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[Conjomen]

Hi all!
First a little background, my family and I have been the owners of a home with a 15000 gallon (give or take )in ground pool for 17 years. My husband and I bought the house as an investment never with the intention of living there sooo long. Our neighbor was a retired chemist who taught at the University here in Corpus Christi Texas. He also helped maintain our pool.He was an Awesome person and a great neighbor. I think he followed the BBB method without even knowing it! Cal passed away 2 years ago and I maintained our pool more or less the same way he did. Bleach baking soda and borax...lol... the difference is i never learned to test the water with the full kit the way he did. I always used these 6 way test strips. Every day. When he was alive he tested using the reagents every week.
To try and make a super long story short we sold the house and bought a new one without the in ground pool. My kids missed it so much i bought an intex 22 foot round above ground pool kit. I am sort of following the same schedule we always did,vacuum and brush 3 times a week surface skim daily when you use the test strips. I just ordered the Taylor 100 kit as recommended here and am awaiting the delivery.
My problem is i am having a tough time keeping the ph ta and chlorine in balance. Total chlorine and free chlorine are equal at around 5,ph and ta are swinging around wild from high to low. Is there any thing I should be doing until I get a good test kit? Or just wait for the Taylor kit? I appreciate any help or advice.
BTW awesome site! I wish I had known about it while Cal was alive he'd have enjoyed helping! Thanks so much again.
Connie

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!!!

Test strips are virtually worthless, so I would not speculate anything based on them.

Pretty soon you will have the best test kit available and THEN we will know what is going on in your water.

Have you added any stabilizer to your water? Or used tablets? If not, then that FC level is VERY high and harsh on your skin.

 

[Richard320]

Welcome!

You've done the important thing - you ordered a test kit.

The formula is FC (good) + CC (bad) = TC.
So... if FC and TC are the same, it means CC is zero, which is ideal. So no worries there.

pH will shift dramatically with very small adjustments if the TA is too low. If the TA is high and there are a lot of kids splashing, pH will rise very quickly. If TA is right, pH will stay pretty stable and if pH does need adjustment, small amounts of chemicals usually give small changes, just the way you'd expect. But since test strips aren't the most reliable, don't worry about that stuff until you get accurate test results. When you do get your kit, wipe the tip of the R-009 reagent bottle with a damp paper towel before each drop to remove static electricity. Just the first two or three days. That reagent can build static electricity which changes the drop size, which messes up the test results.

Post your results here and someone should be along to help you make sense and walk you through poolmath the first time.

 

[Texas Splash]

Welcome to TFP!

 

[Conjomen]

Thanks for the warm welcome! To tell the truth I was pretty nervous about testing myself! Glad to know I'll have help!

 

[Conjomen]

Sorry, I meant to add...
No tablets or stabilizer yet. We got the pool up about 2 weeks ago. I have just been adding chlorine (liquid 10%). I did use dry acid to adjust the ph and TA based on the test strip results. I had it in the right range for a day before it started swinging again. I'm sure it has something to do with the test strips themselves so I'll wait for the good test kit to determine how out of whack my water is.Thanks again for all your help. I can't even tell yall how worried i was to be going at this without my friend. He always meant to teach us all how to do everything but we never got around to it. I'm so glad to have found this site!

 

[kimkats]

I am SO glad you found us! We even have videos of the tests AND we will walk you through the as needed/wanted!

Let us know when you test kit gets here and we will go from there!

Kim

 

[Conjomen]

Ok a little off topic...did I read somewhere that ya'll have a record for longest length of time with no algae, or SLAM?IF so I'd like to throw my pool (at the old house ) in for consideration. We went from February of 1997 until we sold our house in Oct of 2014 without any shock, what you guys here call SLAM, or visible algea... Soalmost 12 years is that close to the record?

 

[kimkats]

That is awesome! I don't think there is a real "contest" but maybe that is a thread I should start in one of the forums.....hummmm

My pool would not make it. I had a slight bloom last spring due to me not paying attention to the water temp and as such did not start adding my warm water amounts of chlorine. Oh wait there is also the time my husband got lazy about brushing the sides of the pool (his ONLY job for the pool) so we started to get a tiny bit of algae on them. Both very easy to find and fix but......would keep me out of the record books LOL

Kim

 

[Conjomen]

Lol I really didn't know if i could get away with starting a thread on that but I've been reading all over the forums and through pool school. I thought I saw it mentioned. I figured I could get away with asking on a thread I'd started...But seriously i can't really take too much credit for being algae free it was mostly my neighbor. He took care of the chemicals/testing. My family and I just followed orders and were religious about brushing skimming and vacuumming. I guess we'll see how well we do without a chemist next door.