Pool Closed Green

[Gary R]

Hi to all;

Trying to help someone long distance with their pool. Have tried to convince them about BBB to no avail. Pool has been greenish all summer using pucks, shock and, of course, no quality test kit.

Pool is now closed, green, so I suggested they add at least 4-5 gallons of LC to their 36000 gallon pool but they were worried about the LC staining the liner. Obviously, no good numbers here. I have no knowledge about liners so I was unable to give them any advice.

So the question is about LC staining a vinyl liner.

Also, wondering about the validity of testing water that is several hours old.

Thanks for any help!!

Regards,

Gary R.

 

[Texas Splash]

Hi Gary. Well, about the liner .... the liquid chlorine (i.e. bleach) is perfectly safe for liners when the FC is in correlation with the CYA as noted on the Chlorine/CYA chart. As you noted, you don't know their CYA so that makes adjusting FC impossible. Sure, the green (algae) water will eventually convert the chlorine, but even then simply adding 4-5 gallons is probably a futile effort. It's not a SLAM, so it won't clear the algae. As for testing water that's several hours old, that could be okay up to a point as long as the water was in the sample bottle and maintained in a similar climate/temperature as the source. But once it gets too old and/or the temperature begins to change, it can impact the accuracy of a test and/or the results noted on the Poolmath Calculator. I commend your effort to help, but your friend is really going to have to take full ownership of their pool and do it the right way (TFPC methods, proper test kit) otherwise pool seasons are just going to be frustrating at best.

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Oh, and if they do add bleach to the pool as you suggested now that it's closed (assuming the pump is off), make sure the bleach is manually missed as best as possible.

 

[Gary R]

Many thanks for the info! I'll keep working on them but they have used the pucks, etc. for so many years change is difficult. And, they have a farm store nearby that sells LC for $1.00 a gallon.

Regards,

Gary R.

BTW your pool looks terrific.