Hi all,

I'm pretty new to pool ownership - we just had ours put in in early August. The company that sold me the pool set me up with a lot of products - Dazzle "Pure and Simple" is the line...it's kind of confusing. Everything is prominently branded Dazzle and "Pure + Simple" but there's not a lot of info as to what's in the containers. Even the pool company got confused because I had a UV light and that meant I should be using some different flavour of Dazzle. Anyway...to make a long story a little less long...

The last test I had done at the pool store (Aug 23):

73800 L / 19500 Gal In-Ground, Vinyl lined

TC: 5
FC: 5
pH: 7.6 (Target 7.4-7.6)
CYA: 80 (Target 30-50)
TA: 140
Adj TA: 114 (Target 125-150)
Ca: 232 (Target 175-225)
Borate: 31

They recommended I add 3.5 Kg of Dazzle TA+
Up until last week I was chlorinating with Dazzle Tri-chlor sticks.

I came back from a short trip to Minneapolis with a TF-100 test kit. My wife's aunt was supposed to throw a couple of sticks in the skimmer while we were away, but she didn't and we got a couple of inches of rain, and things were pretty murky when I got back. Reading 0 Chlorine in the pool. I hadn't opened the TF-100 yet, but threw in a couple of bags of the Dazzle weekly shock/oxidizer (not chlorine, but it doesn't really say what it is - safe to swim after 15 minutes apparently). It was Labour Day so I couldn't buy any bleach so just added 3 sticks to the skimmer - which didn't do anything for the chlorine levels in the pool.

I got out the TF-100 and ran the numbers through the pool calc last Tuesday, bought a bunch of bleach and got the pool up to shock level quickly by adding 20 L of 4% bleach. Everything cleared up quickly and looks great, but my TA seems really high. Here are my numbers as of Friday night (Sept 9).

FC 10
CC 0
TA: 225
CYA 45
pH 7.5
CH 220
Borate 30

So everything looks good except TA and CH seem too high. I've run the CYA test twice over a couple of days last week and I'm pretty sure it's right between 40 and 50 using the black dot test.

Do I need to do something about the high TA? I've got a waterfall and waterslide, so I could lower pH with acid and bring it back up with aeration, but is it necessary? We're getting down to the end of the season here...probably winterizing before the end of the month...any ideas?

Thanks!

Just maintain pH and the TA will come down all by itself, slowly.

And when it starts raining in the pool, TA will also drop via dilution.

You have two things to be really happy about. One the pool store was wrong about the high cya and two you found TFP before your cya was too high. Just currious, is the 4% bleach a Canadian thing?

Thanks for the replies...I'll keep an eye on the pH and not worry about it too much.

As for the 4% bleach, well, I never thought to look at the concentration before I found this site. The 4% is the standard-strength Walmart brand "Great Value". They list an Ultra version of the Great Value bleach on their Canadian website that's 6%, but I couldn't find it in-store.