Hello TFP crew! My boyfriend and I acquired our pool last fall when we bought our first home, so this is our first season as pool owners. I think I’ve done a fairly ok job of teaching myself how to care for the pool, all thanks to this website. I’ll include some background information in case it’s relevant, but if it’s not, feel free to skip to the bottom of my post for my water levels and questions.
When we bought the house, the pool was stated to be in ‘working condition’. But it was also left closed all season long last year, since the house was for sale during that time. After pulling the cover off and getting the pump and filter hooked up, we discovered the pump was no longer working. This was unexpected, and we had to wait for payday to purchase a new pump, so about a week went by with the pool just sitting there, not circulating with full exposure to the sun. During that time, the water went from slightly cloudy to completely dark green and full of algae.
We bought a brand new pump, and also a new cartridge filter, and got everything hooked up and working. Using the awesome instructions from this site, we SLAMed the pool. Over the course of about 4-5 days, the pool went from sickly green to crystal clear. It was like magic, and we never could have done it without TFP’s easy to follow directions. I have really good before and after pictures if I can figure out how to post them here.
So after lots of hard work SLAMing, the pool is looking great, and we’ve even swam in it a couple times. I couldn’t get the Taylor test kit ordered in time for us to start the SLAM, so we bought a cheap reagent test kit at Meijer to give us an idea of where to start with chlorine amounts. That’s where I think I messed up. After the pool was cleared of the green, I used the cheap test kit to test the CYA level, and it read zero. I was worried the sun would break down the chlorine faster than it could keep the algae away, so I added the right amount of stabilizer, using poolmath.com, in a sock in the skimmer.
About a week later, yesterday, the Taylor test kit was delivered and I was finally able to do a thorough, accurate test of the pool water. The results were:
CYA 65 ppm
FC 0
CC 0
TA 0
pH <7.0
Calcium Hardness 80 ppm
So basically the water has nothing in it except high CYA, which is disappointing considering I could have just waited on adding the stabilizer. I just want to make sure that my next step should be draining a small amount of water in order to lower the CYA, before I address all other chemical levels.
Am I right that this should be my first step? Is it just guesswork when it comes to how much water to drain/add? Is there anything crucial we’re missing? We really appreciate this website and the tremendous help it’s been to us!
When we bought the house, the pool was stated to be in ‘working condition’. But it was also left closed all season long last year, since the house was for sale during that time. After pulling the cover off and getting the pump and filter hooked up, we discovered the pump was no longer working. This was unexpected, and we had to wait for payday to purchase a new pump, so about a week went by with the pool just sitting there, not circulating with full exposure to the sun. During that time, the water went from slightly cloudy to completely dark green and full of algae.
We bought a brand new pump, and also a new cartridge filter, and got everything hooked up and working. Using the awesome instructions from this site, we SLAMed the pool. Over the course of about 4-5 days, the pool went from sickly green to crystal clear. It was like magic, and we never could have done it without TFP’s easy to follow directions. I have really good before and after pictures if I can figure out how to post them here.
So after lots of hard work SLAMing, the pool is looking great, and we’ve even swam in it a couple times. I couldn’t get the Taylor test kit ordered in time for us to start the SLAM, so we bought a cheap reagent test kit at Meijer to give us an idea of where to start with chlorine amounts. That’s where I think I messed up. After the pool was cleared of the green, I used the cheap test kit to test the CYA level, and it read zero. I was worried the sun would break down the chlorine faster than it could keep the algae away, so I added the right amount of stabilizer, using poolmath.com, in a sock in the skimmer.
About a week later, yesterday, the Taylor test kit was delivered and I was finally able to do a thorough, accurate test of the pool water. The results were:
CYA 65 ppm
FC 0
CC 0
TA 0
pH <7.0
Calcium Hardness 80 ppm
So basically the water has nothing in it except high CYA, which is disappointing considering I could have just waited on adding the stabilizer. I just want to make sure that my next step should be draining a small amount of water in order to lower the CYA, before I address all other chemical levels.
Am I right that this should be my first step? Is it just guesswork when it comes to how much water to drain/add? Is there anything crucial we’re missing? We really appreciate this website and the tremendous help it’s been to us!
