First off I don't own a pool but after my recent dabbling in pool maintenance maybe it'd be nice to have a full sized pool in the future.
Okay so last year my kids started becoming old enough to play in a larger kiddie pool. I hated that thing because I had to fill it early so it could warm up a bit or I'd have to supplement with warm water only to have them use it for a day, get nasty and dump it, clean it out and repeat the next day. I poked around on reddit and thought I'd be smarter this year and picked up a cheapie intex pool filter, pool test strips, and some bleach because most of what I read about kiddie pools was to drop some bleach in there and you can hold the water for a day or two. I started there and did more reading (found TFP) and decided to try small scale pool care. Initially two problems, not enough bleach being added because I was getting algae growth and it seemed like I wasn't able to hold the chlorine levels in the kiddie pool (its exposed to full sun almost all day). More reading lead me to learn chlorine breaks down from the sun so I started adding bleach throughout the day (WFH allows me to keep an eye on it). So where I'm at right now is I have held clean(??) and clear water for about 2wks with just regular addition of bleach and ph down. Up until today TA was pretty low (we'll talk about this below). TC and FC I could hold okay based on my test strips (I know its not the right tool now). And pH was something I continued to battle with pH down (I think its because of the amount of bleach I used). I skim for floaties throughout the day and add a little bleach while I'm out there. Lastly the water has no smells. - It feels like I'm on the right path.....
Okay on the subject of TA - I thought I was "smart" so I added some baking soda to my pool today to try and bring the TA up a bit because its supposed to to help stabilize the pH. I believe my pH continues to rise because of the chlorine breaking down from the sun but I thought maybe TA will help with that too. Well I was smart and just haphazardly dumped a bunch of baking soda into the pool. That spiked my TA. So today I read about how-to lower TA by adding acid into the pool then aerating to bring pH back up and continue to repeat until TA is back to desired levels. I think I ran 2 cycles and TA is still high so I might give up here and just empty the pool and start over since I've had a good 2wk run at it.
My questions:
First, is this realistic to hold and maintain ~100g of water? The test strips, although basic seem to show okay results. I don't want to jeopardize my kids health and safety but boy keeping a pool clean is way easier than emptying it every night and filling it every morning only to hope its warm enough for them by the time they want to play in it. I'd be open to changing out the water every other week or every week if that is a safer scenario but daily changes are painful.
Second, If I'm on the right track I plan to invest in the Taylor K2006 test kit to get a better idea of what my water is doing.
Third, check my logic here. If I'm going to keep going I think I need some CYA to hold my chlorine so I don't have to add so much of it. Stabilizing chlorine should keep my pH from continuing to rise everyday and should reduce my need for bleach and pH down?
thanks in advance for any help and I hope you had a good laugh at this dad trying to be "smart"
Okay so last year my kids started becoming old enough to play in a larger kiddie pool. I hated that thing because I had to fill it early so it could warm up a bit or I'd have to supplement with warm water only to have them use it for a day, get nasty and dump it, clean it out and repeat the next day. I poked around on reddit and thought I'd be smarter this year and picked up a cheapie intex pool filter, pool test strips, and some bleach because most of what I read about kiddie pools was to drop some bleach in there and you can hold the water for a day or two. I started there and did more reading (found TFP) and decided to try small scale pool care. Initially two problems, not enough bleach being added because I was getting algae growth and it seemed like I wasn't able to hold the chlorine levels in the kiddie pool (its exposed to full sun almost all day). More reading lead me to learn chlorine breaks down from the sun so I started adding bleach throughout the day (WFH allows me to keep an eye on it). So where I'm at right now is I have held clean(??) and clear water for about 2wks with just regular addition of bleach and ph down. Up until today TA was pretty low (we'll talk about this below). TC and FC I could hold okay based on my test strips (I know its not the right tool now). And pH was something I continued to battle with pH down (I think its because of the amount of bleach I used). I skim for floaties throughout the day and add a little bleach while I'm out there. Lastly the water has no smells. - It feels like I'm on the right path.....
Okay on the subject of TA - I thought I was "smart" so I added some baking soda to my pool today to try and bring the TA up a bit because its supposed to to help stabilize the pH. I believe my pH continues to rise because of the chlorine breaking down from the sun but I thought maybe TA will help with that too. Well I was smart and just haphazardly dumped a bunch of baking soda into the pool. That spiked my TA. So today I read about how-to lower TA by adding acid into the pool then aerating to bring pH back up and continue to repeat until TA is back to desired levels. I think I ran 2 cycles and TA is still high so I might give up here and just empty the pool and start over since I've had a good 2wk run at it.
My questions:
First, is this realistic to hold and maintain ~100g of water? The test strips, although basic seem to show okay results. I don't want to jeopardize my kids health and safety but boy keeping a pool clean is way easier than emptying it every night and filling it every morning only to hope its warm enough for them by the time they want to play in it. I'd be open to changing out the water every other week or every week if that is a safer scenario but daily changes are painful.
Second, If I'm on the right track I plan to invest in the Taylor K2006 test kit to get a better idea of what my water is doing.
Third, check my logic here. If I'm going to keep going I think I need some CYA to hold my chlorine so I don't have to add so much of it. Stabilizing chlorine should keep my pH from continuing to rise everyday and should reduce my need for bleach and pH down?
thanks in advance for any help and I hope you had a good laugh at this dad trying to be "smart"
