Pest control tech put mosquito treatment in pool water.

[offtheclock]

Pest control was at my house and while watching on my cameras I saw him sprinkle something granular in my pool water. I quickly called him and he said it was for mosquito prevention and would not effect water. I just looked at invoice and it looks like a product called Altosid IGR. It appeared him only sprinkled it in 3 times but I am very concerned. Does anyone have any experience with this?

 

[BMerrill]

Google Search results.
Altosid Pro-G Mosquito IGR can only be used in “abandoned” pools. It cannot be one that people are actively using and swimming in, and if you put it in the water and don’t use the pool, it would need to be drained and cleaned and refilled prior to reuse. If you have a working water pump and are chlorinating the water, then mosquitoes would not be able to breed in the pool. See Mosquito Pest Guide for more information about treating for mosquitoes outdoors.

 

[offtheclock]

Ran home. Still granular at bottom of pool. Getting out now. Will update later.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Methoprene is the main ingredient. It’s a pseudo-hormone that keeps the larval mosquito from developing into a functional adult mosquito. It’s considered a biological “pesticide” as opposed to a chemical one. It breaks down in water and sunlight fairly quickly and is incompatible with strong oxidizers (chlorine is considered a strong oxidizer).

I don’t think you need to drain your pool. I think if you vacuum to waste any remaining granules and then do a SLAM for a couple of days, it should be fine.

Definitely NOT cool what they did WITHOUT asking you first and it shows their incompetence. So I would fire them immediately. Find another pest service and explicitly tell them that the pool and pool area are OFF LIMITS to any chemical treatment.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

I fired a weed control service company here because their tech was a complete moron and was mishandling the weed control spray (glyphosate & pre-emergent) around my property. He was too lazy to put on the backpack sprayer and spot treat so he would drag the pressure sprayer hose all over my 1 acre lot and just spray the stuff everywhere. He wouldn’t go into the pool area and I caught him shooting the herbicide across my pool to reach a patch of rocks towards my back wall. Herbicide was easily being spray into my pool water. I complained several times to the owner and he said each time that he would talk to his techs but they just kept screwing up. After the 3rd strike I was done with them and I let the owner know exactly why I was pulling the service contract with him.

 

[offtheclock]

Ok this stuff was in pool water for 4-5 hours. Took me almost two hours with robot getting it out and emptying robot often as to not let it dissolve more.
First pic is from pest company showing size of it straight out of container and second pic is what I recovered from pool. I suspect there was 1/4 a cup in there. Pest control owner is wanting to know what he needs to do to make situation right.

 

[offtheclock]

Doing some math based upon the container doses. It’s says that 2.5lbs treats 20k gallons water. 2.5 lbs is 40oz. Thinking there was at most a half a cup in there, so 4 oz. That means there was only enough to treat 4K gallons and my pool is 13-14k gallons. Plus it hardly dissolved.

 

[mknauss]

As Matt said above, no real issue. Raise your FC level for a couple days.

Up to you on the company. If you can trust them going forward, accept it. Maybe a one month free service for your time and effort.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

That material is designed to dissolve slowly. Methoprene isn’t very soluble in water either. So my guess is there is extremely little of it in your pool water.

 

[offtheclock]

As Matt said above, no real issue. Raise your FC level for a couple days.

Up to you on the company. If you can trust them going forward, accept it. Maybe a one month free service for your time and effort.

Good to hear. Just coming off SLAM and at 10FC and 60CYA. Should I SLAM again or just maintain at or little higher than I am?

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Go up to 12ppm (half a SLAM) and hold it there for 24 hours.

 

[offtheclock]

Ok will do. This is one of those times I am very thankful I invested in putting cameras around my property!