Salt System, White Pulp Like Stuff That Dries To Flakes

[taxgod4u]

I have a 19K salt pool, plaster/3M, 4 years old, 2 hp pump and 400 ft cartridge filter, solar no heater. Keep the water at 86-88 degrees, not coverred in since before issue showed up. Pump and solar run 8+ hours per day.

ISSUE The last few months there has been a handfull or so of very heavy white paper mache like stuff in the polaris 360 bag. If dried out is gets flakey and crispy, and I think it is bleaching my coping as white spots are showing up. It will dissapate from the pool bottom where it collects if I shock the pool, but it comes back. I assume it is the salt generator as there is none of the stuff in the filters but it collects inthe polaris 360 screen at the pool wall connection. So it has to be post filter created.

any idea what this is and what I need to do to make it stop? the water always tests fine for salt level, akalinity, phosphates, hardness, stabilizer at teh local pool store and my OTO test kit. 2 pool stores had no idea what it was.

[chem geek]

"tests fine" is relative. I suspect that the saturation index is too high and that the SWG is producing calcium carbonate flakes and that the pool is producing scale elsewhere as well. I suggest you get your own good test kit -- either the Taylor K-2006 you can get at a good online price here or the TF100 kit from tftestkits.com here with the latter kit having 36% more volume of reagents so is comparably priced "per test". You can then use The Pool Calculator to calculate the saturation index.

Another possibility, that is less likely, is white water or tissue mold, but that will be on the surface of the water and will fall apart when you try and touch it, so that doesn't sound like what you've got. If it was, then the FC level is probably too low relative to the CYA level.

Richard

[taxgod4u]

Good suggesteion on the test kit. What causes the calcium carbonate and how does one make this stop? Can you enlighten a newbie on what a saturation level is?

[ps558]

"tests fine" is relative. I suspect that the saturation index is too high and that the SWG is producing calcium carbonate flakes and that the pool is producing scale elsewhere as well. I suggest you get your own good test kit -- either the Taylor K-2006 you can get at a good online price here or the TF100 kit from tftestkits.com here with the latter kit having 36% more volume of reagents so is comparably priced "per test". You can then use The Pool Calculator to calculate the saturation index.

Another possibility, that is less likely, is white water or tissue mold, but that will be on the surface of the water and will fall apart when you try and touch it, so that doesn't sound like what you've got. If it was, then the FC level is probably too low relative to the CYA level.

Richard

Chem Geek could it be white water mold?

[chem geek]

White water mold usually falls apart like tissue paper and since it sounded like this was crispier than that when dried out I thought it might be calcium carbonate flakes instead though I did mention it as a possibility. If it's white water mold, then super-shocking at high chlorine levels of an FC around 60% of the CYA level should take care of it. It's rare in a chlorine pool so something must be off with the chemistry.

I think we'll know a lot more after getting results from a good test kit. The saturation index is 0.0 when the water is saturated with calcium carbonate. If the index gets too positive, then the water can get cloudy from over-saturation or can form scale on surfaces or even precipitate calcium carbonate, but that's a hard crystal-like substance -- basically it's the same as limestone. The more I reread the post, however, the more it does sound like white water mold or something like that since shocking shouldn't get rid of calcium carbonate oversaturation and if anything would make it worse if the pH rose.

Richard

[taxgod4u]

While I wait for my test kit to arrive, Let's assume it is a white mold, or some other creature. What is the best method of killing it off? Can I dump say 4 gallons of chlorine into the 18K pool? I say this as I happen to have 4 gallons in the shed...