With the angle my house is set at the destructive forces of the Florida sun beats down on the pool equipment for at least half of the day. It hits the PVC, pump, swg, everything, full force for hours and hours and hours every day. I am starting to worry that over time it's going to destroy everything so I want to protect it as much as I can. The area itself is about 4 feet wide, 3 1/2 feet deep, and a little over 2 ft high with the filter. I cant just plop a shed down on it as on the back wall there are the wires and boxes and only an inch of room between the equipment and the house.



The sun comes from the left, its in the shade right now as it's below the trees but once it gets a little higher it travels right above this area and beats down on that equipment all day.

The simplest thing I could think of is to just get a beach umbrella and put it over that but that's not much of a long term solution and would blow down next time a bad storm comes through. The electrical boxes should last a very long time so not too worried about those, just the equipment itself is what I want to protect.

Opened my pool today. Some observations:

• Pool opened up pretty clean. Water temperature was 49F. Leaves all vacuumed up. See pics below.
• I added borates the end of last year and did not see any winter scaling.
• pH tested way high and added 40 oz of MA to begin working it down.
• I had 4 gallons of 12% chlorine with a date code of May 2024 in the garage. Added it to the pool. If full strength it should add 3PPM/gallon or 12 PPM. Tested at 6 PPM. So the LC became half strength after a year.
• Replaced the booster pump that had a bad bearing whine with a new PB4-60.
• Nipple on the Polaris 380 the flexible hose connects to broke off at a seam. Plast-aid seems to have fused it back together. If it does not hold then a new feed tube is $20.
• Looks like my 10 year old MasterTemp heater developed a crack in the manifold that rusted the bolts and sensors. Heater still fires and works. I need to see if the rusted bolts can be removed to replace the manifold or it will be a new heater.
• Need to replace some diverter valve stem O-rings that appear to be leaking before they rust out the actuator motor.
• Cover has a hole in it. I need to lay it out on the driveway and patch it.

Always something. I have a few projects this spring.

I bought a house that has a horse pool. No filter. Has a pump and skimmers .it's 21000 gallons . I doubt they ever cleaned it as I have never seen the bottom yet . Lol my question is what size filter system would work ? I don't know what my pump pushes. I attached photos of what I have to work with. Any help would be appreciated . Thank you

My husband was a member on this forum and praised the information shared here. He passed away from esophageal cancer January 18th. I just had our salt water pool opened up. I don't know where to begin. What do I fix first? Total chlorine, free chlorine or pH? Chlorines are low and pH is high. Thank you for any advice. Ronda My husband was @Chuck N, some of you may have interacted with him on here. He was awesome!

SNAKE!

Hi there,

I just moved into a home with a pool, and I didn't really have much time to care for the pool. I'm trying to measure the chlorine level in my pool, and I am doubting whether or not I'm doing it correctly. For context, a pool company came out just yesterday and SLAMed the pool.

I'm using the Taylor K-2006 testing kit, and I followed the instructions for measuring chlorine. I filled up the large tube with sample pool water up to the 25 mL mark and added two scoops of the powder (R-0870). The water turned pink, and I started adding the drops (R-0871). After 200 drops, it still didn't turn colorless. If I'm not doing anything wrong, this would indicate a pool with over 40 ppm of chlorine and 30-50 ppm of CYA (according to the pool company).

What should I do? Many thanks.

Meet Marshmallow (not sold on the name yet but it’s growing on me …) -



She is Meringues little sister (from the same parents) -



As you can see, they are spitting images of one another. Marshmallow still has her puppy fur which is a bit darker than Meringue’s so we’ll see how that changes as she grows. But, for now , Meringue has been introducing her new sister to all her favorite toys and they got to play fetch outside … Marshmallow likes to nip at Meringue but Meringue knows how to give her a good hip-check to put the little squirt in her place. Marshmallow seems like she’ll probably be bigger and a bit more stout than Meringue as Meringue is considered small for her breed. They are both Goldendoodles.

I guess I won’t be getting much sleep again … 🫩

Hey I have a zodiac salt water chlorinator and I am wanting to use my pool but am struggling to get everything in check. I have tested using my palin test kit.

Fc 4.2
Fc 4.3
Ph 7.2 and same on my zodiac sensor
TA 120
CYA 2
ORP 580

So I am in a bit of a spiral as my system at 580 keeps on producing chlorine as the lowest set point is 600…

However when I test the water chlorine seems a little high.

I calibrated the sensor and the replaced the sensor and same reading.

Can you help? I am so basic at all of this….

Cheer

I would like to add a heater bypass valve, but my existing plumbing is very tight. I might free up space for a tee if I don't need this section with a bonding wire going to it. Does anyone know if this is really needed? I have not noticed it on pictures of other Pools or at my friends pools.

PSA - Ive never heard of POOLBIDS in Tomball Texas, but my bank let me know they tried to charge my debit card for 763$- Twice So be on the lookout

I googled them and there is no info available about POOLBIDS and they don't have a website.

EDIT: Apparently as per the comments below, this company may be circupool or related to them.

I've had billowing in my new vinyl pool several times and have chosen to let the water table subside. It turned out well—everything returned to form. This last storm (once in a generation, though I've heard that before) has produced floating vinyl beyond my imagination. See the picture below.

Should I be patient and let the water find its own way out? I suppose this will require some looking after to manage the potential for wrinkles. OR start pumping some, if not all, of the water from behind, again with brushing of wrinkles, etc. Thoughts anyone? @Dirk?

McLeod

So I was looking through the B.P.t.B.L.C post the other day after someone had asked about a specific state, and I realized with 74 pages going back 9+ years, most of the detail in there was probably only of historic value, and it was really hard to find relevant information. So, being an engineer, I figured there might be a better way, and came up with the following based on that thread plus some basic digging around.

My thought is people can reply to the thread with updates, and I will update the table with the latest information and replace the image so that it's easy to find and reference.
Open to suggestions, comments, additional data, etc.

I was asked in another thread to write up a review for their new system, so here goes. Any questions, ask away!

I saw Circupool’s Facebook announcement that they were introducing a new system, so it got me interested. Called up Discountsaltpool to ask about it, they said it’s not advertised yet but had some in stock and they’d sell me one. The owner called me shortly after that and said he has been beta testing it for about a year now and has really liked it.

I was torn between this and the Aquapure 1400, but after a less than stellar Jandy warranty experience, I decided to shy away from them.

This unit got my attention because it had app control, an 8 year warranty and seemed to be a relatively easy DIY install. Also, some new functionality that will be available over the next year or so. No idea if I’ll ever take advantage of any of it.

The biggest pain point was wiring up the electrical. The power cord it comes with is about 5’ long, and wouldn’t work for my situation. I wanted to wire it to the aux1 relay on my Jandy pump and have the pump control on/off. I landed on 1/2” conduit to run the electrical to the pump and here was my first challenge. I’m guessing the punch outs in the control box are metric, and the 1/2” conduit fitting was a little bit too big to fit through. So I used a 1/2” tap to get it to fit. Problem solved. Then it was on to figure out how to wire it up to the pump, and this was the easy part. 14 gauge wire was the easiest one to fit into the Core Control internal connections. Thought about using wire nuts to make the connections, but future versions of this controller I believe will utilize this space for additional boards.

Getting to this area was also a little annoying. There are 3 small screws that attach bottom up in order to make this area water tight. If it’s not perfect, it won’t get a good seal. There is also a mounting point underneath this cover, so you’ll want to make sure you have space underneath to at least fit a stubby screwdriver in there to secure it. Because you’ll have to attach it to where ever you’re going to put it, then screw this cover back on. Other than that, I don’t anticipate ever getting in here much. The WiFi connection is in here, and I have the WiFi module attached to the back of the cover I made.

I got some more unistrut and attached the unit there. There is a QR code and serial number on the side of the box (left side as you’re looking at the pictures) that you’ll need to setup the app. Make sure you can get to it. I could not and had to take a phone pic, zoom in and hope I could read it. The serial number is also on the box, but in my case…they were different.

The cell itself was very easy for me. The Jandy adapter they sell was plug and play to remove my Fusion Nature2 and screw this in. I set it up where I could easily see the flow switch when I’m at the pad. Wired up to the controller and turned it on.

The ring will light up either blue or red for each zone on the controller to tell you what is/isn’t within range. There is temp protection on this one where it will automatically lower output at certain thresholds. Once the pool is over the threshold, it turns back to blue. The box itself can adjust in 25% increments, and the app lets you control it in 1% increments. It didn’t seem to like being set closer to 10% with the temp swings in the water, and seemed to get more steady closer to 20%. Set at 12%, the output would fluctuate a bit between 10-20. I didn’t really have a need to test this out any more, just an initial observation.

When I first fired up the app, it said 2 probes weren’t working and gave me an error. It shipped as the “G+” and not the “G”, which required the vendor to make a change to my setup. Once they did this, all was well. It’s the Magen Resilience G/G+ behind the scenes.

I also made a very simple “hat” out of a cedar fence plank. The control box itself has vents on the top, and you can see the Meanwell power supply. I wanted to give it a little bit of cover from the weather and UV as the sun would hit this thing all day long traveling from left to right over the box.

So far, it’s been nice. 30% power between 8am-6pm seems to keep my chlorine in the low 6s. I still need to get my CYA from 60 to 70.

I hope it's okay to post this here!

I love my TF-PRO Test Kit and rely on it to keep our pool in great condition but I have added some items to make the kit a little easier for me to use!

I now have 3 graduated cylinders and 3 magnetic cross-shaped magnetic stirrers so each of the 3 tests, (Chlorine, Calcium Hardness, and Total Alkalinity) each get their own!

The dimensions of my 3D print are the same as the foam insert, except I only made it 35mm tall.

If you have a 3D printer and want to print it, you can go here!



If you print it and like it, please leave a reply and consider boosting my print!

It’s actually printed with PLA matte black but looks a little bit blue in the photos.

Thanks for looking!

Looking at redoing some of our pool plumbing because whoever built it did a very messy job. Is the purpose of the red ball valve I've circled as a bypass for the jandy valve which diverts water to the pool or spa? Additionally, are the red handles replaceable without replacing the entire valve?

I'm want to reverse the water heater inlet and outlet to clean up the piping a bit, purchase a 3-way Jandy valve and check valve to install a water heater bypass, and move the SWG cell post-water heater.

My wife wants me to open the pool early so she has something nice to look at while sitting on the pool deck. Usually I open end of April (based on water temp). Thinking of doing it next weekend. I think the freezing temps are over and even if not, it will barely get to 32. Freeze protect will handle it. No heater just open the pool and get the water circulating for aesthetics.

Open or no?

Hey all,

After 4 years of wavering back and forth, I'm finally going through with an owner build. I'm completely nervous, but I just have to take the plunge - literally! Searching through multiple threads here along with the wiki as well as other sites (before landing here) I'm feeling better.

I'll throw in some initial pics of the area and rough build plans.

My current task is getting quotes from all the trades lined up. So far two excavation quotes were $6,000 and $8,000 which were well over my initial estimates. I'm now following the wiki guide and starting with the rebar folks who can do the excavation. More phone calls to make...

We'll probably changes the steps up a little bit.

I searched the forum here for thoughts on a 110/120v heat pump and didn't find much in terms of actual usage / review, so I've gambled and bought this 35K BTU one from Amazon for $1,360 that should be here today. This is our 2nd year with our 9x18 Intex XTR and what my wife and I found last year was were just a few degrees cold from using our pool for much of the season. Our pool gets shaded around 5:30pm, so whenever we were getting home from work around this time any breeze made my wife too cold to want to stay in (she likes it near 90). Since our intention wasn't to extend our season, but to make our season less susceptible to the daily heat fluctuations, I hope that this 35k BTU heater can keep our pool temps to the upper 80s more of the time. I'm still considering adding the Asurion 3 or 4 year ($130 / $170) protection plans to the order (I have 30 days to buy), since this might be a risky purchase. Thoughts or suggestions on my gamble? Anyone own an Aquastrong products?

This looks pretty good to me..

My wife and I are excited, we have a house that has a mid 1980's pool. Nothing fancy, mostly a "play pool" from the '80s with an 8 ft deep end. When we bought the house in 2009, the pool had a fiberglass resurface over gunite. The pool was fine, but then about 4 years ago people started itching when they rubbed the sides, the last two years people were itching after just getting in it for 5 minutes. 5 minutes of swim meant a day of itching.

Once they drained our pool to refinish it, we could see why. The fibers were clearly exposed. We got the fiberglass blown off with a water blaster, new tile, and are getting Blue Granite PebbleSheen shot tomorrow. We are looking for what to expect while this surface cures, I removed our salt cell and won't "salt" the pool until at least 90 days out. We've been checking the bond kote every few hours, unfortunately a worm met its demise on our bond kote. :-(

First time poster/Long time reader of TFP and wanted to share my thoughts given everyone's help/info in the past.

- Why a robot? Was done w pressure-side cleaners. Replaced my Pentair Racer (3rd unit) and booster pump (4th unit in 5 years).
- Why this one? Was deciding between a corded Dolphin and cordless robot. Narrowed it to the Polaris version or this one. The 3-year full-replacement warranty was the easier option. And the price recently dropped as well.
- Why now? The pool has not been cleaned since the booster pump died in January. Sand/silt and larger debris has been accumulating and manually doing it was not working 100%.

I have a ~20x30 kidney shaped pool with rounded floors. Two steps and lounge ledge.
Updated the firmware (ver. 0.40) as soon as it came out of the box and charged it up.
The unit is hefty (23+ lbs) and took about 2 hours to fully charge (came w 60%).

The app was OK but not necessary to run. It does map a (very) rough image of your pool after the first time it does a full pass.
It took 3 hours to do a full wall/floor cleaning. The whole battery was spent and had to fishhook it out. The basket was filled and weighed about 4-5 lbs w debris/sand.
Charged it again and ran it the second day for a 2x pass on the floor only.

Final first impressions:
- The packaging was very nice and they spent good effort to make the unboxing experience nice.
- The access panel to the basket can seem flimsy. Doesn't have a firm 'click' to close.
- It is very solid and built but w the lexan plastic being shiny and new, you know it will get scuffed quick. Wish it was in a dull finish.
- It took two solid charges to fully clean a pool that had not been formally worked on 3 months. I expect regular use will make the job easier for Benny (that's his new nickname)
- The auto-drain for ballasts doesn't work if it runs out of charge. If it's at 0% and you plug into the base to recharge, it will auto-drain at that point. Keep that in mind. My garage got a nice puddle.
- For me, worth it for the $1100 special price. Daily charging will be a new thing but will keep the box for the first 30 days.

Feel free to ask any questions!

So easy! Post ONE pic related to the theme title above. I bet you have a good pic saved somewhere. See the contest rules below to enter.

PLEASE READ OUR (UPDATED) RULES BEFORE POSTING! ----> TFP Pool of the Month Contest Rules

Photo contests are announced on the first of each month. There is a 5-day submission phase. Days 6 & 7 are for voting. Winner announced on day 8. Winner eligible for a $50 prize.

It's easy! What have you got to lose? You might receive a $50 discount code from TFtestkits.net.

Click Here to See Some Previous TFP Monthly Contest Winners​

Hi TFP, I bought the Evo614iQ back in Nov 2023 from Marina Pool and Spa. For the most part it’s been a decent cleaner, but 8mo or so later, I started having an issue where the cord would become really tangled(eg after a couple of runs or so), and the unit had been leaving more debris than usual on the floor. I would straighten the cord and the same would happen again. I decided to randomly monitor the cleaning activity during run time and what I found was my robot seemed to only cover a very small portion of the pool, and went spinning in circles (one way or the other, or both) randomly, then run a few feet, then spin a few more times - and basically not doing much of a pool run. I’ll see if I can figure out how to upload a video.

I chimed in on this thread: New EVO 614i Robot Pool Cleaner Review to see if others had similar experience, and found that @shawnrw had the same issue. Looks also like @Imageek2 is starting to see the same. I messaged Shawnrw separately asking about the cause and he said they replaced the drive unit and so far it’s operating normal.

I wanted to also share some guidance on my warranty experience. So I called the call Aqua Products Support # (which is Fluidra, the corp support team) and explained the situation to their technical team. There told me the best thing to do would be to take the unit in for warranty at a local service center, to which they helped me locate one near me, which happens to be one was one of the several Leslies stores near me in Houston. Long story short, Leslies is not an authorized center, so that was a giant waste of time. Frustrated, I went to the Aqua Products support page and called the only service center in Texas and explained my situation. FYI, those service center options are here: Service Centers | Aqua Products. I called the one in TX and had explained my situation to one of their tech leads. He confirmed with me that there are only 8 service centers in the nation, and that if you take it to anyone else, he believed they just ship it over to one of the service centers on that site.

So $100 in UPS shipping later, my unit is on it’s way to the only service center in Texas; hopefully I’ll have it back one day soon. I’ll post more on the experience, but definitely would think twice about buying a robot without having local support for it. Hopefully I can get through the warranty period (2yrs from date of purchase) and will be on to a new investment.

Just received my new Maytronics Dolphin Quantum and wanted to post my experiences. Purchased from PoolBots and experince was positive. Bot showed up in about 5 days and was pretty much plug and play.

I had been researching Bots for months and it is admittedly challenging to differentiate between similar features across dozens of manufactures and models. I didn’t want/need high end but didn’t want to risk low end so went “midrange” $800-$1,000 and wound up here.

My biggest concern w going the bot route was how EVERYONE said you CANT leave em in the pool. It voids warranties, breaks em etc. My first surprise in reading the documentation was this:

FAQ - It is safe to leave the cleaner in the water when not in use… (with some chlorine exceptions)

WINNING! Very excited to learn this. So far after 2 cleaning I am pleased.

Thought I would share our creation with anyone interested in keeping the fall leaves out of your pool without having to spend tons of money to do so. My husband made me this homemade Leaf Dome to prevent leaves from entering the pool. It may not be for everyone but it certainly has prevented all leaves, acorns and debris from entering our pool. As you can see in the pictures, the leaves fall onto the netting and eventually blow away in the breeze. This has saved me a tremendous amount of time and labor everyday. Its so nice to walk out and take a pool water sample and not spend 25 minutes dipping out leaves.

Hello everyone, I am a professional in the swimming pool robot industry.

I have purchased robots from various brands for research, including Aiper S1 Pro, Wybot s2, Beatbot Aquasense PRO, as well as some smaller brands like Lydsto, Smorobot, Poolpure Aquaguard, etc.

In my daily work, I spend a significant amount of time comparing the data parameters of different robots and dismantling models from brands like Beatbot, Wybot, Aiper, and others. I also test robots from different brands in various pool environments, including green pools, to observe how they perform in real-world conditions.

Additionally, I’ve compiled some knowledge and insights about using swimming pool robots, which I’d like to share today.

If you are considering purchasing a swimming pool robot, feel free to tell me about your pool’s characteristics, such as:

• Outdoor or indoor pool
• Does the pool have stairs or steps?
• Is there a lot of fine sand,dirt to clean or big leaves to clean?

Based on your specific situation, I can offer recommendations to help you choose the most suitable pool robot.

Looking forward to discussing and sharing experiences with everyone!

The CircuPool RJ+ units come with a power cord that is about 48 inches long. In my case that was far too short, and installing a junction box was far more complicated than changing out the power cord. This post is just for reference in case somebody else faces a similar situation.

The stock power cord is a fairly standard 18-3 (18 gauge, 3 conductor) cord.



16-3 will fit, but you'll have to fight it through the strain relief at the bottom of the RJ+ control module. I used 16-3 just to add a little extra safety margin for the longer length. I used 10 feet of this cord, available by the foot from Home Depot, to replace it.

Each conductor is terminated with a different connector inside the RJ+ unit: black is terminated with a 1/4-inch female disconnect, white is terminated with a spade terminal, and ground is terminated with a ring terminal.



All connectors are standard crimp connectors in 22-16 size. I used these:

• Ring terminal
• Spade terminal
• Female disconnect <-- the web site has a typo, they are really 22-16

The cord enters the RJ60+ through a strain relief connector at the bottom of the controller and runs under the PCB and is wired like as seen below.



With a little creativity I was able to feed in the replacement cord without removing the PCB, being careful not to just shove it any old way and potentially damage any solder joints on the PCB. After crimping the connectors and feeding it through the strain relief, wiring it up was a relatively simple process.

Hope that helps somebody who faces a similar situation as I did.

I figured Id share my setup since I did it with a lot of info obtained here.

The pump and filter were originally done with some cheap hoses. I built the pad, added the heater and buried everything. This is my first time working with PVC piping and pool equipment so being an amateur is an understatement. The equipment is probably the cheapest of the cheap because that's what it came with. Over time, ill do the filter and pump but this years priority was the heater. Next year ill add the chlorinator.

Considerations were:
1 make it functionality correct
2 keep it as simple as possible
3 make it easy to disassemble for winter storage
4 keep room to work on equipment
5 have a bypass on the heater
6 have the recommended 3ft between heater and future chlorinator
7 have future chlorinator installed vertically per manufacturer recommendation

The only thing I would really have done differently is extend the pad another 6" out to keep all of the plumbing over the pad. I may to a paver border to address that.

Thought I'd make a post that might help others. We've had quite a few members this year with high TA, and I've been typing the same information over and over. I'm going to post this so I can link it to help others.

High TA can cause rapid pH rise. High TA is typically caused by high TA fill water. For some, this results in very frequent muriatic acid additions.
You may also want to lower your TA rapidly, for example when you have a new fill in a plaster pool, and you want to lower CSI rapidly.

This is intended for those individuals that have high TA fill water (>~150), and face daily or multiple acid additions weekly. If your fill water is above this threshold, this might be the solution for you. If your fill water is below 150, just manage your pH, keep it in the 7s, and your TA will come down, and pH rise will slow as TA nears 80.

First, check out the TFP guide: Lower Total Alkalinity

Now that you have the basics...

1. Muriatic acid lowers TA and pH.
2. Aeration raises pH, without raising TA.

Here are the tricks with aeration:

1. If you want pH to rise quickly, so you can lower pH and TA again, you need to make LOTS of VERY TINY bubbles. LOTS of VERY TINY bubbles accelerates CO2 outgassing and pH rise. Waterfalls and other forms of aeration raise pH also, so if you have them, use them too.
2. CO2 outgasses the fastest when pH is between 7.0 and 7.4 (Well, 7.0 and 7.2 is fastest, then 7.2-7.4 is next...you get the idea). So lower your pH to 7.0, when it gets to 7.4, lower pH again.

When I first came to TFP, my TA was high due to prior owner's keeping it artificially high due to the use of acidic pucks (my fill water is 80). I found this aerator, that the member made and put on their return:

I didn't want to have to swap this contraption with the return eye. I also wanted something that was portable and easy to use. I got a sump pump, and built the same thing with 1.25" PVC. A 1/3hp pump is plenty big and typically come with a 1.25" male thread. Get a 1.25 Female to 1.5" SLP adapter and thread it on the sump. Build up from there. The elbows are 45s, and the end caps are drilled with 5 to 8, 1/4" holes. The sump pump is put in a bucket to protect the pool surface. I tied a rope to the handle of the bucket, and used electrical tape to attach the power cord of the sump pump to the rope, so the rope has all the tension when lowering and raising the bucket. Make sure you purchase a sump pump with a 12' cord, to keep the connection to any extension cords away from the pool. As always, when there is an electrical device in the pool, PLUGGED IN OR NOT, NO SWIMMING! Sump pumps can fail. We do NOT want electrocutions!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!

In my 30K gallon pool, I can reliably lower TA by 10, in 12 hours. If your pool is 10K, you should be able to reduce TA by 10 in 4 hours (get the connection?) I cycle between 7.0 and 7.4, because CO2 outgasses at the highest rate with this pH. As the guide indicates, 7.6 is fine for the top end too, but as @Newdude says, "I'm 'extra'." When your TA approaches 80, STOP forcing pH down so low. With a TA between 60-80, pH should be fairly stable around 7.8 to 8.0, which is just fine!

Hello. I have had my Pentair intelliflo VS pump just over 2 years now. I just noticed that the LCD screen is blank. it does not show anything. the pump works fine however. I cannot program anything since i can't see what it is i am programming. i check out to replace the screen i need to replace the entire drive kit which costs $600.00. is there any way to fix just the screen or maybe use some external device to program it? thanks