Sorry to hear about your plaster. It sounds like it may have been etched a bit and there's no way to get it back. There are ways to sand it down and make it bit smoother which you could talk to your PB about. The other possibility is calcium scale which can be dissolved over time. Otherwise, your plaster is old enough now that it won't be affected by using a specialized start-up water chemistry procedure now. Just adopt normal TFPC ranges when you get your kit. Pool School - Recommended Levels Keep your pH low for a while before swimming season and see if any of the prickly bits soften up and come off. If you can get a hold of a few pieces, dribble some acid on them and see if they fizz. If they fizz then it's calcium scale as well or on it's own (hopefully). In that case, I would get the CSI down to about -0.6 to hasten dissolving scale, if that's what it turns out to be. It's hard and whiteish, and if you press hard with a stiff fingernail, you might be able to pluck it off. I would also do a .

Well hello there! You are going to love having a pool as the kids will sleep REAL good after they have fun swimming in the pool! I am going to hit the easy ones for now then throw a BUNCH of info at your to work through. -CYA-you have 0 in the pool right now. It has to be added. You can buy it a Walmart or Lowes It will be labeled as stabilizer or balancer. Look for the active ingredient of cyanuric acid. You will put it in the sock and let the kids have fun squeezing the sock to help it dissolve it. FC-you did it right-make sure to use plain, unscented bleach or chlorine (liquid) Walmart is selling it in the pool section and call it pool shock PH-you can buy one of the cheapo kits at Walmart for the PH test. This will really help the water be a lot more comfortable to swim in-eyes and skin That will get you going aka kids swimming until your good test kit gets there!- - - Updated - - - Now for the big stuff : Print these out:Pool School - Basic Pool Care SchedulePool School - Recommended Levels Bookmark these:Pool School - Recommended Pool Chemicalshttp://www.troublefreepool.com/calc.htmlPool School - ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry Make sure to ask any and all questions you might have no matter how small! We have all been where you are at one point. now don't be scared...........we will be here to help! Kim

If this turns out to be calcium scale... needsajet said: CSI down to about -0.6 Click to expand... Easy way to do this is to keep pH on the lower end of the range. You can choose a target pH number very simply by using the CSI result at the bottom of PoolMath. Enter various pH values in the target column, until CSI is around -0.6 (negative 0.6). If you use the PoolMath app, tap the CSI icon on the Overview page, and play with the numbers there.

Thanks Kimkats. So the concentrated bleach I got says that it has 8.25% sodium hypochlorite but then right below that says it yields 7.86% available chlorine. Does that mean I have 7.86% to put in the pool math calculator or does that mean I put 8.25% in there?