What home improvement work did you do today?

Has anyone laid large square footage of tile?Closing in a house Monday and want to do first floor flooring all large porcelain wood like tile. Wondering if labor savings is worth it. Would be done while house is empty

 

None... just had to report in

 

Congrats!!!

 

Just ordered the SE today. All I need is about 5 ports (one for a WAP, one for wife’s office, one for the living room, one for sons bedroom, one for basement), and the SE and a WAP will be more than sufficient for what I need.

 

Pulled our red lacecap hydrangeas in the bed inside the red box; replaced with a bay laurel so we have endless supply of bay leaves, and a blend of red and orange azaleas, some mouseear hostas, and redistributed some chinese wild gingerto better fill out this area.

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We got a resident pool person, because it comes with that too and I don’t know squat about them.

 

Little nervous. Been renting for 4 years and not ready to push repairs off to someone else. But it’ll be nice to get a place to do our own stuff

 

And that will save $$$ big time. I do a lot of projects around the house because I refuse to pay some of the over inflated prices. Is funny, I can tackle almost every project in the house but not on my truck.

 

https://www.troublefreepool.com/ has all the info you need.

Long story short, buy a good test kit, keep crud out of it, and you won't need much other than bleach and muriatic acid.

 

You beat me to it. Was going to recomend TFP.

Do not use test strips, grab a Taylor K2006 test kit. Use liquid chlorine over tablets (use 1 tablet per week) to keep cynauric acid levels down.
if you want low maintenance skimming, grab a Betta Bot. thing is amazing!

 

Knock this out yesterday for my father-in-law.

 

I got a quote on a full building but have been tempted to get something like that instead, especially to start for our camper. it is getting covered in crap from the oak trees. nicely done!

 

115 year old Stone foundation spot pointed, top cement basement step chipped out and rebuilt, basement walkout wall patched and fortified, mortar patches on a spot or two inside the basement.

Roof done, foundation done since 1/1. Only thing left is my new 10x6 shed next month. Then I take the rest of the year to recover and we look at inside work starting next year.

 

Right now it’s saltwater. Is chlorine better?

 

Saltwater is chlorine, it just uses an electric charge to break the salt into chlorine.

Once you get the generator dialed in it'll maintain the chlorine level way more consistently than manual adding or a feeder.

This kit is everything you'd need, the speed stir makes it a lot easier to test and the DPD test is more accurate than the colorimetric test.
https://tftestkits.net/TF-Pro-Salt-with-SmartStir-p119.html

 

Naw, lots of people prefer salt over chlorine. Salt is way cheaper than chlorine from a weekly maintence standpoint is. There is a little inline box near your pump that converts the salt to chlorine.

 

I think that last bit is what confuses people. Can't tell you how many people I've met thought "salt water pool" meant the pool was salt water vs. freshwater, and thus has no chlorine. Salt is Sodium (Na) + Chlorine (Cl), akak NaCl. The salt system uses electricity to split that NaCl into Cl and Sodium hydroxide (NaOH). You're still chlorinating your pool. You're just using salt to do it instead of straight-up chlorine tabs.

EDIT: Ooops. Fester beat me to it.

 

There's a lot of folks who have pools that don't have even a rudimentary understanding of them.

To be fair my experience is a little different than backyard pools but the principles still apply. I've been managing a 300k gallon rec/competition pool for the last 12 years.

 

This question has been answered, but I will add, never buy chemicals from a pool store, they're way overpriced. Get salt from HD or Lowes, the kind used in water softeners. Pure salt, not treated for rust removal.

To increase alkalinity or raise pH, baking soda from the grocery store. To decrease pH muriatic acid from HD.

Stabilizer (cyanuric acid) get the Clorox brand from Amazon.

$18 Clorox® Pool&Spa™ Swimming Pool Chlorine Stabilizer, Helps Chlorine Last Longer, Saltwater Pool Compatible, 4LB (Pack of 1)

https://www.amazon.com/Clorox-Pool-12004CLX-Chlorine-Stabilizer/dp/B084GPVPMM?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7Rjw9gAQ3dMHwgWZsvfORp7ukwsqwHyahnVUVmUpCaZ1nNhlaN_I7DwhWowzaQvP9oaG4dmEVGLgb1DwvPX24MnaRlNRfAVI5G7azyWi8lY.LWeQInfNzeCEKSnWFTt1wJjvnzp6c76QcJTsLC-lEn8&dib_tag=se&keywords=cyanuric+acid&qid=1713114615&refinements=p_89%3AClorox&rnid=2528832011&s=lawn-garden&sr=1-1
It says to add slowly to the skimmers, but I get cheap knee high nylons from the dollar store and fill to a little larger than a baseball. Set them in the skimmers and the next day they're empty and the CYA is in your pool.

If you have vinyl or fiberglass don't worry about hardness. If you have concrete or tile do worry about it. Soft water will leach the calcium. Also, with salt there is no combined chlorine so you don't need to test for that either.

The Taylor kit comes with an informative booklet that explains water chemistry and also has dosing tables.

 

Tis concrete and tile lol.

 

We had above-ground pools growing up. Pinch-A-Penny was a 2-4x per month stop.

Fast forward to the 1990s when I was about a half dozen houses deep, renting with friends. Friend I had a huge crush on wanted the house with a pool, so she and I, along with one of our close friends, rented one with a poolhouse and in-ground pool, with a slide. I had the good credit and know-how, but I failed to recognize what a nightmare it'd be with the giant oak tree overhanging the pool I was constantly pulling leaves, acorns, limbs, moss, and drowned squirrels out of the pool. Got to see (and finally respect, first-hand) what Dad did for us to have a pool all those years. And always in a P-A-P store every other weekend, with roommates who could barely pay their fair share on chemicals, or bother vacuuming, skimming, etc.

Never again. I'll never own another house with a pool if I can help it, unless it's something small like lap pool or something. But even then, I'd think thrice.

 

Nice! Looks awesome. I'm sure it'll be tons of fun!
(between the bouts of aggravation)

 

When going through option period I paid 2 sep companies on top of the general home inspector. 1 to do all pool equipment eval and the other did full (in scuba) evaluation of walls, pipes, etc. pressure tested all the lines and pipes.

only issue that came up was a few mortar joints allowing water to get behind and the very top of the skimmer basket is cracked but not leaking.

btw in all these years have we not developed a way to deploy skimmers without ripping out concrete? Such a small cheap part involves such a labor intensive process