This is going to be a long post. So for the TLDR crew, here it is in a nut shell:
How do you guys in the south, who:
1. Still sanitize with "pucks" and
2. Don't close their pool for the winter
manage to not send their CYA levels to absurd levels?
Now for the detailed version:
A buddy of mine who lives in South FL just bought a home with a pool. He has absolutely zero experience with a pool, so he turned to me for advice, being a multiple pool owner for my entire adult life as well as growing up with one. He closed on the house and three days later his pool turned into what you see in attached Pics below.
I said get in the car RIGHT NOW and buy some bleach and get it in that pool. I sent him to WalMart to get the good 10% stuff in the pool section. I told him to buy as many as he could fit in his trunk. Also had him buy a 12 bag pack of Cal-Hypo Shock. Get home and put 2 gallons and 2 bags in.
I instructed him to run the filter 24/7.
Once that was done I started asking a ton of questions he could not answer:
I asked him to send me as many pictures and videos that he could of the pool equipment. Model numbers on anything he could find. Then I sent him shopping:
I had determined at this point (from pics and videos) he has a Pebble Tech surface pool, about 12,500 gallons. A Hayward cartridge filter, a 1-1/4 HP pump, No inline chlorine feeder, no SWG system, an old school dial timer with the set screws to set the on/off schedule. Basically a very old outdated system.
I taught him how to open up his filter and clean the cartridge. (Aside from being filthy and green, once rinsed off the cartridge was in good condition).
His plumbing (if you can believe) has no way to divert to waste. The "waste" line (which is really a "drain" line is on the return side of the filter, not the suction side (SMH at this installer). As a result, I told him don't bother buying a vacuum hose and vacuum head for now. Instead I called around for him and found a Dolphin Robot at a local shop near him. I sent him there with the warning: "Walk in, buy the Dolphin, and leave. Don't have him test you water. Don't have him try and sell you anything. Don't even talk to him. Just buy the Robot"
This all took place within 24 hours of me seeing the pics of the brown pool for the first time.
So I had him add Chlorine as per my instrux 3 x's a day, run Dolphin as much as your time allows, brush, and clean filter daily. And we wait for those test kits to arrive.....
3 days later, the kit(s) showed up. My "blind SLAM" was already working as the pool went from Brown to a teal green. But still murky.
I gave him very detailed instructions on performing the tests along with videos of me doing it myself from my home in the North East.
Not to my surprise at all his pH and TA was through the roof. His CYA was NIL - unreadable on the Taylor test - (dot never disappeared)
However to my surprise he had less than 1 ppm FC. I had him skip the "noon does" that day because we knew the kit was arriving later that day, and I didn't want the test to "bleach out" which, as y'all know can happen with insanely high FC levels... To make sure it didn't bleach out we repeated the test with the dilution test. Nope - It really was less than 1 ppm.
Full results:
FC - 1.0
TC - 1.0
CC - 0.0
pH - > 8 - Off the comparator readable scale.
TA - 170
CH - 140
CYA < 30 - I actually broke down, had him take to a pool store - They confirmed it was 5.0 (and their other readings were similar to above)
So now I sent him shopping again. Muriatic Acid for pH and TA; Calcium for his CH - That was easy enough as per my clacualtions he got his pH down and nailed the CH in one shot...... But for purposes of this post, I only want to discuss the Chlorine and CYA.
I know he has no intention of installing a SWG anytime soon. So for now I loaded him up with "Stabilized" Products:
A bucket of TriChlor "Pucks"
A twelve pack of TriChlor bags of shock.
With the arsenal of a test kit in hand now, I had him perform a proper SLAM (we were well underway from the enormous "shock treatments" I had him doing up to this point). But instead of using just straight bleach during the SLAM - I had him supplement with 4 pucks in a floaty dispenser, two in the skimmer, two in the pump basket (running 24/7), as well as one bag TriChlor Shock morning, noon, night, it addition to enough bleach to "M" in the SLAM.
Within a few more days he was clear, blue, CC=0 still and a passed OCLT - So A LOT of TriChlor was added during this time - about 6 bags shock, and at least 12 dissolved tablets.
So I cut all the aggressive adding of TriChlor and no more bleach for now. Just told him to maintain a few in the Floater, and ONE in the skimmer and cut the run time on the pump to 10 hours during daylight hours.
It took 3 more days for the FC to drop below 10! I knew he finally was holding onto his FC. So as of last night:
FC - 7.5
TC - 7.5
CC - 0.0
pH - 7.2
TA - 120
CH - 320
CYA - 45-50 ish
Now back to the ORIGINAL Question:
What's the plan of attack going forward? Long term he will convert to a SWG. But for now he has to manually chlorinate. He does not want the hassle of adding bleach every day to maintain a proper FC. My gut feel and experience tells me he will "maintain" proper FC levels with 2 tabs in the floater (slowly dissolving) and just One in the skimmer if he is not running the pump more than 8 - 10 hours.
At this rate we will certainly slow down the increase in CYA - But some day will come that it will get very high. What do you southern folks do?
How do you guys in the south, who:
1. Still sanitize with "pucks" and
2. Don't close their pool for the winter
manage to not send their CYA levels to absurd levels?
Now for the detailed version:
A buddy of mine who lives in South FL just bought a home with a pool. He has absolutely zero experience with a pool, so he turned to me for advice, being a multiple pool owner for my entire adult life as well as growing up with one. He closed on the house and three days later his pool turned into what you see in attached Pics below.
I said get in the car RIGHT NOW and buy some bleach and get it in that pool. I sent him to WalMart to get the good 10% stuff in the pool section. I told him to buy as many as he could fit in his trunk. Also had him buy a 12 bag pack of Cal-Hypo Shock. Get home and put 2 gallons and 2 bags in.
I instructed him to run the filter 24/7.
Once that was done I started asking a ton of questions he could not answer:
- How is the pool sanitized? SWG? Chlorine feeder? Tablets in the skimmer?
- What kind of Filter?
- What's the surface of the pool?
- How many gallons?
I asked him to send me as many pictures and videos that he could of the pool equipment. Model numbers on anything he could find. Then I sent him shopping:
- Links to the Taylor K-2005 as well as the stand alone FAS/DPD test (I didn't have him get the K-2006 because I wanted him have the simple DPD test for ease of daily testing).
- A pool pole, brush, skimming net and bag attachments
- A Dolphin Robot
I had determined at this point (from pics and videos) he has a Pebble Tech surface pool, about 12,500 gallons. A Hayward cartridge filter, a 1-1/4 HP pump, No inline chlorine feeder, no SWG system, an old school dial timer with the set screws to set the on/off schedule. Basically a very old outdated system.
I taught him how to open up his filter and clean the cartridge. (Aside from being filthy and green, once rinsed off the cartridge was in good condition).
His plumbing (if you can believe) has no way to divert to waste. The "waste" line (which is really a "drain" line is on the return side of the filter, not the suction side (SMH at this installer). As a result, I told him don't bother buying a vacuum hose and vacuum head for now. Instead I called around for him and found a Dolphin Robot at a local shop near him. I sent him there with the warning: "Walk in, buy the Dolphin, and leave. Don't have him test you water. Don't have him try and sell you anything. Don't even talk to him. Just buy the Robot"
This all took place within 24 hours of me seeing the pics of the brown pool for the first time.
So I had him add Chlorine as per my instrux 3 x's a day, run Dolphin as much as your time allows, brush, and clean filter daily. And we wait for those test kits to arrive.....
3 days later, the kit(s) showed up. My "blind SLAM" was already working as the pool went from Brown to a teal green. But still murky.
I gave him very detailed instructions on performing the tests along with videos of me doing it myself from my home in the North East.
Not to my surprise at all his pH and TA was through the roof. His CYA was NIL - unreadable on the Taylor test - (dot never disappeared)
However to my surprise he had less than 1 ppm FC. I had him skip the "noon does" that day because we knew the kit was arriving later that day, and I didn't want the test to "bleach out" which, as y'all know can happen with insanely high FC levels... To make sure it didn't bleach out we repeated the test with the dilution test. Nope - It really was less than 1 ppm.
Full results:
FC - 1.0
TC - 1.0
CC - 0.0
pH - > 8 - Off the comparator readable scale.
TA - 170
CH - 140
CYA < 30 - I actually broke down, had him take to a pool store - They confirmed it was 5.0 (and their other readings were similar to above)
So now I sent him shopping again. Muriatic Acid for pH and TA; Calcium for his CH - That was easy enough as per my clacualtions he got his pH down and nailed the CH in one shot...... But for purposes of this post, I only want to discuss the Chlorine and CYA.
I know he has no intention of installing a SWG anytime soon. So for now I loaded him up with "Stabilized" Products:
A bucket of TriChlor "Pucks"
A twelve pack of TriChlor bags of shock.
With the arsenal of a test kit in hand now, I had him perform a proper SLAM (we were well underway from the enormous "shock treatments" I had him doing up to this point). But instead of using just straight bleach during the SLAM - I had him supplement with 4 pucks in a floaty dispenser, two in the skimmer, two in the pump basket (running 24/7), as well as one bag TriChlor Shock morning, noon, night, it addition to enough bleach to "M" in the SLAM.
Within a few more days he was clear, blue, CC=0 still and a passed OCLT - So A LOT of TriChlor was added during this time - about 6 bags shock, and at least 12 dissolved tablets.
So I cut all the aggressive adding of TriChlor and no more bleach for now. Just told him to maintain a few in the Floater, and ONE in the skimmer and cut the run time on the pump to 10 hours during daylight hours.
It took 3 more days for the FC to drop below 10! I knew he finally was holding onto his FC. So as of last night:
FC - 7.5
TC - 7.5
CC - 0.0
pH - 7.2
TA - 120
CH - 320
CYA - 45-50 ish
Now back to the ORIGINAL Question:
What's the plan of attack going forward? Long term he will convert to a SWG. But for now he has to manually chlorinate. He does not want the hassle of adding bleach every day to maintain a proper FC. My gut feel and experience tells me he will "maintain" proper FC levels with 2 tabs in the floater (slowly dissolving) and just One in the skimmer if he is not running the pump more than 8 - 10 hours.
At this rate we will certainly slow down the increase in CYA - But some day will come that it will get very high. What do you southern folks do?