But for all you BBBers... where are you?

how often are you adding chlorine during the hottest part of the summer?

once a day? twice a week? 3 times a week?

& what do you do when you go on vacation?

I add my bleach daily, in the evening, after the sun is off the pool. When I go away, I raise the Chlorine to shock level and close my automatic pool cover for the duration. Works everytime.

I check my FC level every afternoon and add bleach according to the poll calculator. It depends on how long I will be gone. If only 3 or 4 days then just raise the FC to shock level. If longer I might also put one puck in the floater with the floater barely open. When I get back I will shock again and if I have some algae I will just follow the process outlined in Pool School and the pool will be crystal clear in a couple of days.

I have a SWG, so I don't add bleach, though chlorine gets added every day.

Most people using bleach add chlorine every day. That is what we recommend here at TFP. It is possible to make some adjustments and add bleach less often, but it has disadvantages and we don't normally even mention it.

For vacations the ideal is to get someone to watch over the pool for you. If you can't do that, you can use a trichlor tablet feeder or floater to add chlorine slowly, combined with a solar cover and you are good for a week.

I only switched over to BBB from trichlor a week ago. I've been testing PH & FC/CC every evening and adjusting with bleach & muratic acid. Judging by the FC loss per day, it looks like I might be able to add bleach every other day and still stay above the minimum level based on my CYA. But I'm a tinkerer, so I don't mind doing it daily.

On the topic of vacations.....

We tend to be gone about every other weekend from Thurs night to Sun night (lake house about an hour away). I've been debating with myself on what's the best route to go for those weekends. It's short enough time and often enough, that I hate to go back to pucks. My CYA is already 60 so I really don't want to boost it every other week. I figure if I know my approximate daily FC loss, I could just dump in enough bleach for 3 days worth of FC loss (which would still be well below shock level) on Thurs night & then check and adjust everything again Sun night when we return. Longer than that, I think I'd throw 4 pucks in the chlorinator and just let it go for the week. Any other ideas I'm overlooking?

That won't work. The higher the starting FC level, the faster you will lose chlorine during the day.

A solar cover works wonders, especially an opaque cover that blocks all the UV.

You know....I thought that might be the case with the "3 days worth of bleach" method. 2 days & I think the pool would be no problem. 3 days seems to be in that borderline area. Maybe just one or two pucks in the chlorinator?

A cover really isn't an option given the odd shape of the pool and the hassle involved in dragging the cover out, etc. (i.e. I know I would never do it ).

Daily for me but occasionally the level is fine and a day gets skipped. Tabs when on vacation as long as my CYA is around 50.

About 2880 times per day since I added a metering pump a month or so ago. I am still getting the flow set just right, so I am still fine tuning about once per week by adding bleach by hand. The tank on the metering pump holds enough for about a 6 week supply when full.

Ike

Usually works out to about 6X/week. I like to let it get to the low end before I test pH at least once a week.

Am I doing something wrong if I only add bleach once per week on average? My pool just hasn't been going through it that fast..

20k, in ground plaster.

I test every other day and add bleach and MA as necessary. Not very good at doing it at the same time of day, however. I will note on my tests what time of day it was, so like today FC was 2 instead of 3, but I tested at 6 PM not morning. Next time I will be careful about time of day to see if anything is up in the pool. If FC is below my min and it appears to be a trend, happens twice in a row, not due to late test time, then I will check the whole pool to see what is up. Full water tests, filter pressure, circulation time, etc.

While we were on vacation, I had the auto-chlorinator set rather high at 4.5 and someone came by to check skimmers, water level, refill pucks, and test twice a week, adding a jug of bleach if the FC was below 3. Family members don't get paid but they get to swim instead. If I didn't have family, I'd find a smart kid and train him well and pay him handsomely. My son would do that for a neighbor and got $10 per visit about 6 years ago which was a fortune to him then, so he did it well. Some neighborhoods will have a list of kids that pet sit or baby sit, those are the kids to look to for this, if they have their own pools as well.

At the moment, since I got back from vacation and CYA was still low, in spite of using pucks for 2 weeks, I do have pucks in the auto-chlorinator. It is on a very low setting so they have been in there for 3 weeks and 7 pucks still not entirely gone yet. It appears to me that they dissolve very slowly when I am keeping FC up with bleach, or maybe that is my imagination. But even when no pucks are being used, I test every other day and add bleach then.

I test and add bleach every day. I was keeping records or remembering how much FC my pool uses. My average came out to 1.5 every day. So if I do not feel like testing I add 64 oz of 6% to bring it up 1.5 ppm (I do not recomment doing this if you are just learning). When I go on vacation, I take the number of days and multiply it by 1.5 (my normal loss and I do not use pucks since my CYA is at 40 do not want to raise) and that will give me the amount of chlorine I need to add in the form of bleach. Whatever that number is I will add enough to bring it up 1-2 ppm more just to be safe. I have done this on a week long trip and a 4 day trip and came back with more FC than I needed and 0-.5 CC. The 4 day trip I did not leave pump running and on the 7 day trip it ran the whole time. I am in houston and one trip was end of april first of may, and the other one end of june through first week of july. Obviously very hot weather time for houston, but on our 7 day trip it rained a lot so not much sun was out. Both of these times I came back with no issues at all.

Ditto...except my cover isn't auto

Welcome to TFP!

That doesn't sound right unless either you don't have sunlight on the pool (or use an opaque pool cover) or you have a high Cyanuric Acid level and raise your Free Chlorine (FC) level fairly high each week (say to 14 ppm FC and have it drop to 4 ppm in a week with the CYA level at 100 ppm).

In my own pool, I add 12.5% chlorinating liquid around twice a week, but I have a mostly opaque electric safety cover so my chlorine usage is fairly low at around 1 ppm FC per day. The chlorine demand is that high because the pool is used for 1-2 hours per day every day and longer on weekends and it is kept warm at around 88ºF.

I answered "more" because I average out a little more than three times a week.

I typically add one 182 oz jug 6% every other day. If I go longer it gets down a little below the lower end of my target range (I always test when I get off schedule) which then requires addition of more than "usual" according to Pool Calculator. It's happened a few times but I haven't had to shock and CC never got over .5.

I don't have a lot of leaves or above "normal" bugs entering the pool, right now, so it stays pretty steady. BTW... I do run the pump on 20-25 gpm 21/7. Aquabot, moving about 3K water/hour, runs 6-10 hours/24 hr period, using fine bags. So there's lots of water movement. Normally keep CYA 50-60 but it's at 40 right now and haven't been able to get out for CYA for several days since last CYA testing, ~4 days ago. Every other day addition of bleach takes it a little above target range as long as everything is "usual".

If I had an increase in "bather load" I would check and add daily. If the partial shade I get on east and west sides, a few hours early a.m. and late afternoon was eliminated I would probably be checking and adding daily due to Texas sizzling sun and heat.

Pool temp ranges 88-91 without cover. May go a couple degrees lower if we have a day or two of clouds and rain. I, also, have a small fountain that runs the whole time pump in on. That may help keep the temps down some in addition to running pump almost all the time. Because of this I do check the pH more frequently.

When my pH gets near 7.5 the bleach will cloud the water. (I keep it near 7.2 because of working on calcium scale with sequestrants.) The clouding is a sure sign that the pH has crept up to 7.5 or a little more. Calculated addition of MA clears it instantly.

gg=alice

I have a SWG so there is no need to add bleach. Sometimes I add bleach to get the FC high due to bather load.

In the summer, I shoot for every other day; with the solar cover it works out pretty well. Without the cover I'd probably have to go daily.
Winter consumption is a LOT less; from last November to March I would dump in a gallon of 12.5% (FC +7) every 2-3 weeks. (I don't do a gallon at a shot in the summer, except once when we had friends over and it got heavy use for two days with no cover.)
--paulr

So you put your cover on daily? when the pool is not in use? Is it an automatic cover, or do you have to roll it out every day?

Daily to every other day.