excellent finish on plain plaster but is probably not as useful for aggregate finishes. After adding the gallon of acid yesterday morning by evening time my ph was lower than 6.8 (the lowest reading on my test kit). By this morning it was up to 7.2 which is the best reading thus far. The other days the ph was over 7.8 after 24 hours of adding a gallon of acid. I will not add acid until the ph exceeds 7.4 and then only about a quart at a time.
  15. I think that if you want to keep within their guidelines, you should aim for a pH of 7.4. I think that less than that is too aggressive. Increasing the calcium to 180 should help as well. For some reason my plaster installer crossed out 7.4-7.6 for the recommended post-start up ph and hand wrote "7.2-7.4" for the recommended ph. I can only assume that they did that with Wet Edge's blessing. For what it's worth, I think my plaster guy is a good guy and did a great job. I can't imagine him making that change without Wet Edge's approval. In any event, your recommendation of 7.4 is ok with either approach. I'll shoot for that. I may try adding acid in lower amounts, i.e. not a gallon at a time, to avoid the spikes I'm getting. But I still wonder how many gallons of acid it will take before the ph stabilizes. Any general idea?
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