Hi all!

My mom is an avid swimmer in summer, but she's been complaining about the constant pool maintenance. I'm considering getting her a robotic pool cleaner as a Christmas gift, but I'm unsure if it's a worthwhile investment. Has anyone had experience with these? Are they effective at keeping pools clean? Do they save a significant amount of time and effort? Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I was at the local Leslie’s Pro to pick up some 12.5% LC. I saw a new pallet of still wrapped 4 pack boxes. Next to it was a half pallet so I grabbed a 4 pk box and looked for the date code. Top, all 4 sides, even tilted it a little to look on the bottom. No date code.

I looked at the new unwrapped pallet couldn’t find a date code on that either.

I thought, oh well, I need chlorine. The pool water has dropped into the upper 50’s so I had turned off the SWG. The counter person was a young lady and I decided not to ask her about the dates.

Well, I got home and opened the 4 pk. Couldn’t find a date code on any of the individual gallon jugs. So dummy me, I used a half a gallon, then measured a couple of hours later. Expecting to see at least a 2 ppm rise, I got the same reading as before the addition.

Although, I was still at 8 ppm the next day, I added a full gallon. Tested a couple of hours later and it only raised FC to 10ppm. Pool Math indicates the rise should/could have been 4.8 ppm for 26k gallon pool. So I should/could have seen 12.5 ppm and only got to 10 ppm.

I figured I can’t return it after using a gallon and a half from the 4 pk. I learned my lesson, no date code… no purchase.

I searched the forum and google scholar and couldn't find an answer to this. Is anyone aware of a study or personal experiment with data that shows the chlorine usage rate per day in ppm (or percentage) as a function of different CYA levels? For example, at 10ppm CYA you lose 2ppm FC per day, at 30ppm CYA you lose 1ppm FC per day, at 50ppm you lose .75ppm per day, at 100ppm CYA you lose .5ppm FC per day. Just making those numbers up of course. In Bob Lowry's writing he suggests that you lose around 1ppm per day at 30ppm CYA, but I can't find him talking about how that chlorine loss rate changes with different levels of CYA.

I know the decay rate changes with other factors besides CYA (temp, Crud in the pool, etc), but all else being equal, am trying to find data showing the relationship between CYA level and chlorine loss rate, before I go and try to do my own experiments.

EDIT: just realized I put this under the water chemistry forum, if it could be moved to the appropriate one would appreciate that!

Hey all!

New pool owner here, trying to get a handle on everything and get the pool balanced in a position to maintain.

Location: Bay Area, CA
Pool: 20k gallons
Spillover Spa: 700 gallons

From what I can tell, I have the following equipment:

• Controller: Easytouch with Screenlogic
• Pump: Intelliflo VS Pump 354605.E
• Booster/Cleaner Pump: Pentair Boost-Rite LA-MS05
• Filter: Sta-Rite PLM300
• Heater: Pentair SR400NA
• Air Blower: Air Supply 23E1
• SWG: Intellichlor IC40
• Valves:
  • Return: Jandy valve that looks to control return from pool/spa
  • Supply: Jandy valve that looks to control supply to pool/spa
• Auto filler: Looks like the tank on a toilet but in ground, just fills up and connects to some jets housings when the float gets low

Here is a picture of the pool (sorry for the really bad photo lol):


Here is a picture of the whole setup:



Now a whole bunch of questions:
1. Right now the pool/spa are unheated, I was reading that the heater should not be run for water temperatures less than 68F, but that it is ok on startup. If I am able to isolate the spa, is it ok to run the heater occasionally to get the Spa up to temp (100 something)?


2. Looks like I have a few leaks. Attaching pictures here for reference.
This is on the output from the filter housing as it goes towards to heater. It looks like it is leaking from the actual filter housing, but it could be leaking from the connection with the pvc pipe, I just couldn't get around it to tell.


And then this is on the heater, maybe a simpler fix than the filter leak above?



3. It seems like when I run the Pool and Spa functions on ScreenLogic I still get the spillover from the Spa. When I run the cleaner it doesn't look like I get any spillover though.

Looking in SLConfig, it looks like my valves are unassigned? I'm assuming I need to assign each of them? I'm not really sure how to assign them to a circuit though, as it looks like they would only isolate return/supply from the pool/spa?

Any advice on how to configure this so I can isolate the spa, etc...

Here are some of my configs:

I’ll admit I tend to be an overthinker. The toilet paper has to go over the top. Only distilled water in my radiator and battery. Hot tub water chemistry must be perfect.
I still haven’t come to a conclusion concerning bromine vs chlorine but I’ll continue that journey in the months ahead. Right now I’m using liquid chlorine with CYA 30. I have watched 100’s of YouTube’s concerning chlorine vs non/chlorine shock. I’ve been falling asleep at 11:30 with my phone on my chest watching and trying to determine which is the better hot tub shock. MPS will mess up your chlorine readings. MPS doesn’t kill anything. Brian, the Atlanta hot guy, says he throws in a couple tsp after every soak.

I am slightly confused. Well, honestly, I am very confused. I don’t know my head from my…

My thinking is to add chlorine every time after we get out. Then I’m thinking of doing 2 oz MPS once a week as a shock.

Should I just scrap MPS? Why do some people hate it and some people love it? I honestly don’t understand why “I” can’t find a consensus.

I wish I could get this settled.

Hey TFPers,

I haven't seen many reviews for this anywhere apart so I thought I'd put in my 2 cents on this new skimmer robot. Paid for it with real money from Amazon and i'm definitely not a 'free product' marketing shill.

My situation:
Neigbour's 80+ year old maple tree looms over the fenceline so it's a source of branches, leaves, caterpillars, even poor squirrels into our pool. So I've been looking at skimmer bots for a while now to take care of the various waves of detritus that get into pool over the course of the summer. We get direct blazing sun on the pool only for about 4-5 hours per day, so solar-only models didn't really fit my situation. The Aiper Surfer was chargeable via DC *and* solar panels, so i thought I'd be the guinea pig for this thing since Amazon Prime's return policy gives me an out if it's terrible.

The good:
- DC charging! It charges from zero-ish to 100 in roughly 3 hours.
- Solar charging seems efficient. It charges while running, and I noticed that the battery % indicator in the app was going up even while it was doing laps around the pool
- The app-- great to have. Shows battery life, temperature of the water, and offers full manual controls. But it *could* be better. (see below)
- Connects to your wifi and bluetooth so you could theoretically control it from the comfort of your home while looking out the window
- Build of the robot seems pretty solid. The body is obviously plastic, but feels comparable to the plastic used on Maytronic robots.

Ok, could be better:
- The app! Wish it had start/stop scheduling (that would be easy to program in the existing app), or could be integrated into a smart home ecosystem like Alexa or Google home. It already has the wifi connection so this should be a no brainer.
- Object avoidance-- works for the most part. For the first few minutes it crashes into everything but the sensors eventually find their bearings and avoids most things. Gets caught on the ladder but eventually bumps itself free. Gets caught in the skimmer so I've created those pool noodle bars for its sensors to detect.
- When stopped, small bits of junk tend to float back out of the basket... But i understand that's a common problem across all skimmer bot.

The not so good:
- Unsure about the potential lifespan of this machine. Already experiencing a weird bug where I turn off the robot and it randomly turns itself back on to standby mode. Sent a note to Aiper and they think it's a circuit problem and will send a replacement. Great, but reduces the confidence on the longevity of the electronics beyond 1 season and the 1 yr warranty.

Am I keeping it? Not sure. I'm hoping there's a software update with basic scheduling at the very least. It does what it's supposed to do pretty well, but I also don't want to own a brick within a season's time if the electronics / non-replaceable battery are flakey.

Can anyone speak to the longevity of Aiper products?

(*AFAIK S1 and M1 models are different only by their colour. I have the S1.)

Here's a thing I did that I hadn't seen anyone else do, so I thought I'd share it. With an autofill, it's hard to know if something goes wrong causing a leak until it's a bigger problem because the autofill will mask it.

So I put a GPH flowmeter on it so I can see how much it's using and notice if something changes.

I've been using a traditional chlorine pool for over 4 years. With calcium hypochlorite powder and a pool robot, it’s super easy to maintain. However, I've noticed a trend toward saltwater pools lately. Is it a wise move to join this trend and convert my pool to a saltwater system?

A "Low Salt" error causes Intex SWGs to shut down, and refuse to make chlorine.
Mine gave me 3 such errors on successive nights.
There are multiple videos purporting to "fix" the issue, by hot-wiring the metal-plate cell directly to the transformer, and bypassing the timer and all the "intelligence" of the device.
But I like the idea of the timer and the water-flow detector, and the other controls and features.

So, what about actually diagnosing and fixing the issue? Assuming that one has already inspected and cleaned the cell if required, one can easily notice that initially, the clear piping allows one to see the bubbles of gas being created by the cell in the initial period before the "Low Salt" alarm, so the cell is plainly "working".

So, what's wrong? The alarm is due to a decreased conductivity (increased resistance) in the water between the plates of the cell. Its just an ohm-meter.

[EDIT 8/14/2021]
I was sloppy in the original post about salt and conductivity/resistance, speculating that perhaps excessive backwashing might result in a physical "low salt" condition. WRONG!
My little 4545 gallon pool is supposed to need 117 lbs of salt, and salt comes in 40-lb bags, so I had a few extra pounds of salt to toss in, and if this guess is wrong, the equipment will be just as happy with 120lbs as with 117lbs, only 2% difference. But that didn't fix the issue, and the idea is a somewhat silly one to begin with, as fresh water by its nature has very few ions. De-ionized water as a conductivity of about 5.5μS/m.
Sea water has Sodium and Chloride ions and has a conductivity of around 5S/m, as compared with the 5.5μS/m for fresh. So sea water is roughly one million times more conductive than fresh water.
One is going to be hard pressed to screw up the salt if one simply puts in the suggested number of pounds of salt for the gallons of water in the pool, and accounts for only a MAJOR draining of the pool for repairs (like more than 20% of total water volume). I can't see mere backwashing bringing the salt level down significantly, and the "test strips for salt" are an ABSOLUTE JOKE AND ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED FOR ANY PURPOSE. If you worry about salt, go to a pool store with a real test set for salt in water.
[END EDIT]

So, the obvious answer is corrosion on the electrical connections, and sure enough, I found corrosion everywhere in this circuit.
The connector to the cell was corroded inside the connector, and on one of the posts on the cell itself, so emery paper time.
Here is a very good set of photos on doing this:

But wait, there's more... inside the case.
Unscrewing the two screws that hold all the plumbing in place, removing the electronics unit from the pipes, and opening it up, there was also quite a bit of corrosion on the terminal block and wires that (no surprise) go to the cell.
I replaced the screws, crimped and soldered on new wire lugs onto the wires, and replaced the corroded metal plates on the two wires with parts salvaged from another terminal strip in my junkbox of salvageable parts, but you can easily buy these. One can sand off the lugs and metal plates, and match the screws at the hardware store. You want stainless steel screws.

The comical thing is that the various YouTube videos documenting the "hot-wiring" bypass of all the electronics show the corrosion very clearly, for example this screenshot:


Note that ALL the terminals are corroded pretty seriously here, but the two "CL -" and "CL+" terminals, from which wires have been removed in the screenshot above, are the exact cause of the error.
Note that other connections in the system (for example, the push-on terminals at bottom right) are NOT corroded in the least, so the problem is simply that a terminal block made of pure Chineseum, (i.e. crappy Zinc metal alloy) is not a good match for electrical connections involving salt water and electricity. As a general rule, you will see white residue if only a zinc coating is being corroded, and red when the underlying steel is corroded. Good-quality stainless steel will resist corrosion, as the chromium added to the steel forms a "passive oxide layer" on the surface of the steel, and if the steel is scratched, more oxide quickly forms in or over the scratch.

So, my $100 SWG (bought on sale as an "open box return") is back to quietly making all the chlorine my little pool needs, without any complaints.

Came out to do some maintenance today and noticed my EasyTouch panel covered in black soot. Upon closer inspection, it seems the wiring from the panel to the IC40 had caught fire/melted. I was able to find one other thread on this forum where the same thing occurred. In talks with Pentair support at the moment. Hoping that they will make it right.

Meanwhile, I removed the melted internal wiring that connects the IC40 to the SCG circuit board. Now, it seems my pump won't run without that connection. As I would like to still circulate my pool while adding chlorine manually meanwhile, is there a way I can still get my pump to run? Thanks in advance!

We bought some Klean Strip Green Muriatic Acid at Lowe's. It did not have the acid % listed on the bottle. We came home and looked it up and it is 20% acid....but I do not see that as an option on PoolMath so not sure how much we need to add? Should I just pick the 14.5% and then add about 5% more than what PoolMath says?

For all the people who ask about the saltron mini for their hot tub, here is my experience. We bought ours in August of 2019. Set it all up and worked great. We have the setting at 7 and for our tub it maintains the chlorine levels perfectly. About once a month we add muriatic acid to lower the PH. Other than that we change the water about 3 times per year. The cell finally gave up the ghost on Dec 26. Ordered a replacement and 2 days later we were back up and running. Original cost was $400. Replacement cell was $200 and it lasted a total of 16 months. Very inexpensive especially considering I don't have to even think about maintenance on the water levels.
At first I checked the levels almost daily until I knew it was working well and my settings were correct. After that i tested once a week. Now I test about every 2 weeks and every single time my readings are the same. If you are tired of hauling bleach everyday, I highly recommend you make the switch. We did get a bit of rust on 1 stainless steel ring but that's all and I contribute that to simply bad stainless in that 1 section.

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So, like many others on this site, I was tired of the short life of my pentair LED lights and made the switchover to PoolTone. I got the NICHELESS 1 1/2 INCH (SMALL FACE) POOL OR SPA LIGHT and installed them about 18 months ago. The spa light stopped working about 2 months ago and then two of the pool lights went out.

I went back to Florida SunSeeker and they offered me a discount on the replacements, so I said OK and ordered them up. I was out today pulling the old lights out and to my shock and dismay, they lights have basically disintegrated!!!!! It smells like built plastic and the spa one just came apart while trying to remove it. Here are some photos (first two are the larger pool light and the next one is what's left of the SPA light and the hole it came out of). WHAT A MESS!!!!



How is this possible and am I the only one experiencing this problem? It would seem this would be a huge issue for the community if it was happening to everyone, which leads me to the question of "what did I do wrong here?" If I decide to replace the lights with the same brand instead of returning them, what can I do to prevent this from happening again? Wrap the lights in better insulation tape? Use a silicone caulk on it?
Should I go back to Pentair? Their lights generally suck, but they don't explode or melt . . . .

When logging small additions they are rounded up or down in the timeline.
For instance 0.5 oz by weight or volume becomes 1 oz
& 0.4 oz by weight or volume becomes 0 oz., 1.5 oz becomes 2oz etc.
You must click on the individual log (as if you were going to edit it) to see the actual amount.
For pools this isn’t an issue usually but for small spas it can be for multiple reasons including interpretation of other’s logs.
It seems to be calculating the true amounts in the summary page.
I initially thought it just wasn’t logging my additions and zeroing everything out.
It didn’t used to operate this way. I really hope there’s a fix.

A little history, Robotina was bought 3 years ago from a seller on Ebay. He listed it as a Refurbished unit and got about 200 bucks savings from a new one. At first few months Robotina would live 1-3 days underwater. I got lazy and let her live 24/7/365 except for few minutes while wash down and to clean basket once a week. Also during the first few months the Belgian Waffle "Mona" got into a relationship with Robotina's Cable and chewed it up several times. Which i had to repair and the cable grew shorter every time. Now is about half length from original. After reading some post by @JoyfulNoise Matt robot rusting useless about a year in, it had me worried about mine. So this weekend got to work and found it interesting, so here we go:

This is what it looks like before dis-assembly



Took the plug apart and no water intrusion detected, so Robotina 1-0.
This part was relubed with Magic Lube2 1.5 years ago, so it held up.



Opened the big box and BINGO! No water intrusion either, Robotina 2-0
The O-ring seal was in As New condition but with a lot of emulsified Silicone around it. Cleand it all up!





Electronics look in great shape, Robotina 3-0



Time to open up the Tracks/Roller motor, the O-ring looked great but with a lot less silicone than the box O-ring. Still no water intrusion. Robotina 4-0.





Now time to re-assemble and lube the O-rings with Magic Lube2. I went ballistic with this, didnt want to come back to bite me. I applied a wdge of silicone where the o-ring would seat and on the o-ring itself.

I just replaced my ancient HASA Liquidator with the new HASA Liquid Feeder.

After installing the unit and starting things up, I noticed that both floats would stick in place as the water level went up and down and then "pop" loose. The result was that the flow on the out/suction side would start and stop.

After a lot of difficulty I finally reached a human at HASA who took a message. I was contacted by a consultant that works on the Liquid Feeder product. Apparently this is a known problem, because he immediately offered to send replacements for the purple "saddles" that the float hinge pins snap into. He said that the holes that the hinge pins go into needed to be very slightly expanded. He recommended that I not try to expand the holes myself. The new saddles seem to have fixed the issue.

I had to load up the threads on one of the new saddles with lots of Teflon tape in order to get it to stay in the proper position.

This next issue is probably unique to my installation, but the information might be of use to somebody else.

My pump is 3 feet above my pool and has very little head left. It can barely prime.

The Liquid Feeder has a larger footprint than the Liquidator, so I had to move it to a different location on my equipment pad. Using tie wraps I ran the out/suction line very neatly up to and along the piping coming out of my sand filter and over to the pump basket. Unfortunately that routed the out/suction tubing higher than the water level in the Liquid Feeder and the pump was unable to establish any flow. As soon as I re-routed the tubing down to ground level, below the level of the water in the Liquid Feeder, the system worked fine.

Notes - I moved the old flowmeter from the Liquidator to the Liquid Feeder. I plumbed in a tee, a short length of tubing and a valve between the outlet from the Liquid Feeder and the spinner. This will let me suck a dilute (5:1, always add acid to water when diluting) acid mixture out of a jug in order to periodically clean out the tubing and flowmeter. (I learned several years ago that this is the cleaning method used by a HASA technician.)

Do they make a special tool for opening this plug (other than pair of pliers)? What a pain. Mine is tough to get to based off how they ran the piping and where they positioned the drain plug in relation to that. With a pair of pliers a complete nightmare. When I clean the filter I typically just shop vac out everything at the bottom and don’t mess with this pain in the rear drain plug but since I needed to drain everything quick due to the freeze I unscrewed it. Getting back on was a pain as well. I’m thinking at this point unless it’s another apocalypse down here that plug is NEVER coming off again.

Friday evening we went to heat the spa, only to find that the temp did not rise after 15 minutes. So I went to the Pentair MasterTemp 400 and saw that the red Service System light was on, and read that it is a pressure/flow issue. I intended to clean the filter soon since it had been awhile, so early the next day I took it apart. It was in need of a cleaning, but nowhere as bad as the first time the builder cleaned it out. And at that time there was no issue with the heater.

I should mention after by previous cleaning, the pressure gage on the filter read 11psi. It never has gone any higher, giving me the impression that it was not very dirty. Now I wonder if there might be a problem with it.

I also checked the skimmer and pumps baskets, they are empty.

After the pump was put together, I moved on the salt cell. It’s less than a year old and been unplugged since Oct/Nov, but still wanted to see if anything was in there. There was very small thin spidery type leaves, but again, I’ve seen larger obstructions in there before, and the heater was working. Rinsed them out with the hose

To date I have only rinsed the cell with pressured water, the extremely small amount of calcium buildup that in the past was removed from the hoses water pressure.

Should I preform an acid wash anyway just because it’s almost a year?

The pool is still under warranty with the pool builder for another month or two, and 2+ years with Pentair’s warranty. If I admit that I have never acid washed it, could they say that I’ve voided the warranty?

I reset the breakers at the sub and main, still no difference.

So back to the Service System light … it still remains on after all of the above.

In looking at pg 40 of the manual, it suggests to:

1 - Verify that pump is on, filter is not blocked, and the water flow is above the minimum requirement. (( I do not have a flow meter, so how can I check the water flow?))

2 - With pump running, adjust Water Pressure Switch to lower pressure until ‘SERVICE SYSTEM” LED goes out. Then verify that “SERVICE SYSTEM” LED goes on with pump off. (( I’m assuming that since this is under warranty I should not mess with this… right?))

Any suggestions before I call the PB or Pentair’s local service rep?

Thanks in advance,
York

I am taking my HAM test tomorrow. I just started the whole thing on 10/16. When I checked into exams though if I don't take it tomorrow, the next test is like middle of November. I am consistently getting 90%-100% on the practice exams so I think I will pass.

Any HAMs?

Hey Everyone! Back from winter hibernation! I opened this past Saturday to clear water with 4.5 ppm FC. TFP baby.

I had a few leaves fall in removing the cover but overall it went smoothly. The cover was almost completely dry.

Shocked the pool ran the filter. My numbers all looked good! Tested with my TFP kit refills.

Already dealing with debris from neighbors cherry tree lol. Don’t ever plant one near a pool.







Hope everyone is doing well!!

I have almost pulled the trigger and bought a heater for my Intex pool about twenty times in the last four months. I always chicken out because I am not very mechanically-inclined and have worried about fittings to get it onto the Intex. Well, I finally decided to shop around and found a Pool Store guy willing, it seemed, to think a bit outside the box. I showed him some of the threads on TFP about people adding skimmers, and hard-plumbing an Intex, etc.

Ultimately he told me the following, making me again chicken out and not buy my much wanted heater:

1. Says I would NEED a thru-wall skimmer to use a heater. Says just using the hose won't work. I guess I could toughen up and force myself to cut the liner and add a skimmer the way many of you have, so maybe that is not the end of the discussion. But . . . does anyone believe I could run the heater through the hose without having a skimmer?

2. He then said even if I put in the thru-wall skimmer, it would not work because the heater I said I want to buy is 400,000 btu and he says that is only for in-ground pools. Something about below or above the water line and that it would be extremely dangerous to put an "in-ground pool heater" on an above-ground pool. So then I asked if he sold "above ground pool heaters" and he said there is only one he knows of that is approved for above ground pool use and that it is a RayPak and is 100,000 btu. Does anyone agree or disagree with his assertion that it would be dangerous to use a 400,000 btu heater on an above ground pool (Intex or otherwise)? I thought many of you on this forum had above ground pools and larger than 100,000 btu, special "above-ground pool heaters" but maybe I have glanced over that detail for two years.

3. He says that even if I put in a thru-wall skimmer and buy a special "above-ground pool heater" that I am ill-advised to try it on an Intex. I showed him how you guys put in the skimmers and that they work, etc. He said his guess is that none of you take your Intex down seasonally and that is why they are working and the skimmer is not ruining the liner. So . . . Do any of you with a thru-wall skimmer on your Intex take your Intex down seasonally? Do you store it with the skimmer on, or do you unscrew it and then re-install it the following year?

4. I really just want a heated pool that I can use for four months and re-claim my yard the other eight months of the year. Hoping it is still do-able and that this guy is wrong. But, I have several thousand into the site prep, etc (gas; electric; moving sprinklers, etc) and I don't want to throw another $3000 for heater, filter, pump down the drain if it is not feasible to "pimp my Intex" the point of having a heater.

Thanks for reading a long post and for any insight offered.

How to do you guys go about measuring Muriatic Acid for your spas? Being that my spa is 330 gallons, in doing the math it looks like I'll be looking at about 2 tps to drop from 8 to 7.2 pH. I haven't filled up the tub yet — more or less just getting prepared with what I'll need. Acid comes in 1 gallon jugs and we're working with such small amounts that it's a little tricky. Do you have some kind of special device you like to use? I did some searching, but the only thing I came up with lead to a dead link for a product. Also, do you folks use some kind of respirator mask when working with this?

hi

will that work with this board?
AL-0
r 1.45

So, does all t-cell-15 work with any?
or does that leslies replacement tell the truth when it says it needs R of 1.5+ ?

anyone know for sure?
thanks!

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Monthly themed photo contests are announced on the first, with a 10-day submission phase. Days 11-15 are for voting, with the winner announced on the 16th, eligible for a $50 prize.



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Folks,

May of this year we filled up our brand new OB pool with a combination infinity edge and zero edge. I'm finding there are a few things that are a little different about its operation so I thought it might be helpful to others that I start this thread as a place where we can assemble learnings and tips specific to these types of pool. Here's my first entry:

My pool has a zero edge around all the edges and infinity over the back edge closest to the lake behind our lot. (recent photo below) 3' below this edge is a catch basin that has two large suction fittings in the bottom which is another 3' below. It's also 2' wide. I was very concerned during the design phase about how to control level since this little basin holds only ~1500 gal compared to the pool volume of 28,000 gal. Turns out it's very easy to control since there's way less time delay when people enter the pool and displace water over the infinity edge. I had planned to use a high level normal level and min level with some unnecessarily complex control. Turns out it's very easily controlled with a single simple float switch type level control set normally about 8" from the bottom. I use this to add water from my irrigation well pump via a pipe that fills the basin directly and it has a simple, inexpensive sprinkler valve. So long as the basin has plenty of volume to handle a lot of people this works great. Each time somebody gets in they displace 23 gal of water over the back edge. So even 5 or 6 is way less than my 1000+ gal capacity. For people that use the smaller horizontal buried surge tanks this could be a bigger issue. So while I was all consumed (over-consumed) with the level control response time I didn't think much about what happens if the level switch failed closed. Right after I added 3500 ppm salt and before I turned it on I had to take a business trip for a week. So I left and my wife just added liquid chlorine. I looked at the pool each day through the security camera that I accessed with my phone. After a few days the pool changed from it's normal gorgeous crystal clear to slightly greenish then deep green. We had massive amounts of rain that often happen this time of year in S Florida. So I had her add 4 ppm chlorine. This helped but didn't solve it so we doubled the addition. This cycle repeated till I was adding 10 ppm per day. This was LOT of chlorine since the pool is 28000 gal. But it was barely enough and 10 ppm is SLAM level for my CYA level (still low for this newish pool). When I finally got home after the flights from H**L we get these days it was 2 am so I went straight to bed. Woke up next day and thought I heard a pump running but that's normal for the irrigation pump. So I got up slowly, had a few cups of coffee and eventually wandered out to look at our gorgeous pool from the patio... only it was now really deep green and the back of my yard below the pool was flooded! Not from rain but from my pool. The level control had failed and ran the irrigation fill all week long 24 hours per day! The green color came from the tannins in the well water that are yellow until oxidized with chlorine. Yellow plus blue background from the plaster = green. Thanks @JoyfulNoise noise for that tip from construction when we first started it up. I quickly went to a manual mode on the level control and am now incorporating a high level shut down plus a low level shutdown to prevent pump damage. Very easy to do and yes, necessary for this type of pool.

I hope this is helpful to someone with a similar pool.

Chris

Not sure where to post this, but here goes.

After 9 years, our pool was staining. Walls, floor, sunshelf. Iron stains. We followed the TFP protocol as we saw it:

1. Slammed the pool (first time in 9 years!) Took chlorine pretty high in case mustard algae was staining the pool
2. Reduced phosphates bc it was 2000+ (my guess is air pollution in Maryland)
3. Reduced chlorine to 1, pH to 7.2. Took a long time to get chlorine to drift down!
4. Added 1 quart ascorbic acid (15,000 gallon pool)
5. Stains still present but lightened. Added 1 quart citric acid. I know! It was accidental! I thought the bottle was ascorbic!
6. Stains lifting but still visible
7. 24 hours later, chl = 0, pH < 7
8. Added sequestrant recommended by tfp. Remaining stains lifting.
9. At noon, started correcting pH to 7.2.
10. At 2pm, started reintroducing chlorine at 1 quart per hour. Stopped when we hit 2.

We would never have attempted this without TFP. Thank you so much!!

Just lost my robot early March. Bought it from Amazon March 2017, Died March 2024. Just got the call from local repair store, new power cord and motor is needed: $680. I think I rather just buy new.

But anyway, now that I am in the market for a new one, I am leaning towards buying the same exact model since it served me so well. I know that it doesn't guarantee me another 7+ years, but it left my pool spotless. $800 on Amazon

But its been 7 years and I haven't kept up with new things, so I am wondering what you guys recommend. And since I'm leaning to buying the same one for $800, then thats my budget.

We recently had our pool redone with Pebble Sheen. It's rougher than we'd like. I'd like to polish/grind it to smooth it out a bit. I did a small section in the spa (which I can drain) using a diamond polishing pad on an angle grinder, and it worked quite well. It results in a terrazzo like effect. It would be quite labor intensive to do the whole pool. Any advice regarding tools or tricks to get a good result?

I finally get to start my build thread . We just got our plans back yesterday and started getting bids today.

Background, back in 2006 we built our own pool, which we sadly only had for 2 seasons before moving. Our friend's brother consults o/bs, draws their pool, gets it engineered, sent our plans to subs, sends the permit to the city, orders our equipment wholesale, and guides us thru the process. We used him last time and are using him again. Last time we got our pool done in 3 weeks from dig, but we aren't expecting that this time. We aren't expecting that since it's super busy in the pool building world. We do hope to get done in time to use the hot tub before it heats up for next summer. This is our first time having a hot tub. At first we weren't going to do one, but when we started realizing that our kids are mostly grown, this will be something that they will want to hang out in. We have kids ranging from 33 down to 10 and grandkids from 15 down to 1, so all parts of the pool will be utilized. The little ones will love the Baja step and even the hot tub will become a baby pool in the summer. Our boys loved jumping off the waterfall before. My husband taught them how to jump off the fence last time , but I have vetoed that this time.

We will be getting quartz because I do not like pebble, and we will also be getting some form of cool deck/acrylic lace. I've been in friends' pools with travertine and don't like how slippery it is. It is gorgeous, but I really don't mind the look of cool deck and I like that it isn't slippery. These are some of the few times my preferences are the cheaper ones . As for waterline tile, I will make up for that because I want a glass 1x2 subway tile.

We did have the hot tub at 18" high, but thanks to Kimkats, we lowered it to 6" and I know I'll be much happier. She pointed out that we didn't want anything to block our view of the deep end so we lose sight of little ones swimming. Thankfully I had him change it at the last minute. I will feel much better now not having the view blocked.

We will have a pool fence that goes around the deck and there will be a double gate at an angle between the existing patio and deck that will open up wide for parties.

Our consultant will be getting a list to us later this week of the pool equipment and I will post it then. Tomorrow I will take pictures of the backyard of where it will be.

My husband is the UPS driver for our neighborhood and he saw 2 pools getting dug today and many more being built. He was even noticing the ones doing the digging are on our list of subs. Funny how you notice so much when you're going thru it.