Bleach & Vinyl Liner

[elsie]

If running high chlorine consistently causes liners to fade, then why wouldn't everyone, at least here in the south where the water doesn't freeze, who shocks and covers their pool in the fall open in the Spring to a faded liner? I close with 15 ppm CL and open 8 months later to a ppm of 8, which means the liner was subjected to a high chlorine level of 15 ppm over an extended period of time (before it eventually dropped down to 8 ppm at some point before the Spring). This makes you wonder about high CL fading liners in the first instance, doesn't it? If not during those long winter months, then why in the summer when the pool's open, and when high chlorine doesn't consistently stay high unless treating for algae, and even then it's a limited time -- certainly not month after month? UNLESS, fading results from a myraid of other reasons such as the interaction of high CL and sun and/or other chemistry values.

When I switched to the BBB method some years ago (2003, I believe, a year after I bought my property and inherited my pool), my liner began fading quickly, not just in the deep end where I pour the bleach in front of the jet, but the shallow end as well, which is far from that deep end jet so it's not localized fading. And, although it sounds like it, I am not blaming the BBB method -- the fading just coincided with my 2nd year of ownership. The sides are not faded, but I have almost no color left anywhere on the bottom (and the seams are very visible with a thin line of black). Yes, I do tend to run my CL a little on the high side because I have continual debris from the trees entering the water (I check pH religously and ordinarily add a cup each week as the pH tends to rise with this method for me), but still, this brings us back to the question above: not using my pool as an example, "if consistently high chlorine fades liners, why not when it's covered and the CL level stays consistently high for a number of months?" Surely we would hear reports of this from pool owners all over if they were opening to faded liners, and we don't hear such reports. The fading of my liner, hence, remains a mystery.

Fortunately, it's never bothered me. With the color intact on the sides it still shimmers aquamarine. My liner is a good 10 years old I figure, and still not showing signs requiring replacement. I'm crossing my fingers that the faded liner does not diminish integrity of the liner, and that I can squeeze another season out of it in 2009.