pool "pitting" and stains - please help!

Stains on the pool surfaces, pool equipment
or on the swimmers, or off-color swimming pool
water. Discolored but clear pool water.
ab1105
I'm new here
I'm new here
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu 18 Aug, 2016 19:45
My Pool: 7000 gallons, concrete I think!

pool "pitting" and stains - please help!

Postby ab1105 » Thu 18 Aug, 2016 19:56

Hi, I am seeing a lot of pits forming on my stairs in the shallow end of my pool. They seemed to have formed pretty quickly over this summer (although maybe I just didn't notice them for awhile, but IF they were there prior to this summer, they have definitely started getting bad rather rapidly), along with a lot of light white/yellow-brown stains all of the bottom of the pool. I am guessing rust or copper but I still need to confirm.

The pool is 7,000 gallons and from 2002. The surface looked really good when we bought the house a couple of years ago, but I am afraid that through my inexperience, I might be damaging the pool surface by not knowing enough about what I'm doing. Of course, I know it's a bit older surface, but it looked fine about 1 year ago and now, not so good.

I brush the pool about 1x per week, perhaps not enough, but it's usually not very dirty on the bottom since we live in Florida and have a pool enclosure that keeps the pool pretty clean. We have a solar panel heater, so sometimes the water is 90 degrees F in teh summer and sometimes even a bit higher (we like it warm)!

I try to keep the water fairly well balanced but only check it about 1x per week, and almost always my alkalinity is too low, so I add baking soda occasionally to bring it back up. That's about all I ever add to the pool in the way of powder, other than a powder-form shock about 1-2x per month. Our water in the area must be really hard, because my hardness is always very high, maybe 1,000 or so! I try to add fresh water to balance it out, but it's not enough to help (especially if our water is just very hard already). Not sure if I need to be adding some kind of chemical (Calcium chloride?) to bring the hardness down; however, I read online that LOW hardness causes damage to pool surfaces and equipment but not high hardness…but in another article I see that high hardness could cause rough surfaces (perhaps also the deeper pitting I'm seeing in our pool).

The pH seems to stay pretty constant without any help. We use tri-chlor tabs and stock a bunch of them up in the system, then turn the dial down until they feed in at the right amount, although our chlorine is very often too high (even with the feeder dial at .5 to 1) and so I sometimes have to turn the dial down to .5 or 0 for a bit until the chlorine clears out. Maybe too much chlorine can cuase erosion? I don't check the CYA because these darn cheaper test strips I bought don't have it on them and I don't want to waste them. Maybe I should get an old school test kit though to be sure I'm reading the levels more accurately?

So, I'm trying to figure out 1) how to diagnose my issues of pitting/erosion in the surface AND light yellowish-brown stains and 2) what order to do steps to diagnose in. If you have any ideas of the order in which I should diagnose problems and how I should go about it, please let me know. I have considered asking a company to come out, but most times they try to sell me tons of chemicals and I'm afraid the wrong company might try to take advantage of my being a novice pool owner to sell me a bunch of stuff I don't need to fix this problem.

Many thanks for any thoughts you can offer!

Angelapool "pitting" and stains - question


Denniswiseman
Pool Industry Leader
Pool Industry Leader
Posts: 2592
Joined: Tue 06 Sep, 2011 05:48
My Pool: 10k inground fibreglass, Telescopic Cover, Hayward Powerline pump, Quality filter with glass media, 27kw output heat pump, K-2006C test kit
Location: United Kingdom

Re: pool "pitting" and stains - please help!

Postby Denniswiseman » Fri 19 Aug, 2016 02:39

First of all get a decent test kit to check your CYA and other levels, if you have been using Tri-chlor tabs you will be filling your pool with CYA
The fact that you say your chlorine levels are high with a pool full of CYA seems odd
If your CYA is to high you will have to dilute it with a partial refill which will lower your CH as well
Check out the CYA / Chlorine chart http://www.troublefreepool.com/content/128-chlorine-cya-chart-slam-shock

When you get a test kit check your results with your strips. You will be astounded by the difference
marvinwalters
Pool Care Proficient
Pool Care Proficient
Posts: 55
Joined: Sat 27 Aug, 2016 04:36

Re: pool "pitting" and stains - please help!

Postby marvinwalters » Wed 01 Mar, 2017 00:09

I agree with Denniswiseman. This will surely help.

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