Welcome to Pool Care Secrets - A Regular Weekend Warrior’s Guide to Keeping It Blue
We purchased our first home nearly a year ago, and with it came an in-ground swimming pool. I was excited to do a lot of swimming, because the weather here in Sarasota, Florida is gorgeous year-round. Little did I know that I’d spend more time caring for my pool than swimming in it.
It’s this constant struggle that led me to put together a compendium of the Web’s (and print’s) best (and worst - where noted) information on taking care of that big hole in your patio, the one that insists on being anything but clear, blue, and inviting.
PoolCareSecrets is somewhat of a misnomer, because there are NO SECRETS to having a sparkling blue swimming pool. At least, that’s what they keep telling me.
Filed at 2:03 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Happy Pool and Patching Concrete by Chris
Prior to purchasing our home, which came with this pool, there were a few items on the punchlist to be fixed before closing. One of these was the “hole” in the side of the pool. It was patched with presumably the same stuff I used to fix it today. It’s a 2-part epoxy putty that cures under water when the resin and epoxy are mixed together manually. It sets under water. We’ll see how long it holds up. I may or may not sand it down.
2-part epoxy resin.
Notice all the crumbled stuff at the bottom.
Ah, summertime blues. 
Filed at 6:48 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Happy Pool and Filter Maintenance by Chris
Greetings again, fellow pool care warriors! It’s been a while since my last post, but like they say, “No news is good news!” Our pool’s looked perfect for over a month now. I was very curious about what the pool place would say when I delivered my water sample today, since I’d been slacking on regular liquid chlorine shocks and brushings and the other usual pool care maintenance.
I learned that my pool did contain some chlorine, but it was at 1.5 ppm, which is just below the recommended 2.0 - 4.0 ppm. The reason for this was that my stabilizer level was still rather high. They only prescribed a 1.5 gallon liquid chlorine shock, along with 18 pounds of Calcium to boost the hardness of the water.
I was glad to remember, while I was in the store, to mention to Ken, the friendly guy who helps me each time, that I’d been noticing a lot of gurgling sounds and tiny bubbles (in the wine) coming from one of my circulation jets. I suspected an air-leak, but didn’t consider that its location was at the top of my cartridge filter. Never having really noticed that the backside of my filter was wet most of the time, I told Ken about this and he said that it’s there that the air was creeping into my system.
I purchased a new O-Ring, made by Hayward, my filter’s manufacturer. They didn’t have any generic O-Rings for my filter, so I ended up shelling out $20 for a loop of rubber. I recommend seeking out the cheaper, generic alternative. Below are some pictures of the procedure I followed to change out the O-Ring seal on my cartridge filter. You can click each image to enlarge, and I’ll report back in a few days about whether or not this fixed the air-leak.
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The new O-Ring and the silicone-based lubricant
Close-up of the silicone-based lubricant.
Applying the lubricant to the O-Ring
Top of the filter with the new O-ring and bleeding the air from the system.
Filed at 1:30 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and chemicals and Happy Pool by Chris
Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that BY JOVE I THINK I’VE GOT IT. Got it right, that is… and it’s lasted for over a week straight!
My last trip to Pinch A Penny had me thinking on the way, “Maybe my pool’s bigger than I’ve been telling them, and they’ve been under-advising, or under-medicating my pool’s problems all this time.” As I was getting my water tested, I chatted with them about this, and said that my pool’s gallonage may’ve been
underestimated. I gave them my estimated dimensions and drew them a picture of the pool’s shape. “Aha… we may have something here,” they said. “Your pool’s shape, we calculate the gallonage on that as we would a kidney-shaped pool, not as a rectangular pool.” This entire past year, we’d guestimated my pool’s gallonage at 10,000 gallons, but with some swift calculations we ended up with a number closer to 15,000 gallons.
Everything I’d been trying, as far as chemical treatments went so far, were a full 1/3 below the necessary amounts! That’s a BIG difference when it comes to whether I need 5lbs or 15lbs of stabilizer, for example. We re-ran my water test with 15,000 gallons and got a new prescription, which NOW included more stabilizer and total alkalinity.
I followed this new prescription, and every few days used my Test Kit to monitor the chlorine levels. They were
beginning to stabilize! I’m HAPPY, as you can see from these pictures of the pool. The two top pictures were taken on 7/29 (last week.) As you can see it’s clear, the staining on the bottom has disappeared, and it looks GREAT. The two bottom pictures were taken 8/5 (today) and they can speak for themselves: The new gallonage has produced a clear, clean pool with now-stable chemistry!
Filed at 6:11 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Green Pool and chemicals by Chris
My blue pool, that is. It’s back to green now, a mere week after my previous post.
Dejected, frustrated, and beginning to resent my swimming pool, I grabbed my once-again empty jugs and water sample and headed back to Pinch A Penny. On the way there, I thought back to the past few days. I had purchased a Basic-4 Pool Chemistry Test Kit and was shocked to see that my chlorine levels, both free and total, were dropping faster than bad habits at a nunnery.
“I must be out of, or low on, stabilizer.” I learned at Pinch A Penny that I was right. (see, I’m learning! Maybe the pool’s plotting against me. This is a test.)
So sure enough, my chlorine levels were again at 0 and my stabilizer was sorta low (38ppm, where the ideal range is 40-100ppm).
Before tackling the algae-suffering pool again just now, I had this brilliant idea about physical filtration and how a little pre-emptive vaccuuming prior to adding my chemicals could make all the difference in the world. We’ll see how it works, of course, but here’s the order of what I did just now:
1. Vaccummed the entire bottom of the pool with the tube and long-handled vaccuum (same as the brush, just a different head)
2. Cleaned my filter - it was PEA GREEN. Ick.
3. Added 1.5 Gallons of liquid chlorine shock.
4. Brushed the sides.
5. Broadcasted 1.3 pounds of Stop Green.
Tomorrow around this same time I’ll add another 1.5 gallon jug of liquid chlorine and about 2 pounds of stabilizer, as Pinch A Penny advised.
Filed at 6:47 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and chemicals and Happy Pool by Chris
Well, the 5 gallons of liquid chlorine, 3 stabilized chlorine tablets in the floater, vigorous side brushing, continuous filtration, and 2 pounds of Stop-Green did the trick. The pool was ALMOST blue when our guests arrived, but they’re good friends and understood that the pool MIGHT
not be totally ready. It wasn’t, but by the second day of their stay, it was blue enough to swim in after going to the beach (ah, how refreshing). It’s still cloudy though, so I plan on taking in a sample to the pool place again to see how to clear it up. Blue is good. Clear and Blue’s where I want to be.
My friend suggested trying an automatic chlorinator, the kind that fits inline with my plumbing and gets fed weekly with fresh stabilized chlorine tablets. I’m going to look into this, as he claims to have a relatively stable pool (stabler than mine, at least) and his automatic chlorinator keeps his free and total chlorine levels in a good place. I’ll give that a try and report on what model I chose, its installation, and the results.
Filed at 2:16 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Green Pool by Chris
As if it wasn’t bad enough that I had to suffer the indignity of my Mother in Law seeing our home (and our pool) for the first time with the swimmer in such a greenish state, and that it never REALLY turned back to blue before her 10 day stay…
but we have friends coming to visit again this weekend, and the pool is uh, almost ready to get up and walk away on its own.
The rains this time of year where we live, Southwest Florida, are horrendous. Daily downpours, complete with impressive lightning shows, occur with clockwork precision. This brings all the pollen and such in the air right into our pool, turning it a brilliant, then dull forest green. Lovely.
So, with the time crunch before tonight’s guests arrive, I dumped 2.5 gallons of liquid chlorine, and 2lbs of Stop-Green. I also cleaned the cartridge filter (also green) and swept the sides and bottom of the pool. At the moment, 4 hours later, it’s still incredibly ugly with algae. My HOPE is that it’ll be blue (or at least bluish) in the morning when we wake up, as thankfully our guests don’t arrive until after dark.
Filed at 7:38 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Nifty Gadgets by Chris
When I saw the Water Wand cartridge filter cleaner in a Pinch-A-Penny ad we got in the mail, I thought, “This has got to be one of the most brilliant ideas I’ve ever seen.” I MUST have one.
Since it was Saturday and I need to refill my jugs anyway, I motored down to the store with flyer in hand and said to Ken, “I’m going to bet that these are already sold out, right?” He nodded, and said “Yeah, they sold out earlier this morning. We just introduced them today. We expect to get more on Wednesday.”
Fast forward to Wednesday.
Now I’m back at Pinch-A-Penny, again with flyer-in-hand, and lo and behold they HAVE one.
My wife gets home from work and I exclaim “HONEY, look at this thing! They HAD one. It’s AWESOME.”
Then, I tried it out. What a sad experience. I screwed it onto the end of my garden hose and turned on the water. Water began shooting out in all directions from the housing. Through the seam on the front end, around the screw-fitting at the hose, and in six directions (three of which were on me) from the On/Off thumb-lever.
Am I going crazy? I’m not THAT mechanically uninclined. Is it screwed on right?
So I call Pinch-A-Penny back and tell them that though I was super-excited to get the Water Wand and try it out, I was horribly disapointed with its performance. I’d Googled around for ‘water wand’ and found a number of sites claiming that “due to this product’s abysmal performance and high rate of returns, we aren’t offering it anymore.” I explained this, and was assured I could return it for a store credit.
Last weekend I took it back and said to Ken, “Man, what a disappointment.” He then produced a piece of paper with a little baggie stapled to it, containing three rubber washers. “I got this in the mail from the manufacturer.” He was kind enough to give me a photocopy of it, and one of the washers, since I’d agreed to guinea-pig the “corrections” per this technical bulletin.
Apparently, the manufacturer had gotten enough complaints to send this memo out to stores carrying the Water Wand, in hopes that they could correct the increasingly widespread impression that this thing was a piece of crap. The explanation said that there are so many different types of garden hoses, that the majority of the problems lay in the hose not sealing properly to the Water Wand, and pressurized water would get into the plastic housing and go spraying everywhere. Implementing this washer, most of these connection problems could be overcome.
It worked. The rubber washer helped keep the pressurized water inside the right places inside the Water Wand, and the only place water sprayed out was from “the business end.” I was pleased.
So then, I tested it on my woefully dirty cartridge filter. I was only marginally impressed though, since the pressure of the water emitted is nowhere near the force with which I can use my thumb on an unadulterated garden hose. If it was more pressurized, it would work better in my opinion.
For LIGHT DUTY, this thing is great. For dirtier filters, especially those with clumps of pet hair in them (like ours), I’ll probably stick to using my thumb and call the Water Wand a brilliant idea in theory, but somewhat disappointing in practice.
Filed at 5:15 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Happy Pool by Chris
So today things are back to normal, and the pool is happy again. So am I.
It turns out that a good brushing, 1 gallon of liquid chlorine, a bunch of Stop-Green and 24 hours did the trick. This morning I woke up to a very pretty, inviting swimming pool.
I caved in before writing this and dove in, floating around with my Bubba-Keg and tempting my dog to jump in. He’s a big weenie and refuses to jump in, even though he’s got enough Lab in him to make him practically a duck. Oh well, his loss.
Filed at 5:43 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Green Pool and chemicals by Chris
My Dad’s always (mostly) given me good advice. I grew up with a big swimming pool, and fondly (mostly) remember my childhood pool chores. Sweep the pool. Clean the Aqua-Queen (a real bitch of a robot). Backwash it. Hohum.
When we moved into this house and were thus indentured to this pool, one of the first things Dad suggested for the perennial “green pool syndrome” was something called Stop-Yellow. I tried this a few times and had good success… brushing, shocking with liquid chlorine, and then sprinkling a smallish packet of the stuff around the pool. The next day, the water’d turned crystal clear and all was well in Swimming Pool Land.
But it didn’t last. Hardly ever does.
I just got back from Pinch-A-Penny, where I get my chemicals and water tests roughly once a week. I got about $40 worth of chemicals this time. Stop-Green, a small tub of Big Aspirins (what I call stabilized chlorine tablets), muriatic acid, and jug refills.
The Stop-Green is different, since now I’m starting to see greenish spots on the sides of the pool, like little verdant flecks in the marcite, which begs its own post some other time. I just brushed the sides and bottom, added 2 quarts of acid, a gallon of chlorine, about 2lbs of stabilizer (all I had left) and then sprinkled about 2lbs of Stop-Green around the pool. It’s incredibly cloudy now, as expected after the vigorous brushing. I’ll run the pump all night for circulation and report back tomorrow.
Filed at 2:15 pm under Chris' Pool Blog and Green Pool by Chris
Since this IS a blog of sorts, this is my inaugural post.
The pool’s green at the moment, and is too full because it rained cats and dogs yesterday. I need to run to Pinch-A-Penny to get the water tested and refill my jugs. My guess is, it’ll need a good shock and some algaecide.
I’ve been following their directions and while the pool turns nicely clear and blue, it generally doesn’t stay that way for more than a few days. I know I’m doing something wrong.
News as it’s available, and thanks for your patience with the actual information pages. I’ll be added that stuff as it becomes available and time permits.
Cheers - Chris
