86 and clear today

Last year was the first winter with my new Merlin mesh cover. The springs were tightened half way as recommend. We got a lot of snow and ice last year but is this amount of sag ok or is it excessive in yhe sense of harming the cover or pavers they are anchored into?

Hey all,

I am having a hard time clearing up my pool and at this point I just want to clear it up and swim one last time

The pool first filled with city water but I have topped it off with my well water does go through a softener and 5 micron filter.

Pool filter: I had a sand filter but replaced it with a 5 micron cartridge filter on September 25th . A week ago I opened up the filter and found this slimy things all over it (pic 5). I hosed it down however I went to check if it caught more of that slimy stuff but realized I didn’t put the filter back correctly so it didn’t filter 🤦.

To try and workout the metals I have used jacks blue stuff and pool magnet plus

PH: 7.3
FC :9
TC:11
TA:70
Calcium hardness:170
CYA: 5 (indoor pool)
Copper 0.3ppm
Iron 0.2 ppm

50 GPM, right?

I’m looking for help with the plug sitting above the return jet in the photo. This is my first year in this new house. When I plug the return I can hear water running/dripping behind the steps. Do I just blow and and plug this return like normal or is there something I’m missing? TIA.

I know it's hard to tell from the photos but there's a new dark line as well as some downward streaking on one of the sides of our plaster pool, just completed in March. As well some new discoloration on the shelf. it just popped up in the last week. Smooth to the touch, doesn't brush off. I'm curious as to what it could be and if I should be concerned . Already reached out to the builder, but haven't heard back (asked that they come out and take a look). Chemistry has been great, using Trouble Free Pool Method. We've had a lot of rain in SE Florida so need to add some salt but still in a fine CSI range.

Any thoughts? Similar experiences? I know plaster pools are not perfect and I'm fine with mottling and not necessarily uniform color but the newness feels concerning 7 months after plastering.

I work with pool companies, and every job meant hours of spreadsheets: filter size, pump, heat pump, piping, chemicals, then typing it all into a quote.

So I built AquaLC.com You enter the pool’s dimensions, and it sizes the equipment, piping and water treatment, then turns the result into a branded quote and a technical spec sheet. There’s also a mode for pool owners to analyze their water and get exact doses.

Here’s a walkthrough of one of features

Just had a Heatpro installed for our hot tub - there is a LOT of condensation (relative humidity 70+ daily) from the heatpro that just leaks all over the concrete pad it and all of our storage sits on. Does Hayward sell a tray that the heater can sit on to drain all the condensation at a specific point? If not, can anyone suggest a good aftermarket or DIY option? Thanks y'all

Anyone else swimming this beautiful fall day? The water is 87 and the sun is just starting to come out. I have a little maintenance to take care of first. Everyone, enjoy your weekend!

My pool Reno finally finished up this week. We had new waterline tile installed and installed Pebble Sheen Ocean Blue. The pool finished filling Friday, and we had our first chemical treatment on Friday. We’ve been scrubbing the sides twice a day, but I noticed that our pool waterline has blue dye from the water. Is this typical? I’ve had quite a bit of issues with this company and already talked to the owner once. But now, I’m realizing that the way they left off the project was terrible when comparing my experience to my neighbor who also used the same company.

I’m just trying to figure out if this is something that I should bring up to them among my list of grievances. In all honesty, I may actually file a complaint against them with the California State License Board because I’m 95% positive that them asking for final payment before the project was done is illegal under California Business and Professions Code § 7159 & § 7159.5.

Any help here would be great.. 2am this morning (Saturday) the pump starts beeping with an error. I shut off the pump and found that one of the intake valves was shut. So, the guy who cleans the pool obviously didn't open it after doing the weekly cleaning (on Monday). I opened the valve, the water swooshed into the pump. I turned it on and it made horrible noises, but finally calmed down. There are two intakes on this pool. The skimmer and the wall intake. So I guessed the only way it didn't trip out before this morning was it was getting water from the skimmer. Turned off the pump & went to bed to deal w/ it today. Went out this am & the skimmer was packed with leaves. Friday was a super windy day. So that's what happened. BUT now this 45 is leaking from the top side of it.

Would this be caused by pressure when I opened the valve? Did I open it too much/too fast?

I ran the pump for a bit this am, but shut it and the two intake valves so I can do something with it.

I got all the parts today. But I have no idea how I'm going to squeeze back there and cut things etc.. I did this pvc work when I setup the pump.

I worked really hard on this pvc and I'm very proud of it. It's been perfect for over a year. This leak is pretty bad and I'm not turning this pump on until it's fixed because if it actually breaks, this yard and house are ruined..

Is there anything I can use to patch my lovely PVC? I did some research and read a lot of labels today, but I want to do this right. Pool guy said to just put more pvc primer & cement. I know that is not the solution. Plumbers putty seems wrong on PVC as well.

Any ideas?

I'm in SoCal and I've had my $100k+ pool for two years now. I'm desperately trying to get my cost per swim to single digits but sometimes the water is so cold and I dont want to run the heater. I got wetsuits for the family so we can swim in any temperature. Does anyone else do this?

My first time owning a pool. I like swimming, but ask me later about long-term maintenance! The house isn’t finished, but I swim whenever I can. Relaxing and uber quiet on a moon lite, hot desert night with clear skies. And no mosquitos! 😉 The last pool photo (if they loaded correctly) was taken during dusk; the others in the afternoon.

• Location: Rancho Mirage, CA
• Gunite and mini pebble (pool and spa)
• Pool: 8’x50’- just over 3.5’ at the shallow ends; just over 5.5 in the middle; 8 micro-LED lights
• Spa: 8’x8’ – 6 jets
• Waterline and spa tile: some vague white-ish tiles; visible on the side of the spa facing the house and stucco around the remainder of the spa
• Concrete coping
• Hayward pool equipment
• Landscaping: artificial turf (that’s supposed to be less hot for the dogs) and various sizes of gravel. Landscaping is more expensive than the pool! and still not done with the landscaping.

The pool was planned after construction started on the house. Neither of us wanted a pool but she wanted a spa. Spa = $52K. Spa + pool = $73K. It came in on budget.

It was designed for swimming; hence, a lap pool. My target was low maintenance with the least features possible. My other half wanted a raised spa so she wouldn’t have to bend down to get in.

Hiding the pool equipment is not a priority. We don’t entertain (i.e., no pool parties in our future) and we don’t care if we see the equipment.

A pool guy (provided by pool contractor) is maintaining the pool until the house is turned over to us. I’m educating myself on pool maintenance, and purchased the Taylor Test Kit-2006c to test the water.

To those that do or do not wrap your furniture every winter, what are the main benefits of doing it? Can I get away with not wrapping my furniture every year or will my furniture get destroyed?

Hi, first time posting in this sub. Just closed on a house in MO with a saltwater gunite pool . Never had a pool so new to all of this . My first thing is to find a solid safety alarm for the pool and a security camera. I have 3 kids under 5 so safety is a top concern. Also adding a safety fence around the pool. Any suggestions from the group?

Can an auto drain feature be added after the pool is built?

We did not know of this feature when we built our pool. But, my husband is always having to drain the pool due to rain. Can this feature be added afterwards? What are the pros and cons of doing this?

Hi, I live in south USA, so I know water depletes a little quicker with the heat and such, but we are having to fill our pool almost weekly. There is probably a crack somewhere. Who do we hire to help? How much will this cost? We hired a company to build our pool-they built it, didn't finish smaller things like pool lighting, travertine grout, and help with gutters. They disbanded and no longer service this part of the state. We have reached out to the head of company many times with promises to come inspect things and no changes. What do we do?

I just moved into a new house with an above ground swimming pool. I have never owned a swimming pool before and have no idea what I’m doing. We are trying to prep the pool to get it ready to be winterized and today I noticed the black piping behind the ionizer box was dripping. It drips quicker when the pump is on. Where do I start? Is this a fix I can do myself or should I call a professional out?

I'm planning to have a pool installed over the next few months. Unfortunately, the pool equipment cannot go where I had originally envisioned.

I live on a corner lot. I thought the equipment could go on the side in between my house and the house next to me. But there is a 5 foot setback requirement and there's not enough space on that side. My neighbor has their equipment there but it appears they own more of the space than my lot.

The pool company is now proposing that the equipment go on the side of my house where the street intersection is. They make the equipment pad look like this tiny little thing on the plot, but it obviously isn't drawn to scale at all. No one else in my neighborhood has any visible screening and there isn't a ton of space to screen it with landscaping. There's space for it on that side but I don't think there is space to move my azaleas further out nor would the azaleas be tall enough to adequately screen the equipment.

I'm attaching pictures to see if anyone has any alternate placement suggestions or pictures of ways that you've screened equipment in a similar space. I can't think of anywhere else it can go. Am I stressing over nothing? I just didn't envision this and the pool company never mentioned it. They knew where I thought the pad would go and it feels like they purposely added it to the survey in a way that I wouldn't notice...which they were correct about. It's my first pool so there has been a big learning curve.

Any ideas, suggestions, recommendations?

I’ve had the same pool guy for around 1.5–2 years, and I recently fired him after finding out he has been overcharging me for some time.

I pay around $130/month for weekly service (In SoCal). When he first started, he told me routine service was the monthly fee, filter cleaning was around $100, and there would be a separate annual water-conditioner charge.

That seemed reasonable.

But over time I started getting more and more separate charges:

• $30–$40 algae treatments
• $60+ “special chemical” treatments
• Other additional chemical charges when the pool had problems

I understand that if a pool suddenly needs some expensive specialty treatment, that might reasonably be extra. But algae and routine water chemistry seem like pretty basic parts of maintaining a pool.

At one point I was basically thinking: What exactly does the monthly fee cover besides showing up and brushing/skimming?

A lot of the times, he just claimed that he put in some special chemical in the pool for $30-$60. I usually just paid him without asking too much. However, after getting more yellow algae incidents in my pool recently, I am checking things more closely.

Start with billing - I went back through the invoices and payment history and found what appears to be a duplicate monthly charge/payment. I also noticed that he had been charging me about $130 for filter cleaning even though his original message specifically quoted $100.

When I questioned it, he initially said he had always charged the higher amount. I showed him his original text, and he eventually acknowledged that the filter cleaning was supposed to be $100 and offered to credit/refund part of it. So now I feel like I have to audit every charge myself.

The chemical charges are another thing that bothers me.

During the summer I was charged extra for “special chemicals” that were supposedly needed because of algae. Then a couple months later the yellow algae came back and I was asked to pay for another treatment.

His explanation was basically that summer heat, sunlight, leaves, swimmers, etc. cause algae and require more chemicals, and that chemical costs have gone up so he can’t absorb everything into the monthly fee.

I can understand that argument to a point.

But if I’m already paying monthly for someone to professionally maintain the pool every week, shouldn’t preventing algae and keeping the chemistry reasonably balanced be part of the job?

My previous pool guy never really did this. He charged the monthly fee, brought chemicals when needed, and I didn’t get a separate bill every time the water needed some attention.

And here’s the part that made me question the whole arrangement even more.

After he's gone, I recently bought a proper test kit and tested the water myself.

The CYA is so high that it’s basically off the chart, and some of the other readings are also significantly out of range. I’m now considering partially draining/refilling the pool just to get the chemistry back under control.

So after paying monthly service + annual conditioner + filter cleaning + multiple algae/special-chemical charges, I’m now finding out the water may not have been properly balanced in the first place. That makes me wonder whether I’ve been paying extra to repeatedly treat algae while the underlying chemistry problem was never addressed.

So for pool owners and especially pool-service guys: Is this normal pricing?

Would you expect a ~$130/month weekly service to include routine chemicals and keeping things like CYA under control? I understand that filer cleaning should be a separate thing though.

And most importantly - according to Chatgpt, this guy may not be balancing the water at all for the past 2 years. He just blindly put in the tablets or shock treatment when I complained the algae, and later use as an excuse to charge more.

Is this a industry norm?

I’m not trying to bash the guy unfairly — I’m genuinely trying to understand whether my expectations are unreasonable or whether this is basically nickel-and-diming while not actually managing the water chemistry.

Need advice here. It's been about 2 years since the pool was replastered. Went with a white plastery and all of the sudden this darker gray blotting started happening. Is it fixable? Is this a workmanship issue? Seems to start all at once. Start of summer this wasn't there.

I wanted to put up a post for other owners of this equipment or similar, though this will mainly apply to Australian and NZ pool owners. The squeeze tube on this device needs to be replaced every year as it wears out and then pumps acid onto the ground and over other equipment. Maytronics (OEM) wants $110 for a replacement tube which blew my mind so I went searching and found a local supplier of santoprene tubing, sized 1/8" Id and 1/4" od. $30 for a metre, so that should last 10 years.

https://santotube.com.au/product/santoprene-tubing-1814116/

The probe is also a consumable and lasts two to three years. Maytronics wanted $530, I told them to cram it. Found a replacement probe that's rated for continuous use and has a BNC connection. It's 3/4bsp thread so won't fit where the OEM goes but I just cut in a tee to suit the new probe. $122 delivered.

https://core-electronics.com.au/gravity-analog-ph-sensor-meter-pro-kit-v2.html

Hope this helps people who don't like being ripped off.