I remember reading somehwere on here about CYA being converted to Amonia in a pool by bacteria. If this is correct, would it not be possible to lower your CYA level by introducing said bacteria into the pool, and then shocking to remove the amonia and bacteria, thus avoiding a drain/refill?

Just an idle crazy thought.

It's not a very controllable situation, especially since you can't readily coax the bacteria to grow without also getting algae to grow as well. I write about my accidental experience with this here and described technically here, but note that it takes a LOT of chlorine -- roughly 2.5x the CYA amount in ppm. There also isn't an easy way to have the bacteria stop before they have broken down most or all of the CYA.

Since the bacteria are just using enzymes to accelerate this breakdown, it would be more logical for some company to create such an enzyme (or extract one from bacteria). Of course, one would need to break down that enzyme using chlorine before adding more CYA or else it will get broken down as well. If they also added an enzyme to break down ammonia, then one might not need as much chlorine (assuming there was enough dissolved oxygen in the water to perform the oxidation).

I'd bet that there is a patent opportunity as well as market potential for a CYA reducer.

Just sayin.

I think that may be the best idea I've heard in a long time..not sure about the cost-to-market, but the pool stores would LOVE to have a product to SELL you that would lower your CYA, so you could continue using your pucks, not to mention then they could SELL you another product to break down the amonia, and then SELL you some more CYA because you would be at Zero.

But in all seriousness, this may actually be a patentable idea, I'll read through your other two posts on the subject and see if I can educate myself enough.

This has been proposed many times before, so the idea alone isn't patentable. But if you can get it to work reliably, whatever you had to do to make that happen would be patentable.

The pool store doesn't need a product to lower CYA cuz they make more $$$ on us (ok, not me anymore!) selling MORE tabs, MORE preventative algaecide, MORE killer algaecide, and MORE shock, MORE clarifier as the season goes on....they don't want people to figure out it's the pool stores' fault we have high CYA levels and why our pools look like a pond after mid summer.....

Just sell this new product through this website....

Thank you TFP...