A Tale of Swimming Pool Woes!

[strawberrystar]

Hello

I would love to know what it is and therefore be able to prevent it in future. However on seeing the stain, a state of panic set in and the first thought was how can I get this off!?

I would be interested to hear from anyone else who is suffering with the same kind of staining and if they have been able to remove it with anything. I went to Boots but could only see one bottle of suncream containing zinc and that was a factor 50+ for babies. I am confused as to all the people with pools and british guests who don't have the staining. What's the difference? My pool guy said they must have just had less children using the pool.....Should I ban children from using the pool?????Hmmmmm!

[alan h]

If you do the dreaded google, I think you'll find that;-
a. most people think it is suncream that does it
b. the stain can lead to the liner cracking and failing in sunlight
c. many places insist on people showering to remove sun cream before bathing in their pools
d. nobody seems to know how to remove it
e. because of 'b' above - many recommend covering it with the plastic strips to keep the sunlight off of the 'stain' to minimise the risk of liner degradation once it is stained

[Debby]

Just a thought, but being married to a German, it is normal and expected for Germans to take a shower before they go into a pool, thus washing off the sun tan cream. My advice would be to have an outside shower next to pool and put up a sign to remind British guests to shower before jumping in! Italian agriturismos and German public pools also require use of swimming caps but maybe that's a step too far!

[annabe]

Our pool is 4 years old and in the last two years we have discovered this strange 2inch wide bgreen/yellow band above the waterline. It is very unattractive.
The company who built the pool says that of the 450 pools they have built and maintain, this has happened to only 15 and all are owned by Brits!

At the beginning of this summer, in an attempt to get rid of it, we raised the level of the water to cover the stripe and added extra chlorine and the mark faded quite a bit - but it came back with a vengeance!

Any suggstions would be very gratefully received.

[Technically Blonde]

we are the same with this year being the first in 3 years that the stain has appeared. We have had more Brit visitors this year ........ chlorine fades it but does not get rid of it. Going to look at the borderline mentioned earlier in this thread

[annabe]

Can someone tell me where to get the 'borderline' from?
And I wonder how successful it is?
I imagine it is better to get a darker colour so the dreaded green stain, is less visible.

[Charles Phillips]

This is the only site I have found in Europe - not a retail site, but maybe your supplier could find it, or search further on DEL. (They do colours which would work with your sand coloured pool, but all of these 'waterline strips' are patterned, so I imagine they rely on this to camoflauge the staining.) It might also be worth googling 'waterline' rather than borderline.

LINERS - DEL - FABRICANT DE LINER POUR PISCINE

[juliancoll]

Here are a couple of links.

borderlines - adhesive borders for pools: create a new look

BorderLines Adhesive tile pool borders

[Charles Phillips]

Yes, julie, but those are US sites, and they only do borderlines in 'blue', which would be okay, but hardly wonderful, on a sand liner coloured pool. The world's leaders in swimming pool liner stuff are the French, (who also have the advantage of being EU and avoiding import duties.....)

There are factories in France which have the capability of printing anything you want onto a bit of swimming pool vinyl. Even (at a cost) your own artwork!

[juliancoll]

That's OK Charlie boy - you pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.