Welcome to the startup phase. Congratulations on your new pool. It's filled with water and now we need to get that water circulating. Here's what you need to know. When your pool is filled with water to the middle of its tile line, you should make sure that your startup tech is scheduled to come out as soon as possible to get things going. They're gonna start up your system, check your equipment, and begin the chemical balancing process. This is what we call the curing period and it is critical for the long term strength and beauty of your pool surface. Brush the entire surface of your pool daily. This removes plaster dust and ensures a smooth finish. Never use a stainless steel brush. Always use a nylon brush when brushing your new pool. There's two really important things you don't wanna do in these first thirty days. One is run your heater. I know that new spa looks enticing. Just wait thirty days. You've waited this long. You can do it. Don't run that heater. The other thing is the salt. If you have a salt system, do not add salt within those first thirty days. Remember, your surface is still soft, so you wanna also avoid any of those robot automatic cleaners at least for these first thirty days to ensure that they don't accidentally leave any divots in your soft new plaster. It is critically important to also ensure that your water level never drops below the middle of that tile line and exposes any plaster during this curing process. Finally, make sure your startup tech can provide you with a water balance report. This is gonna give you a record of how the water chemistry was managed from day one. You can download the checklist and startup guide after this video. But before you do, let's join Mike in the field so you can see startup in action. Alright. Here we are, right at the end of the project. This is our startup procedure video. Exciting that we got to this point. Congratulations. First thing I wanna go over is right before your pool's being plastered, you wanna make sure that the electricians come out and got the panel hooked up, that you have power to your pumps because once the pool fills up with water, which it does immediately after it's been plastered, we want to be able to get that pump started right away to get it circulated and get all the filtering going. So you need to make sure that you have electricity going to your pump. You can have your electrician do a dry start, which is just to confirm that there is power going to the pump. The other thing you probably wanna have is a brush. The type of brush you buy is gonna be up to you, but you wanna have a brush and a pole ready because once that pool is filled with water, you're gonna wanna start brushing it, at least two to three times a day for the first week. So make sure you have a good, brush and a telescopic pole, ready for you, so that once the pole's filled, you're good to go. The first thing I would recommend is to have a startup tech do your startup. If you decide not to and you want to follow our video, that's great. If you need some additional information on it, can always reach out to us. But if you are doing it yourself or you're having a startup tech come out, either way, I'd kinda like to go over the processes with you so you can kinda get an idea what to expect. Alright? So first off, as we talked about power going to the equipment and to your pump, once the pool is filled up with water, then you're gonna wanna start your pump. Now your pump at this point has had almost no water in it all except for during the pressurization process. So what you're gonna do is remove the pump lid for the very first time. You'll remove the pump lid and on the lid it has little arrows that say closed and open, so obviously you would open it. You'll probably need to fill it up with some water. So one of our pro tips was having a hose bib installed out at your pool equipment. This is a perfect time to be able to use that. You're gonna take that lid off and fill the basket up with some water and just regular tap water's fine. Fill it all the way up and it'll take a minute to fill all the way up, and then put the lid back on, and then you'll wanna get the power to it and start it up right away. So you go over to your breaker panel, hit the switch, turn on the pump, and get it circulating right away. It'll take it a little bit. It'll do a little bit of what we call cavitation, which means, it sounds like it's kinda starving for water, that's normal. It'll do that for a few minutes, then it'll kinda catch itself, all of a sudden you'll see water flowing through it and then your pump's run up and running. If you get any leaks around there, you may wanna shut the pump off, take it off, inspect the o ring that's in there, see if there's any debris, make sure it's nice and clean, reinstall it. There is a rubber gasket in there, so you wanna make sure it's set in correctly. And then put the lid back on, start it up again, you shouldn't have any leaks at that point. So now that you got your pump up and running, you're gonna be able to get everything filtered, get the help, get the plaster dust out. You're gonna wanna be using your brush that I just showed you, like I said, two to three times a day for probably the first at least three to five days. You can always refer back to our startup procedures that we have, in your member's area. We have a whole list for you to go over there, so you can always refer back to that if you forget something I go over now. So once we got that up and running, you'll notice that the filter, the little pressure gauge, will start to go up as the pump's on. That lets you know that the water is circulating and such. You'll notice that it's gonna fluctuate up and down as the pump is pulling water, that's normal. Once the pump is primed and running, you'll see that that's gonna have a pretty normal range in it. So every job's different. It may be ten pounds, it may be twenty pounds that it's gonna run at normally, but it'll stay pretty consistent once the pump is up and running. At this point, your lights should have already been hooked up. If they haven't been, you want to have your startup tech take care of that. We talked about the j boxes before. That's where your wiring comes up from the lights and hooks up to a conduit that goes over to the panel so that that way you have power going to these. We talked about that before that the power is supplied from the transformer because it's all low voltage. So if the lights haven't been hooked up yet, now is the time to go ahead and get those hooked up. You don't want to turn the lights on until the pool is filled with water because they are water cooled. So don't be turning them on ahead of time, but if they haven't been hooked up, now's the time to do it. We talked about when the pump's running, the filter's running, you're gonna see the gauge right here fluctuate a little bit and then you'll find it's got a pretty normal pressure. After about the first two weeks, you're gonna wanna take apart the filter and clean it. All the plaster dust that's in in construction debris that gets in there needs to be cleaned out sooner than later. So within the first week or two, you should take apart your filter, have it all cleaned up, and then put it all back together. We'll go over that process in a little bit, but for now, I just wanted to bring that up to you so you keep that in mind that you will need to keep that filter clean after about the first, like I say, week to two weeks. The next thing they're gonna do is if you have a heater, they're gonna need to get the heater prepped for being able to start up and run. Now, you cannot use your heater for the first twenty eight days. You want that plaster to completely cure before you use the heater at all. But you can do a test run on it to make sure everything works properly. So the way they're gonna do that is you should have a gas shut off valve here, which I labeled just so that it'd be easy to see. Obviously, that valve will need to be turned on, plus you're probably gonna have another valve over at your main gas line coming out from the house. Make sure that is also turned on. And then inside the heater, there's a switch comes from the factory in the off position. So have your startup tech or yourself. If you're not sure exactly where it's located, it's in your manual. Just turn that inside switch over to on to make sure that there's gas flow going to it. Turn all your gas valves on. They're gonna wanna do what they call bleed the system, and that's where you're gonna let some gas flow out for a little bit first. Again, help get rid of any construction debris that may have gotten in the pipe. Some of the what they call pipe dope, which is the caulking that they use on the on the pipes when they put the threads together may have got in there. So they'll have that come out first, blow it all out really good. Once it's blown out, they'll hook it back up together again, and then you can start your heater. Make sure it's working properly, but then remember not to use it for the first twenty eight days until your plaster has been completely cured out. The heater will only work when it's switched on, obviously, and it will only work if there's water flowing through it. So if the pump's not on, your heater's not gonna be on. So as long as the pump's running and you've passed your cure time, if the pump's running, you can turn your heater on, adjust the thermostat, and you'll be good to go. Okay. Let's talk about the salt cell if you have one on your project. At startup, we've shown you where the salt cell gets located on our previous videos. It'll be a little different on different equipment sets exactly where they happen to place it. It'll always have a check valve that's required on the incoming side so that when the equipment shuts off, don't have any concentration of chlorine backing up into the heater. We talked a little bit about that on the previous videos. But with the salt cell, you don't wanna put any salt into your pool until your cure time has passed. So if it's a pebbled pool that has been acid washed, you're gonna have a little faster cure time than a regular standard pool plaster that's gonna need the full twenty eight days. But either way, make sure your plaster has cured out. Ask your, installer of the pebble or plaster, whichever you decided on, ask them their recommendations before you put salt in your pool. Once you get the salt in your pool, you can follow any of the salt bags, have a list on them, how much salt to use for how big your pool is. Follow that recommendation. In the beginning, you're gonna be putting a lot of salt in, say on the average about ten bags of salt, and the salt is pool salt. It's specific for pools. It's not the kind of salt that you put in a soft water system or something like that. This is a completely separate salt. It's more pure. It's a finer grade, so it dissolves really quick. So check with your installer of the plaster to see when you can when they recommend you install that salt. Once the salt salt is installed, the salt cell will be up and running at that point. Water is gonna be flowing through it as the pump turns on every day. Whether it turns on or off, via the power cord will depend on how you have your system set up. So in the very beginning, you're gonna have the salt cell turned off until we get the salt in the pool after the pool has been cured. Once that salt's in and dissolved, then of course you can switch it on and take and watch and see how the salt cell works where I'll show you in another video how to test that and make sure that everything's working properly. Okay. This is an air blower. Your project may or may not have one. It takes the outside air and pumps it into the jets inside the spa. It adds a lot of bubbles to the spa. Not everybody's too fond of them. They do introduce outside air to the spa. So if your spa is a hundred degrees and it's only sixty degrees out, you're gonna be introducing very cold air into your spa and it may not feel quite so good, but, I have one here so I thought I'd show you what that looks like. It's placed on top of what the air line is. Now if this blower wasn't there, you would just have some slits in here or some holes, for this airline. The airline is what supplies air to your jets. If you remember in our previous videos, the plumbing videos, we talked about the jets and how there's a plumbing line and there's an airline. That airline gets looped up all together and comes up here. That airline will need to be higher than the water level of the spa. So, the water level on this spa is somewhere down about here. So you can see it's about, oh, at least two feet higher than the water level, and that's because if any water were to get in there, we don't want it to get up into the blower. Even if you don't have a blower, don't want it spilling up and out. So you'll see that air line will be one of the highest parts of your equipment sticking up will be the air line. And then if you add a blower to it, it might be a little bit higher. So I just wanted to show you the air blower, talk about the air line, and how that all works for your spa. If your plumber hadn't already painted all your pipes, that's something you may wanna do. Just grab pretty much any paint that, this one happens to bonds to plastic, so it's a good one to use, obviously, with PVC being plastic. Painting your pipes is gonna help prevent UV damage to the pipe. So obviously, this is what your pipes would look like once they're installed. It's better to get some paint on here, get that UV protection on there, helps it last a little bit longer. I highly recommend doing that. So if your plumber didn't do it, maybe your startup tech can do it for you, or of course, being DIY, maybe you can do that part yourself. You'll also wanna label the pipes. We talked about during the plumbing phase how your plumber should label everything so you know what everything is. Your startup tech would know what everything is as far as what lines do what. So once you're done, may wanna go ahead. This one helps to use a label gun that put out some labels for what each individual component is. I wanted to show you this one because if you are in a situation where your pool equipment is lower than your pool is, you may wanna put some special wording on next to the valve that that would have to be closed before they can open up the pump lid because if the equipment's lower than the pool level and you were to just open that pump lid up, it would drain out the pool pretty quickly on you. So if you have something like that, make sure you put that on labels. We know that you know, but let's say somebody else is in the backyard, a maintenance guy, he doesn't quite understand that. He would know, oh gosh, I better shut that valve before I open up that pump lid so all that water doesn't come out. But other than that, it's kinda nice just to have everything labeled. It helps remind you and of course any service person that were to come over, any warranty things that happen, they would be easy and clearly labeled so they know exactly what everything is. Okay. Over here at the skimmer, this is where we used to have that big ugly loop that I told you would not be there forever and would get removed, and it has. That usually is gonna be taken out by your plaster company at the time of plaster. If they haven't taken it out yet, you're gonna need to probably have your startup tech take care of that. They'll just unscrew it, and then in its place, they're gonna put in the skimmer basket which looks like this. That's gonna catch all the debris from the surface area of the pool, and you'll need to check this about once a week, clean it out. In the front of the skimmer is what we call a weir gate. That'll also need to be installed, again, by you or your startup tech, and that weir gate is a little door, you will, that flaps back and forth, allows water and debris to come in when the pump's on. When the pump shuts off, it closes, keeps that debris going through the skimmer basket, and keeps it from going out back into the pool. If your pool has an autofill system, there's different styles out there. An autofill system is basically like a toilet bowl float that goes up and down. As the water level goes down on the pool, the float goes down, kicks on the water, fills the pool till that float comes up and turns off. That'll need to be adjusted by your service tech who's doing the startup, or your plaster company sometimes will do that as well, or of course you can do that yourself. But under this lid, that's where that valve is that'll need to be adjusted once you have your water level set in your pool. You'll need to adjust that to that water level, and then, as though like I say, as the water level drops, that float will kick up, turn on, fill back up till it gets to the middle of the tile line, and that way you don't have to run a hose out here and fill it up. It's all done through the autofill. If your pool has a pool cleaner, a suction pool cleaner, which most do, you don't want to put that pool cleaner in until the plaster is fully cured. Again, just like adding salt, turning on your heater, or putting the pool cleaner in, you wanna make sure that plaster is fully cured before you do any of those. These cleaners have little tracks on them which are soft, but could mar the finish a little bit when the plaster is fresh and new. So you want to make sure that everything's cured up before you install your pool cleaner into the pool itself. Okay. Once the pool's been filled with water, you're gonna want to get some type of test kit for the chemicals in there. I actually suggest taking a sample of your water down to your local pool supply store, especially in the very beginning. They're gonna be able to do a chemical analysis for you for free. Obviously, wanna sell you their chemicals, but that way you know exactly where your water's at, especially in the very beginning. It's very important. You want to make sure that your hardness levels, your calcium, you want to make sure that all those levels are correct, so it properly cures the plaster that way. So in the beginning, I highly recommend doing that, taking a sample down. Like I say, they'll do it for free, and that way you know exactly where you're at. Now they do have test kits available. You can either use this type of test kit that uses liquid that goes you put your pool water in the test kit and you use the little droplets in there to see exactly where you need to be with your acid, with your calcium, with your chlorine. They also have test strips available that you simply just grab out a strip, put it into the water, and then you're going to check the colors compared to the colors on the back and it'll tell you where you're at. These are a lot more simple, they seem to be a little bit more popular with most of our clients, but either way you're going to need to be testing your water. Again, I suggest taking it to a professional, especially in the beginning for that chemical analysis, but it'd be a good idea to have a test kit available so that you can start getting used to doing that yourself. Alright, on the breakers, just so that you're aware, the breakers do have a built in GFI, the GFCI, just like in your bathroom that pops. These could pop as well. So if your lights or your pump stop working at any one time, the first thing to check is to see if that GFI popped and make sure your breakers are all in line. These are very sensitive, because they're exposed out here in the weather, so, they can very easily get tripped with moisture. So if you recognize any kind of problem with your pump or your lights, the first thing you need to check is your GSCI and make sure that it hasn't popped. Alright. If you have a remote control system with your project, which you most likely will, you may have an external antenna like this one is here that communicates back to your router in your house, over to the panel itself. Some units will have a separate antenna like this. Other units, the antenna is gonna be built into the power center itself. So depending on which one you get, you may have an external antenna and you may have one built into your control panel itself. And that is going to help control your remote, so that you can use your phone app to turn things on and off, adjust your temperatures, adjust the lights, turn them on and off, the light shows, all that kind of stuff that's all done with your smartphone, needs to be able to talk to your router. So it's either gonna be through an external antenna like this or an internal one that's already inside the panel. We have the pool suite plugged in right here to the what we call a vac lock. The vac lock has a little lid that'll close when the hose isn't in there so that there's no suction or open port suction area, that could scare somebody if they ever swing by and put their hand up on it. So the little valve closes if the hose isn't in, and if it is, as it comes up, it has a little lip on it that'll actually hold the hose in place. This particular pool has this leaf canister because as you can probably see, there's some leaves in the pool. They will come into this leaf canister and stay in here so they don't go all the way back to the pump basket. So you just have to clean this out once a week or so. And then from here, this hose will go all the way to the pool cleaner, which is down here at the other end. The amount of hoses you're gonna use is gonna depend on the size of your pool. You're gonna have to take the cleaner from where the vacuum port is to the furthest point, see how many lengths of hose that is, and that'll determine how many hose lengths you will use. You'll probably have some extras. On this particular ploy, I think there was four extra pieces. But so the hose just connect. Each hose length is, oh, about four feet, and they'll all connect like that. And then at the end of it is the actual pool cleaner that's gonna go around and vacuum the bottom and sides of the pool like so. One thing I will bring up is if you see that it's not running, check the bottom port. There may be anything from a marble to an acorn to a snail that gets stuck in there and won't let it operate, so you'll just have to clean that out. Throw it back in the pool and let it do its thing. If you have a hose bib, that's coming up out of the ground like this and you happen to live in an area that gets freeze or frost, you may wanna go ahead and do some type of insulation around that. I have also an insulation bag here that when the hose is disconnected, slides over it and you can pull it tight. In that way, the frost doesn't affect your hose bib and you don't have to worry about any cracked piping. Startup pro tip. If you don't already have one of these tubes that replaces the salt system, you may want to get one especially during the winter months. What happens with your salt cell is during the winter months, it's not gonna be producing. If the salt cell picks up that, the temperature of the pool has dropped down, it'll automatically shut itself off, so there's no reason for the cell to be there. Plus, if you live in an area that freezes, the freezing temperatures could actually ruin the cells inside of the salt system. So it's a good idea to have one of these. You simply undo the unions here, slip this in place, and then after winter, take it out, put your cell back in. That way, you don't have to worry about any problems happening with your salt cell, during the winter months if it should freeze or get a lot of frost.