A few years ago I stumbled onto the pizza making forum and I
love it. I could spend hours and hours sifting through posts there. I’ve
learned invaluable pizza lessons. I’m more of a reader than a writer on the
forum but I do chime in once in awhile.
This spring I spent a lot of time doing searches on pools
and maintenance. In the course of those searches I found another forum - pool
forum. Trouble Free Pools. Turns out that pool forum people are just as nice
and helpful as pizza forum people. Who knew? Ready for something else that blew
my mind? You can pretty much take care of a pool with a testing kit, bleach,
Borax and baking soda. The active ingredient in bleach is the same active
ingredient in pool store chlorine – just different concentrations. If you are
in a Walmart or Target and you see someone buying 16 gallons of bleach, they are
most likely taking care of their pool and not cleaning a crime scene.
Now, I don’t want to bash any local pool stores - don’t have
any experience with them other than a quick pickup of chlorine. But…I have read many stories where people have
gotten terrible advice from professional pool people. I guess like anything,
all pool experts are not created equal. According to the forum, the test
strips you dip in pools are very unreliable and having your water tested at the
pool store can often be wrong too. The home testing kit I got from the forum is
pretty easy to use. I kind of feel like a chemist using it. There is a lot of
add 5 drops of this, swirl then count the number of drops it takes to change
color. I've also kind of matched the colors on the test strips to better numbers from my test kit so I sometimes still use the strips as a quick ballpark check of the water.
I’ve read through the pool school a few times and I think I
have the hang of it. I’ve learned about cyanuric acid (a stabilizer that helps
keep chlorine in the water). The right amount of cyanuric acid is good – and
necessary. Too much is less good. Way too much and it’s time to drain water
from your pool. Without the forum, I think my cyanuric acid level would be
rising into the less good category now. I’ve also read up on the forums way to
shock a pool (SLAM – Shock Level And Maintain) in case I ever need it. So far
so good. I haven’t needed it. There's also the pool math calculator which gives pretty good estimates on what adding something to your pool will do.
When the forum talks about clear pool water, they mean you
should be able to drop a quarter in the deep end and be able to see if it’s
heads or tails. This picture was taken with my phone. The quarter is in front of the sneaker on the floor of the pool. The zooming in isn’t the clearest. What do
you think?
Standing there, I could tell it was heads. Not as easy with
the phone picture. So far, the only problem I’ve had using the Trouble Free
Pool forum’s maintenance methods is that I can see every speck of dirt on the
floor of the pool. And since the pool is surrounded by sand, it’s been driving
me nuts. But that's slowly changing. Some more construction started this week.
Anyhow, if you have a pool – in ground or above ground – you might like looking around the Trouble Free Pool forum. I’ve learned a lot there.
Anyhow, if you have a pool – in ground or above ground – you might like looking around the Trouble Free Pool forum. I’ve learned a lot there.
