FBXL Social

Pool owners only: what product could possibly be worth this expense? Is it full of Alex Jones’s colloidal silver?
“Honey, I sold the car to buy pool additives. Sorry 😞”.
I could not trade my running F-150 truck for this bucket. How much to fill my pool with dirt and plant grass over it?😐

@Haleakalacrater

Is that Chlorine?

@EarlThePearls no idea. 🤷🏻‍♂️

@greyknight no idea. It’s still too much. I’ll research.

@greyknight I’m an expert on this. Or I pretend to be. Let me know if you have questions. Are you having an in ground vinyl lined pool built?

@greyknight I also have a buddy who is a pretend professional pool owner-expert. And my neighbor did his own salt water generator system.

@EarlThePearls @Haleakalacrater it is shock, very high concentrate for when you have problems and need to kill algae right now, you don't use much so this may be for professional pool guys to treat lots of pools.

@weeniewawa @EarlThePearls calcium hypochlorite? I can’t read it it seems to be 37%?

@greyknight the generator is expensive and the cell can and will fail. The cell is expensive. Or the electronics driving it can fail. Check warranty thoroughly. Be aware salt water pools make chlorine from the massive amount of salt in the pool. Chlorine is still your sanitizer. But the price of all chlorine products is astronomical and not coming down. I get 5 gallons of 12.5% liquid sodium hypochlorite in a reusable returnable blue jug for $43. I add 1/3 -1/2 gallon daily. 28,000 gallons.

@greyknight sodium hypochlorite is basic and will raise pH to the point of needing to add muriatic acid. That is about $11/gallon for 32 Baum strong stuff. I might add 1 gallon per month. The pucks are tri-Chlor and add a stabilizer called cyanuric acid. Too much CYA makes you need more chlorine to have the same sanitizer effect. You need 30-60 ppm CYA or sunlight will destroy chlorine. The 3” pucks add 3ppm each. This gets out of control the only remedy is dilution.

@greyknight nice you’ll get a long season out of it. I believe you’d need to add SOME cyanuric acid initially only even with a salt water pool. I’d check that though it should be common info. It’s in granular form. Read up on Trouble Free Pools website. The SW generator may make enough chlorine that it doesn’t require a stabilizer.

@greyknight I know nothing about that UV stuff. If I were doing it I’d go SW at initial build. In ground versus above is really up to you. I with I did a basic rectangle mine is free form curvy looks nice but the cover is stupid expensive and you need a lot of anchors for it. If you go SW with in ground invest in brass sockets for the ladders and rails do not use zinc.

@greyknight go with a DE filter - do not use anything else like sand. You can use a variable speed pump if you want but unsure if you’ll save energy. Try to upgrade the variflow (Hayward’s brand) selector valve off the filter to 2” piping, even if you neck it back down to 1.5” later, it prevents cavitation (loud clicking sounds in water flow). Jandy brand 3-way diverter valves for the flow control are the best. If in-ground pool, make sure they compact soil thoroughly around the exterior.

@greyknight get a wifi smart timer off Amazon it’s amazing. Less than $50 now. You can add it later yourself or get electrician to do it. Don’t forget you’ll need a fence. Don’t waste money on a robotic vacuum. They all suck. Manual vac or buy a Kreepy Krauly.

@greyknight if you mean concrete and gunite and not vinyl lined I don’t know much about those. That’s a quality pool though. If you surround with pavers here in northeast and do not compact properly your pavers will settle. It’s a huge hole that gets backfilled. Proper compaction is key - you don’t want to go crazy and deform pool walls though. Get a reputable pool installer. But insist on what you really want. DE can filter friggin’ bacteria your pool will be super clear.

@greyknight no I use it for pump on off. I can’t afford a heater. Most people in the northeast will use the heater one season and never again due to cost.

@greyknight key to preventing algae is to maintain a proper chlorine level. One season I only shocked at initial opening and that was it. Lasted all season without shocking again. Sometimes it is necessary though.

@greyknight you’ll probably get a heat pump then. Expensive.

@greyknight you should see what our pools look like at “opening” up here when it’s been winterized for 5 months. Total Swamp. But in 3 days with a lot of vacuuming it’ll look way better, then after shocking, within a week after opening it’ll be crystal clear.

@greyknight heat pump will extend your swimming if you got kids or teenagers they want it like 80 degrees 😒. I swam down to 58. It’s not enjoyable though - but I’ve done it.

@greyknight I actually helped install a few in ground pools when I was a young lad. What a shit job.

@Haleakalacrater @greyknight TFP gang! We just converted our pool to salt (yesterday) here in central TX. Keeping the thing sanitized was crazy. We were buying serial killer amounts of bleach. We had a UV sanitizer and it was useless. Do not waste the money. Same for the puck dispenser. LMK if I can answer anything for you.

@Haleakalacrater Does it double as viagra?

@greyknight @Haleakalacrater it’s been a huge time saver so far. The whole thing was less than $1k and my husband installed it in a couple hours. You rarely need any kind of bleach, or so they say. Also re: the freezes, our pool detects cold weather and automatically runs the pumps to keep everything flowing. It’s been fine down to 10 degrees.

@greyknight @C I think SW is simpler - it just adjusts voltage to the cell to generate whatever chlorine amount is set to. Also the 3” pucks are now $250/50lb bucket we used to get it delivered for about $100 a bucket- the prices are criminal

@greyknight @Haleakalacrater because it generates chlorine, the salt system saves you the effort of adding chlorine on a regular basis (ideally daily.) Auto-dispensing chlorine pucks are only suitable for short term use, since they add too much stabilizer to the water, so you’re stuck buying plastic bottles of bleach on a regular basis. They aren’t always available and it’s a lot of plastic bottles to dispose of.

@C @greyknight Amen! Get a decent test kit too and test yourself. Learn pool chemistry it’s actually not that hard. The pucks are good for when I’m away. Otherwise I use liquid sodium hypochlorite. I get it in a huge 5 gallon jug. It’s ridiculous how expensive it is now. I’ll likely do a salt conversion for next season.

@greyknight @Haleakalacrater just wait until you get the salt test kit. It’s supposed to turn the color of “milky salmon.” Wonder how long it took the guys at Taylor to come up with that description.

@C 😬😂 the CYA test is so subjective. Did the black dot at the bottom of the tube disappear? I think I see it. I’m not sure. Is it still there?…🥴

@Haleakalacrater I know! Although ours was 170 when we bought the house and the pool, that was easy to tell! Sigh.

@C you should’ve added some water to your cyanuric acid. 😒

#poolhumor