I’m guessing here, but I’ve probably told 10 different people over the last 20 years how stupid they were getting a pool. The latest one being my friend John here in Tucson, who got a pool installed in his backyard no more than a year ago. I remember telling him “Big mistake!” I’m not even sure where I got that particular piece of advice. It could have been from my dad, or more likely, a disgruntled pool owner I knew. In any event, I now have a pool myself…. And I love it.
Of course it’s fun to swim in it. But what I’m talking about here is: I’m really getting into the one thing that I warned others about. In short, I like the water chemistry and the cleaning! Now granted, brushing the pool is a tad tedious. (Brushing surfaces is required to keep algae from forming and to “sweep” debris to the drain.) But I really like taking the water measurements and adding chemicals. It’s like a little lab in the backyard. Tonight I added 24 oz of Muriatic acid to bring the pH down from 8.0 to 7.4ish. Tomorrow I’m going to super chlorinate it to get the “combined chlorine” or CC down. CC is the shit that smells like chlorine. If you smell chlorine in a pool, then that pool’s chlorine is probably NOT SUFFICIENT. If you’ve got the good chlorine in your pool which is called “Free chlorine” (FC) then you shouldn’t smell anything.
Regarding the cleaning and sweeping, I just solved that problem with money. I bought a DOLPHIN DIAGNOSTIC 2010 automatic pool cleaner. I just got it today, and let it run it all afternoon. The filter bag was just full of dirt, grit, sticks and leaves. I had no idea there was that much dirt in the pool! WOW. I’m going to run it again tomorrow.
All I’m trying to say here is, I’m into this stuff, and I gave bad advice for 2 decades. If you are reading my blog for advice, caveat emptor!
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