I live in Florida and have a fairly small pool. The deep end is a little over 5 feet deep. It began as a marcite pool ... built in
1992. The finish didn't last long. I was told that old marcite pools had asbestoes mixed in and that's why the finish lasted so long. Anyway, in 2002 we had the pool done over using a silicone substance called "diamond brite". It is still looking pretty good and was guaranteed for 10 years....much longer than marcite. I paid about $2500 for the refinishing job.
When we lived in NY we were lucky to get twelve weeks use out of the pool in a season. I uncovered it in mid May and covered it back up in late September, but it was only usable from Memorial Day to *maybe* mid-September and a couple or four of those weeks it wasn't usable. I figured ten weeks was average.
Of course that was a vinyl lined pool. I don't own a pool here in Alabama, but the neighbors have a vinyl-lined pool. The season is much longer and I notice they don't cover it at all, so run the filter year-round. Must get expensive.
Close? What does that mean? Here I just turn the pump off when the pool drops into the low 50s or 40s. I don't have to worry about freezing but if it does freeze I turn the pump back on. A hard freeze is rare but last year it happened several times. Which is really rare here (Central Tx). Last winter was strange.
The only in-ground vinyl pool I've ever seen was a a hotel in Niagara Falls.
5 months! I'm in New York about 6 hours east of you and common practice here is Memorial Day [May 30ish] to Labor Day [Sept 6ish] - essentially just June, July & August.
I can't imagine those lakes heating thing up-- are you just that much tougher than us?
Jim [who does enjoy a daily soak in the backyard hot tub year-round]
We generally use the pool from the end of May to the end of October, about five months. I don't really "close" the pool, but when it gets cold there is little need for chemicals. The big thing is getting the leaves out so the phosphates don't build up.
Any ceramic tile will stand up to chlorine, and just about anything else you can throw at it. It's "ceramic". Grout is cement. There are no more durable materials for pool service.
The reason they use 1" (etc.) tile for pools is to form to the inevitable slight irregularities in the substrate.
Probably. If algae is a problem, "Phosfree" is the solution.
I've tiled a few high school pools. Tile is a great choice for longevity and ease of maintenance, not to mention beauty. That's why so many "commercial use" pools are tiled.
The material is expensive, and the labor is intensive, but in the long run it's worth it, for them. Probably not worth it to you. -----
Actually Orenda PR-10,000 is a much better solution, literally. Does the same thing, but much more concentrated and far less expensive. I had really high levels of phosphorus last year. It would have taken about $300 worth of Phosfree versus $60 worth of PR10,000. Which is why Leslie's doesn't sell it! "
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". Very hard to find.
1 quart of PR10,000 per 10,000 gallons removes 10,000 ppb of phosphates; it would take about 16 quarts of Phosfree to do the same.
And of course a high phosphorus level is only one of several common causes of algae. Too high a level of cyanuric acid from using stabilized chlorine tablets causes chlorine lock and then even very high levels of chlorine won't stop algae.
Liquid 12.5% chlorine, liquid muriatic acid, and a highly concentrated phosphorus remover are the most cost-effective ways to not have algae.
I'm not really from here so I don't speak TX. That drawl almost nauseates me. Fortunately, not everyone here is hillbilly but there are quite a few. Folksy good old boys. Ughhhhh.
I'm an hour west of Toronto in a town called Georgetown but I live in a weird geographic zone because of the great lakes. We get a lot of hot summer weather trapped here because of the shape of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, that's why a tornado every year I guess. There's never much spring or fall. I have peach trees in my backyard for example. Yes the winters are cold but we get 80 degree F weather in late April early May. Mind you we get mid 50's in mid June at times too, like last week.
Many people heat their pools here. I use one of those bubble solar blankets and I heat my pool to 76 or 78 degrees with it but some of my neighbours have natural gas heaters and heat to mid 80s.
My pool was opened April 23 and first swims were second week of may. We'll close it end of September before all the leaves fall into it. Most of my neighbours open their pools 2nd week of may.
This is my first house with a pool, that's why all the questions I'm asking :)
Close means you drain a portion of your pool and throw a big tarp over it and watch the snow and ice accumulate over the next 5 months. The Tarps are help down by water bags that act as weights. Drain every drop out of your filter, blow out every drop of water from your hoses, and finally pack all the pool tools away in the garage for 7 months.
Takes about five years to learn the intricacies of taking care of it. About every two years you realize that everything you know is wrong.
I.e. you finally realize that using stabilized chlorine tablets in a feeder is a really bad idea when the place that's been selling you those tablets admits that they cause a lot of problems.
And then there's 'open'. In a perfect world, 'open' is a one day, $100 worth of chemicals event.
In the real world it is a little trickier. There, 'open' is when you find out that you missed a 1/2 cup of water and it cracked the PVC- setting you back 1 day and a few bucks. It is also when you discover that the pump has set up from sitting 7 months. Finally you break it free, but it makes this god-awful screech that the neighbors [1/4 mile away] can hear. Now you're set back another few days and a couple hundred dollars.
You also find where a rodent chewed a hole in a corner of the leaf tarp so he could chuck a bushel of nuts into your pool. And while pulling off the cover you dump 20 gallons of green slime, pollywogs and leaves into the pool. You can get most of that out with a hard day of leaf skimming. [the 'professional' leaf rake was expensive- but worth every penny today.]
This is all done on a weekend where the weather is unseasonably warm- you sweat your butt off to get it all done. Then, as soon as the water turns clear enough to venture into, the weather turns again. It will be rainy and cold for at least 2 weeks after the pool is ready to use. Hopefully, when it warms up again it hasn't turned green from all that rain.
You forgot one thing: the renting of the highest HP gas pump, and all that fire hose, to drain all the melted snow and ice water, mixed with dead mice and leaves from 17 maple trees from the top of the tarp, so that you can remove the tarp. Then after all that you discover that your tarp tore and you need to get a new one for October.
If you don't take the tarp off soon enuf, your backyard will be infested with flies and mosquitoes.
That would suck. You really have to want that pool. Some winters here it never drops to freezing. I had to really keep an eye on it last winter. I just bought a new heater and I'm afraid, if it gets cold again, I may need to do something similar to what you have to do. Those heaters are expensive.
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