Photo 1. Splash marks on the pool before filling.

Photo 2. Stains that appeared 10 days later.

Help! Our brand new gunite pool was plastered (plain white) 11 days ago. Plaster was done on Friday and they started to fill immediately. We never received any instructions from our PB and knew almost nothing about pools bc they said they had someone starting everything up for the first 28 days. I noticed Friday night that the fill was going very slowly and tried to add a second hose, but in the process splashed some water into the shallow end (i’ve since read everything I could learn about pool startups and now know this is a huge no no...)😭 anyway, the next morning I texted our pb because the splash marks were still visible. He said it was no problem and would disappear once the water level got up to that point (whew!) He then told me to go ahead and stick a hose in the shallow end and let it fill from both sides, so I did! I noticed that the water sat/pooled in a couple spots before running down into the deep end, but assumed it was fine because our pb said to do it. It took another almost 10 hours to get up to the shallow level and cover the puddles from the second hose, and at that point the wet marks disappeared. However, yesterday they reappeared and now I’m really worried that our plaster finish is ruined. The people taking care of the startup keep saying it’s fine and they’ll be able to take care of the stains once the pool gets clean (it’s insanely dirty from having our yard graded and sodded this week) but I’m getting the feeling maybe they don’t really know what they’re doing...the issues I noticed are:

1. they let the pool sit for 3 days after it finished filling, didn’t turn on the equipment or brush anything
2. The person doing the 28 day startup told me there are no chemicals in the water yet
3. He also said they’ll start testing the water once they add chemicals (I thought ph had to be carefully monitored in a new plaster pool?)
4. They are only brushing maybe once/day. I’ve been supplementing with extra brushing since around day 5 after reading how important brushing is, but at this point the entire pool is covered in stains.

Anyway, I’m assuming they can get the dirt-related stains out of the plaster but I’m especially worried about the spots that got wet before filling, and especially the areas that sat all day puddling in the shallow end while the pool was filling. Is there anything at all that can be done to address this issue? I’m sick to my stomach over the $$$ we’ve spent on this project, only to be faced with the prospect of immediately redoing the plaster...I’ve found tons of warnings about filling from the deep end and not moving the hose, but no info about whether this can be fixed.

(Also, I can’t believe a PB would sell a $100K pool, stick a hose in it on Friday afternoon and leave for the weekend, never mentioning to the homeowner that something as basic as moving the hose could ruin our plaster finish...)