Recent content by DrewLG

It will be... Until you start adding things like a table and chairs, chaise lounges and umbrellas, a fire pit or other seating area, planters or a barbecue, a deck box to hold pool toys and accessories, etc. Also, if you're going to put a safety fence around the area, that'll tend to make the...

Being prepared to fight a fire with the water in your pool is a great idea. But using your pool pump is not a good solution. See this post: Using pump waste output for emergency fire situation?

First, make an approximate guess (or have @ajw22 make one for you). Then, if you notice that all of your added chemicals consistently seem to be doing less than they should, raise your pool-volume estimate by 500 gallons. Or if the chemicals seem to be doing more than they should, lower your...

The high concentration of chlorine might not be great for your equipment -- TFP recommends against placing trichlor pucks in the skimmer for that reason, and your cal-hypo granules will raise the chlorine concentration a lot higher than pucks would. And pushing such a high concentration of...

If you switch to a reliable testing method, you'll find that chemicals do what you expect.

@Leebo, thanks for the update -- I'm sure it was a lot of work. My general feeling about the new UI aligns with the opinions already posted here, but I also have some more-specific notes. Is there a bug tracker for the app, or would you like a private message, or is this thread the best place...

Keeping the heater on won't really do what you want. Say your heater is a big one, 400K BTU/hour. That means it can add one degree F per hour to around 38,000 gallons of water -- let's call it 36,000 gallons to make the math easy. The heater won't work unless the flow through it is at least...

The "mode" just describes where the water is being pulled from: In Pool mode it's coming from the pool, and in Spa mode it's coming from the spa. So if you want to use the Spillway feature-- where water is pulled from the pool and returned to the spa -- you'll be in the Pool mode by...

Whether you do the test indoors or outdoors, you can calibrate your eye with this 50ppm CYA solution: R-7065 CYA Standard 50ppm (2oz) Do the CYA test with it instead of pool water, and see what the dot looks like when the tube is filled to the 50ppm line. That's what the dot should look like...

Someone with more knowledge or experience should answer that. All I know is that mine is copper and it's lasted for years and years.

A 266K BTU heater will heat your pool one degree per hour. But whenever the pool is warm, it will of course be losing heat to its surroundings. So the net effect of the heater will be to heat the pool by some amount less than 1 degree per hour. A 400K BTU heater will heat the pool 50% faster...

Your automation can tell the valve to turn to either Position A or Position B. ON1: The valve turns clockwise when told to move to Position A, counterclockwise when told to move to Position B. ON2: The valve turns counterclockwise when told to move to Position A, clockwise when told to move to...

+1 for the MK rodent-proofing mesh. Fits great, easy to install, lasts a long time.

A PVC-pipe shield would provide a lot more protection from the sides (and top, if it were longer than 3 inches). But if I already had your shields and didn't want to fabricate new ones, I'd probably try extending the top and sides of the existing shields by bending a piece of thin sheetmetal or...

What shape are the shields? If they're tubular -- made from PVC pipe, maybe -- they'll protect the surfaces of the sensor and reflector even in a strong rain. And if they're not too long, they shouldn't really affect aiming difficulty.