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Yes: Pools are worth it....


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14 hours ago, TexEx15 said:

Unfortunately I think I’m in the same boat. Would you mind if I reached out via PM to pick your brain?

Absolutely. I’ve heard there are up to 1,000 pools in central Texas with this issue. Feel free to PM me and anyone for that matter with ASR questions. If your pool was constructed from 2018-2021 with shotcrete and you have cracking…it’s a possibility.

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51 minutes ago, Tailgate said:

Thanks. Having a pool ripped out of your backyard with jackhammers for months was not a fun experience…windows shattering on other side of house from vibrations. Was unreal watching. But happy with outcome.

Can I ask where you are? It's obviously central Texas, but you look out of the city a little bit. The pool is gorgeous, but I'm digging the house and the legroom you have.

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1 hour ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Can I ask where you are? It's obviously central Texas, but you look out of the city a little bit. The pool is gorgeous, but I'm digging the house and the legroom you have.

South Austin…near 1826. Thank you. I’m on one acre.

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3 hours ago, Tailgate said:

Absolutely. I’ve heard there are up to 1,000 pools in central Texas with this issue. Feel free to PM me and anyone for that matter with ASR questions. If your pool was constructed from 2018-2021 with shotcrete and you have cracking…it’s a possibility.

Yeah I may want to talk to your lawyer 

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ours was completed nov 2020 and started developing cracks around late august 2023. the builder mentioned possibility of asr. his insurance company is involved now but this shit is slow going. really not looking forward to possibility of having this thing ripped out and rebuilt. the first time was shitty enough. 

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Got this thing installed just in time for the first big pollen dump.  Hoping it turns out to be $400 well spent.   There’s pros and cons but I’m thinking that sweeping this off when it’s wet or blowing it off when it’s dry is going to be better than emptying my skimmers 5 times a day and stressing about it every week when I’m out of town for a couple days. 
 

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3582EAB2-6253-4969-9FB0-095DBA043BDF.thumb.jpeg.3824082496f1e699a45c9bd812497971.jpeg

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On 3/20/2024 at 9:25 PM, Dbeasy said:

On the ASR thing, I live far up in Northwest Austin/Leander and people all over are dealing with this. It sounds badddd. 

My friend in NW Austin, off Oak Knoll, had his pool built in late 2020/2021.  It's had cracking between the spa spillover and main pool since it was installed. Cody kept on sending crews out to just rebuild that bit.  Now he has cracks all the way across the main pool.  Insurance and attorneys are involved.  This really sucks for all of you.

 

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On 3/25/2024 at 10:32 AM, Your Mom said:

Got this thing installed just in time for the first big pollen dump.  Hoping it turns out to be $400 well spent.   There’s pros and cons but I’m thinking that sweeping this off when it’s wet or blowing it off when it’s dry is going to be better than emptying my skimmers 5 times a day and stressing about it every week when I’m out of town for a couple days. 
 

599048E4-8DD1-4203-9F0A-7B7F106CBFAA.thumb.jpeg.bec493683ca3f121220edf2d54e07bd4.jpeg

3582EAB2-6253-4969-9FB0-095DBA043BDF.thumb.jpeg.3824082496f1e699a45c9bd812497971.jpeg

That seems to be about 10 mins of pollen drop for mine.  It’s a rough 3 weeks or so. Any way to attach that thing without the screws in the decking? 

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9 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

That seems to be about 10 mins of pollen drop for mine.  It’s a rough 3 weeks or so. Any way to attach that thing without the screws in the decking? 

As I was reading up on it there were lots of reviews from people who tried using stakes in the grass unsuccessfully.  Each strap is attached to a spring that’s under fairly high tension.   I wasn’t real excited about the screws either but the last two springs broke me with the pollen. I am away from home two nights a week, occasionally three and leaving it alone for that length of time is too much. Same with the oak leaves when they fall. A few weeks ago I came home from a trip and the skimmer baskets were so full that it impeded the flow of water completely. It worries me for the pump. 

The screws are in a brass anchor. The anchor is flush and when you remove the net for swim season you can turn the screws down to be flush as well.  Not sure how or if that would work in a nicer deck with travertine or some other kind of tile. 

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1 minute ago, Your Mom said:

As I was reading up on it there were lots of reviews from people who tried using stakes in the grass unsuccessfully.  Each strap is attached to a spring that’s under fairly high tension.   I wasn’t real excited about the screws either but the last two springs broke me with the pollen. I am away from home two nights a week, occasionally three and leaving it alone for that length of time is too much. Same with the oak leaves when they fall. A few weeks ago I came home from a trip and the skimmer baskets were so full that it impeded the flow of water completely. It worries me for the pump. 

The screws are in a brass anchor. The anchor is flush and when you remove the net for swim season you can turn the screws down to be flush as well.  Not sure how or if that would work in a nicer deck with travertine or some other kind of tile. 

Yeah I’m travertine on 3 sides. But think I could sink them just past it, maybe. If you really committed to an anchor, not half assed it.   We’re in same boat. Have to leave often and I just turn the system off when I’m gone or pump would burn up in a day. The baskets are chock full in minutes sometimes.  You have a link to that tarp?

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On 3/25/2024 at 9:32 AM, Your Mom said:

Got this thing installed just in time for the first big pollen dump.  Hoping it turns out to be $400 well spent.   There’s pros and cons but I’m thinking that sweeping this off when it’s wet or blowing it off when it’s dry is going to be better than emptying my skimmers 5 times a day and stressing about it every week when I’m out of town for a couple days. 
 

599048E4-8DD1-4203-9F0A-7B7F106CBFAA.thumb.jpeg.bec493683ca3f121220edf2d54e07bd4.jpeg

3582EAB2-6253-4969-9FB0-095DBA043BDF.thumb.jpeg.3824082496f1e699a45c9bd812497971.jpeg

Do you have dogs? I have 3 dogs averaging 65 lbs that would just run/sit on this thing all day long.

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3 minutes ago, rage-a-holic said:

Do you have dogs? I have 3 dogs averaging 65 lbs that would just run/sit on this thing all day long.

I don’t have dogs. It would support their weight but I’d be worried they tear it. 
 

unrelated to that statement, I also stuck an inner tube float under today to raise the middle. There was one spot right in the middle that sunk enough to touch the water and stayed wet which prevented the leaf blower from being as effiective. I’ll know tomorrow morning if the innertube fixes that. 

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13 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

I don’t have dogs. It would support their weight but I’d be worried they tear it. 
 

unrelated to that statement, I also stuck an inner tube float under today to raise the middle. There was one spot right in the middle that sunk enough to touch the water and stayed wet which prevented the leaf blower from being as effiective. I’ll know tomorrow morning if the innertube fixes that. 

That's what has prevented me from installing one, but fuck, I am so fucking tired of leaves and shit. Almost 10 years of daily or weekly skimming.

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Good article:

 

https://www.aquamagazine.com/service/chemistry/article/15383114/asr-prevention

 

ASR, an acronym that stands for "Alkali Silica Reaction," has received attention recently in seminars and discussion in the pool builder community. The ASR phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "concrete cancer" due to its similarities to that disease in its effects on concrete.

Cases of ASR are unusual, and it's a regional issue. When it strikes, it's a big deal in the local builder community, but in other areas, few people know anything about it.

ASR stems from the accidental use of rare, highly reactive aggregate, and since that agg is inevitably coming from the local quarry, the problem is localized around it. To recap the basics of ASR, it's a chemical reaction that rapidly breaks up concrete from within. Reduced to its simplest terms, it starts with a combination of moisture and bad (reactive) aggregate.

Paolo Benedetti is a Watershape University instructor, a legendary builder in his own right and an authority on best practices in the pool industry. He gave a seminar on ASR this spring at the Southwest Pool & Spa Show in Houston, in the wake of the recent outbreak of ASR in central Texas. Benedetti described the product of the ASR chemical reaction as "a gel that forms around the agg, and continues to swell, fracturing the concrete, which provides pathways for more moisture, which results in more fracturing."

The overwhelming and vast majority of aggregate quarried in the world is not reactive and will not trigger ASR, but a tiny percentage of it is and will. An outbreak of ASR occurs when some of that reactive agg is excavated from a quarry, and finds its way into a concrete structure, whether that is a bridge abutment, a building foundation or a pool.

With that unlucky, bad agg in the mix (unbeknownst to the builder) and the resultant concrete formed and set, the speed of the reaction and thus, concrete destruction, will depend on the amount of moisture intrusion.

One way to prevent ASR is to avoid the use of reactive agg, but that's hard to do. A builder can have the agg tested for reactivity, but those tests are expensive and somewhat unreliable, with a reported 50% false positive rate. A more practicable preventative is the use of pozzolans, such as fly ash, slag and silica fume in the concrete mix, which reduce the permeability of concrete. By reducing moisture intrusion, you strike a strong blow against ASR.

Pozzolans were more common practice among builders, Benedetti says, but "in the last seven or eight years, due to unavailability, the use of pozzolans, such as fly ash, slag and silica fume, has dropped."

This drop in the use of pozzolans, he suggests, has contributed to the potential for cases of ASR. But another big contributor is water intrusion. And according to Benedetti, there are a number of things a builder can do to give concrete stronger resistance to ASR and other problems that are associated with moisture in concrete. These include standard best practices, such as making sure shotcrete has high compressive values, which makes it more dense and less permeable, and controlling shrinkage cracks through the use of a better steel-to-concrete ratio. Using less water in the cement mix also helps but, of course, comes with tradeoffs.

In existing pools, the best course to control the spread of ASR fracturing is to reduce water intrusion as much as possible, says John McIntyre, a professional engineer from the Austin area who specializes in the pool industry, and who has seen the outbreak in central Texas firsthand: "You can't take the aggregate out of an already cast wall. So the only thing you can control at that point is the water," which means mitigating moisture intrusion from external sources. That means everything from proper waterproofing to drainage.

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  • 3 weeks later...

All right, my friends. Pull up a chair, grab a beer, and let me tell you the tale. The tale of the Great Algae War of 2024.

I shared already the state of the pool from last month. Here it is again:

20240319_110857.thumb.jpg.31b80cd2658b80e4ebb6a2a6ee24e79e.jpg

ca. March 19th.

Now, this is no ordinary mess. To give you some idea, not only was the pool completely full of algae -- we're talking long strands from the surface to the floor, here, but I scooped up a goddamned pinworm off the surface. Yeah, you know those fucking intestinal parasites? Yeah. One of those. It was dead. No idea where it came from.

March 28th. I'm just about to go on vacation. One more glimpse.

20240328_154550.thumb.jpg.f79420e042ce96e23ac0c76bb0eeb7fa.jpg

Ew.

I dumped 10 pounds of shock in there and got the pump going. Also skimmed as much as I could off the surface. Went on vacation, came back home.

April 2nd. Back home. OK, that's an improvement. We're sorta bluish green instead of deep forest green.

20240402_141315.thumb.jpg.ca1fe728d4cad3329a19cd98a5e577a7.jpg

Dumped 10 more pounds of shock in.

Tuesday. OK, now the color is correct, but you can't see deeper than the second step. I've used up about 12 chlorine tabs, too. But now it's clean enough that I can start running the vacuum; there's no huge deposits floating on the surface, and the green is gone.

20240409_165741.thumb.jpg.fea98eeffab3214b59b61cc76002751e.jpg

Pardon the mess. We're having work done on our house and our yard is being used to store shit that was in what used to be our garage.

Yesterday. Here's the deep end of the pool. By this point I've disassembled and cleaned out the filter completely three times. You can see the bottom of the deep end, but it's still murky.

20240411_115529.thumb.jpg.844a84941bc9e49b6a0aa81d06391fc4.jpg

And finally: Today. You can read the labeling on the Poolvergnugen all the way down at the bottom of the pool.

20240412_104949.thumb.jpg.fa9a120ff91e7074103e2559c331e427.jpg

All that's left is -- I'm going to dissassemble the filter one last time, dump in about five pounds of Sodium Carbonate (all that chlorine got my pH down to about 6.5), then put the Solar Blanket over it so it can start warming up. Now the solar blanket ain't clean, so I'll need to keep my eye on chlorine levels more or less daily over the next week. But other than that, we're done here!

Edited by Rimbo
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And here I am bitching about small dots of black algae....good grief man.

You know if a put a bottle of chlorine in there every few days during the off season, you won't have to deal with an underwater jungle.

Edited by freyguy
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14 hours ago, Rimbo said:

All right, my friends. Pull up a chair, grab a beer, and let me tell you the tale. The tale of the Great Algae War of 2024.

I shared already the state of the pool from last month. Here it is again:

20240319_110857.thumb.jpg.31b80cd2658b80e4ebb6a2a6ee24e79e.jpg

ca. March 19th.

Now, this is no ordinary mess. To give you some idea, not only was the pool completely full of algae -- we're talking long strands from the surface to the floor, here, but I scooped up a goddamned pinworm off the surface. Yeah, you know those fucking intestinal parasites? Yeah. One of those. It was dead. No idea where it came from.

March 28th. I'm just about to go on vacation. One more glimpse.

20240328_154550.thumb.jpg.f79420e042ce96e23ac0c76bb0eeb7fa.jpg

Ew.

I dumped 10 pounds of shock in there and got the pump going. Also skimmed as much as I could off the surface. Went on vacation, came back home.

April 2nd. Back home. OK, that's an improvement. We're sorta bluish green instead of deep forest green.

20240402_141315.thumb.jpg.ca1fe728d4cad3329a19cd98a5e577a7.jpg

Dumped 10 more pounds of shock in.

Tuesday. OK, now the color is correct, but you can't see deeper than the second step. I've used up about 12 chlorine tabs, too. But now it's clean enough that I can start running the vacuum; there's no huge deposits floating on the surface, and the green is gone.

20240409_165741.thumb.jpg.fea98eeffab3214b59b61cc76002751e.jpg

Pardon the mess. We're having work done on our house and our yard is being used to store shit that was in what used to be our garage.

Yesterday. Here's the deep end of the pool. By this point I've disassembled and cleaned out the filter completely three times. You can see the bottom of the deep end, but it's still murky.

20240411_115529.thumb.jpg.844a84941bc9e49b6a0aa81d06391fc4.jpg

And finally: Today. You can read the labeling on the Poolvergnugen all the way down at the bottom of the pool.

20240412_104949.thumb.jpg.fa9a120ff91e7074103e2559c331e427.jpg

All that's left is -- I'm going to dissassemble the filter one last time, dump in about five pounds of Sodium Carbonate (all that chlorine got my pH down to about 6.5), then put the Solar Blanket over it so it can start warming up. Now the solar blanket ain't clean, so I'll need to keep my eye on chlorine levels more or less daily over the next week. But other than that, we're done here!

Happy Survivor GIF

Great work, but it would be a few years before I would be able to swim in the pool.

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22 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

Happy Survivor GIF

Great work, but it would be a few years before I would be able to swim in the pool.

My wife pretty much feels this way. Although her timeline is more like "never."

Me, I'm fine with it. I know how the filter works. The chlorine levels have been high enough over the past week to kill anything; even beyond that, DE filters everything down to about 3-5 µm. So a virus might survive, but e.g. amoebae are gone.

Just dumped in 10 lbs of Na2CO3 to get the pH back up closer to 7 after all the chlorine tabs that've been in there. Only thing wrong with the water now... is it's just too damn cold. Like 68 degrees.

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16 hours ago, Rimbo said:

My wife pretty much feels this way. Although her timeline is more like "never."

Me, I'm fine with it. I know how the filter works. The chlorine levels have been high enough over the past week to kill anything; even beyond that, DE filters everything down to about 3-5 µm. So a virus might survive, but e.g. amoebae are gone.

Just dumped in 10 lbs of Na2CO3 to get the pH back up closer to 7 after all the chlorine tabs that've been in there. Only thing wrong with the water now... is it's just too damn cold. Like 68 degrees.

I thought you were in Southern California.

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1 hour ago, Dbeasy said:

So is this ASR thing also wrecking patios?

Short answer is yes it can. It's not as likely to show up early though if patio is sealed properly as it's the water that soaks in that causes the cracking to start. From what I've read it's more likely to happen later and homeowner to go, oh my patio settled and now there are some cracks vs my pool is leaking water.

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On 3/27/2024 at 7:01 AM, Bevo said:

Good article:

 

https://www.aquamagazine.com/service/chemistry/article/15383114/asr-prevention

 

ASR, an acronym that stands for "Alkali Silica Reaction," has received attention recently in seminars and discussion in the pool builder community. The ASR phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "concrete cancer" due to its similarities to that disease in its effects on concrete.

Cases of ASR are unusual, and it's a regional issue. When it strikes, it's a big deal in the local builder community, but in other areas, few people know anything about it.

ASR stems from the accidental use of rare, highly reactive aggregate, and since that agg is inevitably coming from the local quarry, the problem is localized around it. To recap the basics of ASR, it's a chemical reaction that rapidly breaks up concrete from within. Reduced to its simplest terms, it starts with a combination of moisture and bad (reactive) aggregate.

Paolo Benedetti is a Watershape University instructor, a legendary builder in his own right and an authority on best practices in the pool industry. He gave a seminar on ASR this spring at the Southwest Pool & Spa Show in Houston, in the wake of the recent outbreak of ASR in central Texas. Benedetti described the product of the ASR chemical reaction as "a gel that forms around the agg, and continues to swell, fracturing the concrete, which provides pathways for more moisture, which results in more fracturing."

The overwhelming and vast majority of aggregate quarried in the world is not reactive and will not trigger ASR, but a tiny percentage of it is and will. An outbreak of ASR occurs when some of that reactive agg is excavated from a quarry, and finds its way into a concrete structure, whether that is a bridge abutment, a building foundation or a pool.

With that unlucky, bad agg in the mix (unbeknownst to the builder) and the resultant concrete formed and set, the speed of the reaction and thus, concrete destruction, will depend on the amount of moisture intrusion.

One way to prevent ASR is to avoid the use of reactive agg, but that's hard to do. A builder can have the agg tested for reactivity, but those tests are expensive and somewhat unreliable, with a reported 50% false positive rate. A more practicable preventative is the use of pozzolans, such as fly ash, slag and silica fume in the concrete mix, which reduce the permeability of concrete. By reducing moisture intrusion, you strike a strong blow against ASR.

Pozzolans were more common practice among builders, Benedetti says, but "in the last seven or eight years, due to unavailability, the use of pozzolans, such as fly ash, slag and silica fume, has dropped."

This drop in the use of pozzolans, he suggests, has contributed to the potential for cases of ASR. But another big contributor is water intrusion. And according to Benedetti, there are a number of things a builder can do to give concrete stronger resistance to ASR and other problems that are associated with moisture in concrete. These include standard best practices, such as making sure shotcrete has high compressive values, which makes it more dense and less permeable, and controlling shrinkage cracks through the use of a better steel-to-concrete ratio. Using less water in the cement mix also helps but, of course, comes with tradeoffs.

In existing pools, the best course to control the spread of ASR fracturing is to reduce water intrusion as much as possible, says John McIntyre, a professional engineer from the Austin area who specializes in the pool industry, and who has seen the outbreak in central Texas firsthand: "You can't take the aggregate out of an already cast wall. So the only thing you can control at that point is the water," which means mitigating moisture intrusion from external sources. That means everything from proper waterproofing to drainage.

ASR often caused from using bad aggregate composed of disorganized silica-chain rocks, like what you'd find in volcanics like obsidian.  Or from microcrystalline quartz like chert or opal, or strained quartz like quartzite.  Not many volcanics in local quarries around Austin so potential bad aggregate could be from a microcrystalline form like chert. 

Anyone figure out the source quarry yet?

The additives (or lack of additives in this case) are also a factor, and based on article above, sounds like that is a big factor.  Fly ash, silica fume, and slag all additives that help mitigate against ASR formation. 

With all the construction occuring in central Texas these days, I wonder if the ASR problem will extend beyond pools due to general lack of availability of additives like article suggests.  Or maybe it's isolated to the pool subcontractor using bad aggregate and/or saving money not adding the additives.

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17 minutes ago, 7KHorn said:

ASR often caused from using bad aggregate composed of disorganized silica-chain rocks, like what you'd find in volcanics like obsidian.  Or from microcrystalline quartz like chert or opal, or strained quartz like quartzite.  Not many volcanics in local quarries around Austin so potential bad aggregate could be from a microcrystalline form like chert. 

Anyone figure out the source quarry yet?

The additives (or lack of additives in this case) are also a factor, and based on article above, sounds like that is a big factor.  Fly ash, silica fume, and slag all additives that help mitigate against ASR formation. 

With all the construction occuring in central Texas these days, I wonder if the ASR problem will extend beyond pools due to general lack of availability of additives like article suggests.  Or maybe it's isolated to the pool subcontractor using bad aggregate and/or saving money not adding the additives.

I did not read that article.  Too much trauma to read any more.  

In a previous article I read it stated that it took extensive/expensive testing to rule out the bad aggregate so the fly ash additive was a sort of preventative measure that was always used because it was less expensive to add the ash than to test every batch.

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