Ordered My Pool

[Watermom]

A healthy dose of fear is not a bad thing when dealing with pool chemicals. Knowledge is power and if you are educated about them and use them correctly, you'll be fine. Sometimes people underestimate the potential of danger from seemingly harmless little pucks and powder. That is what gets you in trouble.

Re: the apt. complex thread --- we were ALL (mods and Ben) getting scared about that one!

[dcombs44]

Test kit came today. Should be able to get my tap water tested tonight or tomorrow. I'll post results and my predictions for what I'll need here. I'll need your help to make sure I'm not making a bad estimate.

Got the "hole" roughly dug yesterday. Plan to spend tomorrow afternoon leveling and cleaning up the mess from the bobcat. Hope to be setting patio blocks by tomorrow evening.

[Watermom]

Hard to wait isn't it? I remember the hard work of getting my pool site ready. Thought we never would get it level! One side would be a little high, so we'd take a little bit off. Then, it would be a little lower than another side and so on............

Wasn't too fun from what I remember, but SO worth it!

[dcombs44]

Tested pH and Alk for grins from my tap water.

pH was pretty much dead on 8.0 (not bad for a fish tank )

Alk hadn't changed colors at 12 drops, so it's higher than 120. I stopped there. I know I've still got some room here with the vinyl pool.

Looks like I'll be playing a little mad scientist to get things in check.

Once I fill, what's the first thing to get in check?

I guess I should work on adding CYA first since it's acidic right? That should lower pH....

What's the best route here?

[Watermom]

PH and chlorine first. Then you can tweak the other stuff.

[aylad]

I agree with Watermom, pH and chlorine first, but it won't hurt to go ahead and add your CYA, just don't broadcast it like the label says, and if you add it through the skimmer into a sand filter, don't backwash the filter or retest for CYA for at least 4-5 days because it takes a long time for it to dissolve. Until you have CYA in the water, you're gonna have to make frequent chlorine additions because the sun will eat up a lot of your chlorine, so the sooner you can have it in the pool the better.

Janet

[dcombs44]

Thanks!

So, we had the sod removed last week, but I kept getting rained out on days I planned to work on leveling.

Well, we finally got to start yesterday (heat index of 110 degrees). About 4 inches down on the high side was a 4' x 10' slab of 10" thick concrete. Grrrrrr....

Took a big chunk of the afternoon to bust up the concrete and remove it.

Ended up getting a few of the blocks set for the posts using a laser transit level. Had to dig down a fair amount though, so we've got a fair amount of digging and raking left to do.

Back to the grind after work today.