Any pool owners?

[Reifel Tower]

Originally Posted by Nuklhed

none in the movies I have seen.. But there is one in the Am/Pm commercial with the cousin Alex

HA - way to keep it local Nuk.

[Crippler]

Nice pool man. Right now I'm running chloro tabs in an inline feeder. But I am thinking of going the salt route. More up my alley. This summer has been a really tough one so far for keeping the chlorine level up or the pool balanced for that matter. The sun and temp has been pretty high this summer for longer periods. I think we are on day 7 of 90 or above right? That sucks. Especially when you add the BS 80% humidity on top of that. Anyway, the way I look at it right now is if the water is clear and I have no algae, then it's all good. Screw it. I'm not dumping $40-50/wk into balancing my pool chemistry.

Anyone know if that UV Shield additive really works? Maybe I need to throw some of that shit in to help with getting my chlorine up a little.

[Reifel Tower]

Re: UV Shield

I was talking to a guy at a pool store about this. He told me its just a very thin layer of parafin wax.

How true that is I dont know.

Im kind of leary of using.

[Peench]

Screw hiring a pool guy! Taking care of the pool is a cake walk! And the last pool guy I hired screwed up our pool. I hired him to drain it and do a wash (not acid wash as we have a gel coated non-plaster pool). So he comes out, drains it and then cleans it. Fills it up and within a week the whole pool turned black. I called him and after a week he finally called me back, then came out a week later then said "I have no idea." WTF? You're the fancy, shchmancy pool guy I hired? He said he talked to some friends and they had no idea either. WTF?

So my wife does some research online, finds a guy in Florida who has a website called AskAlanAQuestion.com or something. She shoots Alan an email asking about our issue and the guy responds within a few hours. He's a chemist or something and totally knew exactly what was wrong. He gave us some things to try and if those worked told us how to fix it. We lowered the PH, threw in some metal remover stuff and then a bunch of ascorbic acid (which the guy at the pool store didn't even realize they sold), and it cleared up in a day. Normal maintenance is a cake walk - save the $70-100 a month for beer and more pron!

I love your pool. I tried finding photos of mine online but couldn't find any. We use chlorine and while I've thought about switching I've seen no reason to do so at this time. I check the chemicals in our pool (about the same gallons as yours) about once a week and then throw in what is needed at that time. During the summer I put in a chlorine float with some tabs to address the heat burn off, but I take it out during winter.

We added a solar heater a few years back and it heats up the water quite a bit. Pretty awesome addition for relatively little cash.

I also swapped out the crappy outcleaner we had for a Hayward Pool Vac Ultra. This thing is awesome because it doesn't get stuck on stuff like all the others.

The pool pretty much takes care of itself now. Get yourself a nice test kit (I use the test strips because they are easy), and a few chemicals from the local store and do it yourself. It's more fun that way anyway! And the local stores will always test your water for free and tell you what you need as well. Find a guy who knows what he is talking about and you'll be set.

[Crippler]

Peench and the solar cover. Nice. I honestly would hate having my pool open ALL yr. I like the break over the winter. Cover that bitch and hope the cover stays on all winter during the storms. My pool hit 92F this yr already w/OUT a solar cover. It was like taking a bath and it sucked. Right now it's about 86F which I think is perfect. Nice and refreshing yet not too cold where your boys are going turtle on ya.

[Reifel Tower]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

A pool guy is out of the questions - its way too easy to do the work - maybe like 20 - 30 mins a week total. Ill start my own pool guy company and write off the expenses for that.

Im thinking of the salt route for simple chlorine generation and to make it easier on the kids and wifes clothes and eyes - I hear the water feels "softer"... Im thinking about that.

Peench - that pool vac - is that like the aquabot turbo?

[Serren]

Originally Posted by Reifel Tower

"its way too easy to do the work"

Good luck! The work is easy, it is getting it right ALL THE TIME that is the hard part. Wait until your 3rd or 4th trip to the pool store getting an armada of chemicals to kill some algea or another. A few of those a year and your at the break-even point for the pool chemical guy.

But I learned the hard way as well.

[Peench]

Nah Cripp, we got the full solar heating dealios on the roof. I haven't put the solar cover on in years. We don't get many storms here so having it open in winter just looks cool - and we can often swim in it anyway.

Reiffle - I don't know much about the Aquabot turbo so I can't say. From the photos I've seen of it online it looks quite a bit different. The old cleaner I had would get stuck in two places in my pool. The Hayward I linked above has a little mechanism that rotates the cleaner every 10 seconds or something crazy so that even if it does get stuck it clears itself fairly quickly. Saves wear and tear on the pool surface from suctioning/cleaning in one area while it is stuck.

I guess I've been pretty lucky (aside from the example above that wasn't even my fault) that we haven't had many issues. I take my pool filter out every month or two and give it a nice thorough water-jet cleaning, check the chemicals once a week (or every 2 weeks if I forget) and we've had pretty good luck.