Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Around The House). This thread is read-only.
My new-to-me house has a 10,000 gallon pool that I maintain, repair and upgrade, but it is only used when company arrives. I selected / purchased the house for the garage space and personally would have LOVED to NOT have a pool, but here we are…
After almost 20 years of home ownership w/ swimming pools, some knowledge has FINALLY broken though my thick brain crust. I am NOT a chemist and will never be one, so IMO a pool is a giant chemistry experiment. Test strips and water samples to the pool store to see what chemicals are required to bring my (usually) beautiful water into the good range on a dozen measured parameters. I always bring a recent photograph w/ my water sample to the pool store of my on-hand chemicals to see what I need to purchase. In all those years I’ve only had one single 100% good test results “Report Card”.
Unfortunately, the small nuances between good and bad on some test strip colors, combined w/ the short timeframe to determine the result before the test strip color changes to useless don’t always permit selecting the correct “measured” result.
For more than a week I’ve been unable to maintain any chlorine in my pool. That is REALLY scary because the water will then randomly toggle from beautiful to green almost instantaneously and then fixing green water is a major butt pain.
My pool uses a Hayward AquaRite Salt Chlorination System to create chlorine using their TurboCell, which is essentially running a fuel cell backwards. Of course the manufacturer doesn’t provide everything required to fully understand if / why their system isn’t attaining the desired results, so when all else fails then a shotgun approach is required. My system “appeared” to be running properly and their documented tests showed good, but the strips still showed no chlorine, grrr.
Being a self-affirmed troglodyte I insist on discovering knowledge by reading. When ALL OTHER OPTIONS have been exhausted I will begrudgingly turn to YouTube. On YouTube I found a pool service professional showing EXACTLY what I needed to know. Just immerse the energized TurboCell into a 5 gallon bucket and do a visual observation for chlorine gas generation. Would that have killed Hayward to publish ANYWHERE into ANY of their documents???
So when I submerged my operational TurboCell into a 5 gallon bucket of pool water, boom, visual evidence of LOTS of chlorine gas generation.
Now back to the no chlorine in the water, why? Turns out the test strips were showing borderline between good / bad on cyanuric acid (stabilizer), used to prevent chlorine from rapidly deteriorating.
LOTS of cyanuric acid granules were added, then worked into being dissolved so they could modify the water. A layer of granules on the pool floor in my mind haven’t changed the water chemistry, so I help them dissolve. WHY can’t they sell a product that dissolves in water?
EUREKA, now I have measured in-range pool water chlorine!!!
Another time / money suck pool project competed.
Energized and Submerged TurboCell Generating Chlorine Gas
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Cyanuric Acid Granules Being Brushed to Dissolve
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My water chemistry measurement plan going forward is to use this LaMotte 3581 Mobile WaterLink Spin Touch photometer instrument and their 4329-H WaterLink Spin Disc to precisely measure 11 water parameters. Hopefully this will provide good long-term measurement results.
The southern Florida home gets seasonal torrential downpours.
The side skimmer pool water return on this pool has a “picture frame” opening on the wall. If / when the water level gets too high it goes above the upper edge on that picture frame, preventing that water inlet from capturing floating stuff from being filtered from the water.
The previous owner used an AC powered submersible garden hose pump to slowly decrease the water level, probably over hours, to attain a workable side skimmer range.
I don’t have that amount of time for that seasonally frequent operation, so instead I just unscrew / remove the TurboCell from the 2″ Schedule 40 plumbing, turn off the chlorination system power. then turn on the pool pump.
The water level is then visually observed (for minutes) while the driveway / street is flooded w/ massive amounts of water until the meniscus stops clinging onto the upper edge of the “picture frame” opening.
The pump is turned off, cell replaced, fittings tightened, chlorination system AC power restored and pump turned back on to check for leaks.
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That is a heck of a set up. When it’s hot out, I want a pool but sounds like it better to just find a friend who has a pool and buy him a 6 pack to use it.
Thanks much.
My daughter and I went on a cruise and attending the shows got my (small) brain thinking about improving the pool party atmosphere.
To that end I added a motorized mirror ball, a pair of pin spotlights and a random moving color spec light.
In order to properly accomplish this project I FINALLY completed the long-postponed wiring project to add a ceiling NEMA 5-15 electrical power receptacle for my pool enclosure string light, eliminating the suspended extension cord. A BIG part of the delay was anticipating the “fun” of crawling around fiberglass insulated trusses.
Of course I greatly expanded the project, changing from a single pull cord attic lightbulb, to now having a light switch control, plus adding a 8′ long fluorescent light, plus a continuous power NEMA 5-15 duplex receptacle and a switched receptacle. The project changed from just adding the single receptacle for the existing pool enclosure string light, to now adding three GFCI protected receptacles. I also added framing to hold the mirror ball motor. The pin spot lights were placed to securely screw into the existing truss framing.
Getting up there required disassembling (then reassembling) the guest room closet wire rack shelving, so my ladder could get through the ceiling panel door. I also added a very nice pull cord light in this closet as part of the project. All my other closets already had switch controlled lights. After the closet was now properly illuminated I discovered my incomplete surface refinishing prior to my recent paint job, so used my OCD to fill then paint those minor defects.
Now my new DMX-compatible lights and motor are all properly installed. I started w/ a DMX controller, but instead reverted to just using the included remote controls. The motor has no brains or on/off switch, so I added a remote controlled dongle to control power for the motor. I discovered the single random color spec light has a small internal fan that runs continuously whenever power is applied. This is now also plugged into the switched dongle, so the fan only runs when the ball is spinning.
The ONLY missing element was kick butt audio, so I added a 500W RMS Bluetooth PA system.
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See when I see that, a pool is worth having. that looks awesome.
wingless wrote:
On 10/6/2025 at 6:26 AM, wingless said:,,,
The side skimmer pool water return on this pool has a “picture frame” opening on the wall. If / when the water level gets too high it goes above the upper edge on that picture frame, preventing that water inlet from capturing floating stuff from being filtered from the water.
The previous owner used an AC powered submersible garden hose pump to slowly decrease the water level, probably over hours, to attain a workable side skimmer range.
I don’t have that amount of time for that seasonally frequent operation, so instead I just unscrew / remove the TurboCell from the 2″ Schedule 40 plumbing, turn off the chlorination system power. then turn on the pool pump.
The water level is then visually observed (for minutes) while the driveway / street is flooded w/ massive amounts of water until the meniscus stops clinging onto the upper edge of the “picture frame” opening.
The pump is turned off, cell replaced, fittings tightened, chlorination system AC power restored and pump turned back on to check for leaks.
These images show the water level just a little too high. Floating stuff cannot make it to the filters for removal. Frequently the water gets a lot too high after just a typical seasonal daily rainstorm.
The next image shows the water dropped until the meniscus has stopped clinging to the upper edge. This permits floating stuff to be removed.
The excess water is dumped near the pool pump, going down the driveway, then onto the street. At least this step happens quickly. Of course dumping this much water screws up the chemistry.
For many, many years I’ve used my slip joint pliers to tighten the salt cell nut until I recently found the wrench shown, designed to exactly fit the nut. The bespoke wrench is sooo much better.
Water Level Too High
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Water Level Dropped Low Enough
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Excess Water Rapidly Dumped Out From Missing Salt Cell
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Using Bespoke Wrench to Tighten (Loosen) Salt Cell Nut
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And I am back to trying to find a friend who has a pool, lol. In all honesty, I am sure it’s like everything else, once you can figure it all out, not to bad and worth it. You have a nice set up.
Eric – TIA wrote:
3 hours ago, Eric – TIA said:And I am back to trying to find a friend who has a pool, lol. In all honesty, I am sure it’s like everything else, once you can figure it all out, not to bad and worth it. You have a nice set up.
We had a pool at the old house and there are day that I miss it. Now we just walk up to the ocean and sit on the beach. That’s how I feel about a boat. Been there and done that. Now days the best type of boat is a friend with a boat.
wingless wrote:
On 10/6/2025 at 12:52 AM, wingless said:My new-to-me house has a 10,000 gallon pool that I maintain, repair and upgrade, but it is only used when company arrives. I selected / purchased the house for the garage space and personally would have LOVED to NOT have a pool, but here we are…
regopit wrote:
24 minutes ago, regopit said:We had a pool at the old house and there are day that I miss it. Now we just walk up to the ocean and sit on the beach. That’s how I feel about a boat. Been there and done that. Now days the best type of boat is a friend with a boat.
Would have loved no pool, but this one has massive garage space, which is what I wanted / needed. I’ve NEVER lived w/o car(s) in the driveway, until now.
At least w/o a boat you can beg and plead to the boat owners to help when it comes time to don a space suit and restore the bottom. That’s an essential part of boating…
wingless wrote:
On 10/7/2025 at 8:21 PM, wingless said:Frequently the water gets a lot too high after just a typical seasonal daily rainstorm.
The excess water is dumped near the pool pump, going down the driveway, then onto the street. At least this step happens quickly. Of course dumping this much water screws up the chemistry.
Excess Water Rapidly Dumped Out From Missing Salt Cell
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My pool was finally getting close to having all the parameters getting within range, then we had an extended daily deluge of torrential Florida downpours, forcing me to dump thousands of gallons of water, over and over again. Of course this diluted the chemistry, throwing everything waaay out of whack.
So I took the plunge and purchased the LaMotte WaterLink Spin Touch Centrifugal Fluidics Photometer instrument. I immediately discovered my out-of-spec water status and started bringing it into range on the dozen parameters, by adding the appropriate chemicals. FINALLY attained my FIRST perfect score (attached image)! This is an excellent instrument to precisely / immediately quantify the dozen mysterious and important pool chemical chemistry parameters.
Like every other pool owner, I’ve tried / used test strips w/ extreme frustration. My process was me first attempting to bring the water into test strip compliance at home, then bring a water sample to the pool store (also using a LaMotte Spin Touch Lab) for them to measure and report all the problems I would never discover until they tested the water.
The instrument uses six sets of optical interference filters to create six precise light wavelengths (colors) to permit measurement of the colors that appear on the reagent disk after the instrument spins the water sample in the disk. I’ve always found that the dip test strips required guessing on the results, partly because of the slight color differences on the printed result table and partly because of the color non-uniformity on the dip strip. IMO it is sooo great to have a precise / repeatable digital result for each test.
It is great that the instrument includes a sealed calibration disk. My speculation is that the disk has precise and quantified colors to permit calibration verification. I haven’t opened the sealed pouch yet.
The test creates a results report showing what’s in range and out of range. The report shows suggested treatment for out of range results. The instrument permits tweaking the ranges, if required. I slightly adjusted my ranges to match that of my local pool store, that I’ve been using for decades. The software permits selection of different pool chemistry profiles, to be appropriate for different applications.
There are four different single usage disks and three different multiple usage disks (3 uses per each multiple usage disk) available. I’m using the 4329-H (203 Series) single usage disk on my salt in-ground pool.
FIRST Perfect Test Report
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Six Interference Filter Testing Colors – Image Composed from 405nm Data
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Filling Reagent Disk
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Reagent Disk Filled
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Used Reagent Disk / Spun to Obtain Colors for Measurement
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Complete LaMotte WaterLink Spin Touch Centrifugal Fluidics Photometer
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1705 Calibration Meter Check Disk
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wingless wrote:
9 hours ago, wingless said:My pool was finally getting close to having all the parameters getting within range, then we had an extended daily deluge of torrential Florida downpours, forcing me to dump thousands of gallons of water, over and over again. Of course this diluted the chemistry, throwing everything waaay out of whack.
So I took the plunge and purchased the LaMotte WaterLink Spin Touch Centrifugal Fluidics Photometer instrument. I immediately discovered my out-of-spec water status and started bringing it into range on the dozen parameters, by adding the appropriate chemicals. FINALLY attained my FIRST perfect score (attached image)! This is an excellent instrument to precisely / immediately quantify the dozen mysterious and important pool chemical chemistry parameters.
The test creates a results report showing what’s in range and out of range. The report shows suggested treatment for out of range results. The instrument permits tweaking the ranges, if required. I slightly adjusted my ranges to match that of my local pool store, that I’ve been using for decades. The software permits selection of different pool chemistry profiles, to be appropriate for different applications.
This shows my current arsenal of pool chemical inventory, used to bring the measured levels to within the acceptable range.
The 40 lbs bag of pool salt is purchased when required as the level decreases slowly when diluted by massive rainwater dumping and because it goes funny when stored, turning into a block instead of large granules.
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The aluminum frame screen enclosure is an important part on my home.
The visible screw head degradation was a concern to me. I was very concerned that they would break, instead of unscrewing during replacement, causing a huge problem. They were waaay past their service life. I contracted a local company that specializes in replacing screws and screens to rework my enclosure, removing and replacing those parts w/ new. My screens also had random holes, but those were MUCH less of a concern for me.
Prior to their arrival I completed several projects. One long edge of the enclosure frame is attached to the house’s truss roof (instead of the frame posts going down to the ground) to have a wide open expanse, using a high-strength anodized Super Gutter between the roof and the enclosure, holding up that side of the enclosure. The Super Gutter is box shaped, not K shaped, designed to support the mechanical load of the screen enclosure.
The Super Gutter is available in fixed lengths and in my installation required two pieces w/ a coupler between those sections. Throughout my home ownership that coupler joint always leaked, making a mess on the pool patio. Prior to the screen / screw service I cut the screen, permitting repair using a step ladder from the ground, instead of hanging over the roof edge, working from above. I started w/ using my battery leaf blower from the roof to clean and dry the gutter.
Because the Super Gutter is a structural part, it is installed horizontal, not slightly sloping to the downspouts, so there is always some water. I wanted / needed it clean and dry to repair. After it was clean and dry I removed all the prior “repairs” goop using my heat gun and a paint scraper, from the interior and exterior of the gutter. This exposed the problem. The coupler shown in current online searches is a wide aluminum part. My coupler is instead a narrow plastic part, now having holes and breaks. I used EPDM tape and gutter sealant to FINALLY attain zero leaking at this joint.
The other advance project was to clean the exterior pavers using my pressure washer. The perimeter pavers are 12″ square, 1″ thick, alternating white and red color. Prior years of neglect had those pavers dirt color. I pressure washed those clean, then again pressure washed the screened enclosure and the interior pool patio. I didn’t want to kick up ALL THAT DIRT onto my brand new screens. Now everything was clean and ready for the service.
It is sooo nice having professionals doing the work! They removed all the old screens, also requiring temporary removal of some extrusion covers to fully expose the spline and groove.
There were some fasteners that are impossible to replace w/o disassembling the structure, removal would have permanently detached an internal plate and they knew to NOT remove those screws. They were able to remove and replace almost all the screws. Some screws couldn’t be removed and a new screw was installed nearby.
The process for working above my ~18′ wide pool was fascinating to me. They used a No Longer Available 20′ long Werner Task-Master Aluminum Plank to span the expanse, permitting holding one end of a step ladder. The second step ladder was placed on the pool patio. An elevated extension plank was run between those two ladders. This setup permitted skilled workers to safely access the entire enclosure structure, even above the water.
The screens were installed, an entire wall or roof section at a time, rolling out the wide screen from one edge to the other, even though that expanse consisted of multiple individual screens. They started w/ retaining part of an edge w/ the spline, then cutting between sections, before progressing w/ additional spline installation.
The company installed charcoal Phifer 18×14 Pool & Patio fiberglass screens.
The finished result looks great to me.
Pressure Washing Perimeter Pavers
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Existing Old Screws Installed
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New Replacement Screws Installed
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Old Removed Screws
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Removing Old Screens
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Installing New Screens
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Final Result – New Screens and Screws.
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Insane to what goes into owning a pool. After seeing all of this, these are thing I would never consider. However what you have done, is awesome and hope you get some enjoyment out of it.
The house / pool came w/ a cover, folded up in the garage. After I manually deployed it one time I decided muscling this large sheet of thick plastic “bubble wrap” was not something I wanted to repeat, so I purchased a cover reel, so I could just wind up the cover and store it at the edge.
What I discovered it that the massively intense southern Florida sunshine caused my cover to disintegrate in short order, so I discarded that old cover.
Now that the weather is cooling a new replacement 18’x36′ cover was ordered / received. My pool / house has a 12 panel solar system for heating / cooling the pool water. The usage of just the cover w/ the solar system is sufficient to maintain comfortable water temperatures 80°F to 90°F in the fall and spring. No cover is required throughout the summer to maintain 90°F w/ the solar panels.
Additionally I purchased a Hayward HP31405T 140,000 BTU heat pump to heat or cool the water under more severe ambient temperatures. My plan is to daisy chain the heat pump plumbing w/ the solar panel plumbing to use as much “free” roof panel heating or cooling as possible, then use the heat pump to attain the desired setpoint temperature. I haven’t wired or plumbed in the heat pump yet, except in my mind. It is secured onto a hurricane pad at the correct location near the house and existing pump.
There were issues discovered w/ the prior cover / reel that I wanted to mitigate, as much as possible.
One was that the clips would not remain latched. To address that I drilled a small pilot hole through the center of the spike. I also helped the spike properly pierce and then engage the plastic sheet. Finally, once the latch was closed it was secured shut w/ a small stainless screw and washer. This latch is not opening now, until I remove the screw.
The other issue was that both ends on the prior cover were cut w/ rounded corners to match the pool. That forced the reel strap lengths to all be different. Those different lengths added to the difficulty when winding the cover onto the reel. My solution was to retain the existing cover square corners, w/ the cover sheet overlapping the patio on the corners.
Now the cover winds up onto the reel w/ MUCH less effort.
My plan is to store this new cover indoors during the warmer months to extend the service life.
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I’ve found that for “quick” pool usage, once I wind up the cover, if I position the cover reel handle against the screen frame and the cover reel wheel against the door hinge jamb, then people and the grand dogs can walk around the pool and also use the door.
When positioned like this, then I don’t need to worry as much about the handle poking through my new screens because it’s pushed against the frame.
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Very cool set up, looks awesome. Would be nice if you can daisy chain them together with the header and solar.
Eric – TIA wrote:
32 minutes ago, Eric – TIA said:Very cool set up, looks awesome. Would be nice if you can daisy chain them together with the header and solar.
Thanks much.
That’s the plan, one loop for both heat pump and solar. My plan is to make the two thermostat setpoints 1°F apart, so the heat pump is “happy” before the solar. This way I can squeeze the most free heating or cooling from the roof panels, using the heat pump electricity to augment the free.
The heat pump manual instructs to NOT run solar water into the heat pump, because it might be too hot, exceeding the specified maximum input temperature. (They show a parallel path w/ water valves, but that layout doesn’t work for me.) Exceeding the maximum temperature might occur from turning on the water flow at 1PM on a sunny southern Florida summer afternoon. The water flow will instead be plumbed to be pool to pump to heat pump to solar, back to pool. This way I cannot / will not ever exceed the maximum input water temperature on the heat pump.
Sweet, if you get it hooked up, lets see. Sounds like a great plan.