Swimming Pool

Not quite a water garden but does anyone else have a swimming pool?

We treated ourselves to one about 3 years ago (remember, when we had some hot weather?). This a picture of the 1st summer



It seems to have harder and more time consuming to maintain and I spend as much time wrestling with chlorine levels and pH levels as I do with my beloved real water features. I never seem to have achieved the true shape of the pool and the clarity of the water that I got the first year. It makes me realise that even the 'flat' part of the garden that it is on must slope slightly.:rolleyes:

 

Dont have one myself but look after a couple of large pools for customers, The trick as youve guessed is to maintain the ph and clorination regularly and frequently backwash.

Make sure your clorinre granuls are fresh aswell, they do go stale and arent as effective.

 

We don't have one .
It has to be at least 80 deg before I take my cardi off. :D

 

Gosh, even I don't have one. Well, tell a lie, we bought a blow up thingy that four adults could lounge in and it got a puncture within weeks and the water went green although we covered it up and put drops of chemicals in it so we gave it to the charity shop .... SO we still don't have one ..... :D

 

I tell a lie we do have one.



Or at least my beautiful Grand Children did have one in my garden on Sunday.

 

What do you mean by backwash?
Mine has an external filter pump with cloth filters and a surface skimmer in the pool.

 

Lyn - that's a lovely photo

 

I guese yours is a different setup, The pools I maintain filter using a sand bed filter in addition to the skimmers, the backwash basicly gets rid of the algae and cra* the filter has seperated..

 

I just take the filter out and change it:D

 

My son is a swimming pool/water treatment engineer. Reading this,he recommends these points..
1.On a weekley basis replace 80 cm of water.
2.Clean skimmer basket daily also pump basket and cloth filters.
3.Purchase Pool water clarifier and algaecide. Clarifier will remove particles to clear the water and the algaecide will prevent algae formation from sunlight.
4.Purchase a Chlorine maintainer chemical product,this prevents the sun from breaking down the chlorine levels.
5. Keep pool free of debris at all times.
6. Always cover your pool when not in use.

Hope this helps fmay,and he says if you lived closer he could put it right

 

For information:

This is a sand filter



so called because it has lots of ................sand (smaller ones can have over 100lbs in weight of sand)

The big "lump" on the top is the control valve, in normal operation the sand filter removes the very fine particles from the water and keeps them.

To remove these "kept particles" you change the "big lump" to back wash, which then cleans all the small bits, then you send it to waste.

The smaller "black lump" on the side / base is what is commonly called a swimming pool pump to send water from the pool to the sand filter.

 

Thanks for the replies - it's looking white now instead of green, chlorine is high, pH is low so adjusting slowly. Have bought clarifier and algicide but thought I would leave them out of the equation until I get the other balances right.