This went on for a while until I could not maintain either the pool or my sanity anymore and I embarked on mission : blue pool
- Firstly I had the problem of suction: THe Kreepy did not climb the walls anymore and all the garbage got dtuck in the diaphragma of the kreepy
The solution to this was saturated / old filter sand and can be determined in one of 2 ways : If you start the pool motor on Filter and it pushes a lot of brown water into the pool you know it is time to replace the filter sand, secondly you can open the filter and inspect the sand if it is clogy and sticky it is time to replace the filter sand.
This is a daunting task and 1 hint: If you do it yourself after unsrewing the lid, re-insert the screws into the filter and close the breather that way you don't struggle to get sand out of screw holes or air filters afterwards - As my kreepy was so old and the physical casing (believe me I allready replaced all lose and moving parts) was falling apart it was time to buy a new kreepy,
I bought exactly the same make/model thus giving me "spare parts" if something brakes on the new kreepy - Green / Milky water
I took a water sample to a pool shop and had them test the water for all the other stuff you can't test yourself easily (My pH or rather the pool's pH was perfect) but the water was saturated and some other balances were off : I got 2 bags of burn-out, clear tablets and chlorine:
* Here I got a valuable tip from the pool shop, allways do these mayor filterings etc. without teh kreepy running just on filter and the weir.
Method:
dissolved 2 packs of burn-out into 5l water and slowly released it into the weir and filter for 1 hour.
added 2 clear tablets into weir and run filter for 4 hours
backwash,rinse,filter
added 1 cup of chlorine, a tumbler and filter
The Next day I had a crystal clear pool :-) - TOD4C : Time Of Day for Kreepy to run : Apparantly the best time is to run teh kreepy continious for 12 hours during daylight in the summer that way the chlorine production is helped along and some crucial chemical balances restored via the sun.
I'm no pool expert but I've seen it with mine as well: you get to a point where the pool is low maintenance and always looks good (without actually doing a lot yourself), but then something happens and you battle to get it blue again for ages!
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me sometimes is that everyone has their own opinion on different things. One good example is when to run the pool pump. The "12-hour in the summer" thing is common, but I've heard many people say that you should run it through the night as you want to minimize the water coming into contact with air (oxygen) during the day as that reduces your chlorine levels quickly (oxygen and sunlight "eats" up your chlorine) - that's why pools with fountains and the like also needs more chlorine.
My pool is at a stage where I only have a chlorine floater in and all I do on a weekly basis:
1. Backwash
2. Add a little bit of algae killer
Every two weeks or so:
1. Add a bag of "burn-out" stuff which is supposed restore some levels in the water.
I also replaced all the sand in my sand filter once. (tough job!)
Keeping a pool blue is sometimes an art and not a science.. maybe we should come up with something which makes it a science.. you have a system with some containers which needs to be filled by the owner (acid, chlorine, whatever else), and then have an automated "tester" in the pool which measures the water and slowly adds the right amounts of whatever is needed from the containers - and voilla - a self-maintaining pool! Not sure if it will be that easy though ;-)
I found this site with lots of pool tips: http://www.alisonosinski.com/pooltips
ReplyDeleteEspecially this tip on water testing:
http://www.alisonosinski.com/pooltips/56.htm
It also seems like electronic water testing for pools is not such a wacky thought: http://www.palintest.com/products/pooltest+25+professional