5 problems and clueless!

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WOW!! Well that pretty much sums it up. NO MORE E3!

Test kit is ordered due to arrive Tuesday. Will do a partial drain then slam. I'm sure i'll be asking a thousand questions to make sure i do this right.

I used E3 bc the previous owner lead us to the pool management company they had been using. I had never owned a pool and knew nothing about caring for one. E3, tabs, non chlorine liner safe tko shock, formula 500, and liquid chlorine was the system he put me on bc when we opened the pool after purchasing the home he realized the previous owner had not opened the pool in 2 summers and had a mesh cover = literal swamp! But without draining he helped us get it cleaned up. The following summer the wood wall in deep end caved in and whole pool collapsed. So we had to pull the pool out of the ground and rebuild it to a steel wall frame set up on enormous concrete footings. The build was finished in the month of July so that first season we had a great summer of swimming. The following summer, the polaris line blew, and after our 4th of july party i came outside in the morning to a half empty pool. Devastated to say the least. Found out the kids were using the noodles as geysers to have a water noodle fight,,, they were pressing the one end of the noodles up against the returns very forcefully so all the water would shoot out the noodles at one another. The pressure backed up and blew the line. We plugged it up and have been hand vacuuming ever since, now looking into a Dolphin. Through all this, i had never changed the water care method, big mistake. I had two good opportunities to start with fresh water but didn't even realize what i was doing so back in went the metals and nonsense. Now here I am again with a mess and haven't put one toe in the water this season. We have been though so much with this pool stuff. Its about time we get things right and just enjoy our investment. Thank goodness for this site. You have been a tremendous help. Just two weeks ago i was totally lost and upset. Now i understand things, i realize how much i need to learn, and i have a plan to hopefully fix this. Fingers crossed i don't screw it up. And if this is all resolved i better head straight over to my neighbor to ask her to take down the half dead pine tree that looks like its going to land directly in my pool every storm that passes through!! With our pool luck so far, i can't take any chances on that LOL!!!

Now that i have written my novel on TFP,,,,,,, :rolleyes:
 
You're about to turn a corner on the "trouble pool" to "trouble free" pool, believe me ;)

Many, many people use commercial products that promise easy pool care like Eclipse3 but that have unintended consequences - one of my best pals whose a chem engineer used copper sulphate for years until it turned his wife's hair green ;) So don't feel bad about it, just feel happy that you're going to be in control ;)
 
Thank you so much for the positivity. I returned all the products I had bought for the season to the pool store today, I felt so empowered :) I'll post back when we use our home test kit this week. We plan to begin the partial drain refill and slam this wknd. We are spending this week reading pool school and the slam process. Feeling excited!!
 
It looks the same as it has the past week. very cloudy. mostly in deep end. can see bottom well in shallow. deep barely.

we got our cya down to 60 and started chlorine application. used 4 gallons 12.5%. then 1 hour later took FC which seemed to be at 17 we added 1 more gallon of bleach.

however,,,we seem to be having difficulty obtaining a FC read on the test. it is bleaching out after 1 or 2 drops of reagent then turning pink again.

we are going to test with diluting it per the manual instructions. it states that bleaching out is common when chlorine is above 20ppm and it causes a false read or no read? we don't know if this is the case, or if we just aren't doing the test right, or if all the chorine we have added is disappearing on us
 
we waited another 2 hours, the test seems to now be performing properly and its giving an FC of 4/cc of 0.5

we just added 3 more gallons of 12.5% to get back up to shock level of 24

we will do another test in an hour

so far since beginning the slam this am we have administered a total of 8 gallons of 12.5% bleach

this seems so excessive. i'm nervous!
 
this seems so excessive.
Click to expand...
Not even close. Peruse this website and you will find SLAMs that have consumed 40-70- gallons of bleach.

Your nervousness usually manifests itself in applying less and less bleach and not following the SLAM procedure correctly. If you do that, you will extend the length of your SLAM and use even more bleach.

Have faith in what we teach.
 

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We have total faith in TFP. We just didn't expect to need quite this much chlorine and for it to take this long. We just did another read, we are at FC 9. Just ran to store to grab 8 more gallons of LC. We are now up to a total cost of $125 bucks.

Question - can we use Cal Hypo at this stage to speed this up? Our Calcium level is good, slightly low. But I don't want to run the risk of it getting on the high side then having another thing to need to correct. Would that be a big risk to take?
 
High doses opf Cal Hypo may temporarily cloud your water....one more thing you don't need to have on your plate.

Use liquid chlorine....it's the best.

You can use the Cal Hypo in smaller doses after you finish the SLAM.

I just saw this...
the test seems to now be performing properly and its giving an FC of 4/cc of 0.5
Click to expand...
That is not a valid test result....can you tell us more? What kit are you using?
 
We are using the Taylor K-2006C. In that particular test (@10ml) the FC test turned clear at the 8th drop (=4 FC). Then after 5 drops of reagent R-0003, it turned pink again, and it only took one drop of R-0871 to turn clear again (= 0.5 CC)... we think, no?
 
Ah, got it! Since that 4 FC we've increased the chlorine additions to every hour, 13 gallons in the pool so far in the past 7 hours.

As of 7:36 pm EST we are:

pH: 7.4
FC: 19 (We added another 3/4 of gallon after this reading based on a goal of 24 FC)
CC: 1

Next test in 10 minutes!
 
Agree! Cheaper, and basic. I love that we are not introducing any metals into the water, and other things that wind up creating havoc down the line. TFP has helped us tremendously. Water looks greatly improved. Just a tiny cloud left in minimal areas of deep end which we are confident will be eliminated by the end of today.

Current results:
FC - 24
PH - 7.4
CC - 0

FC has held at shock level for the past hour! Love seeing the progress! We may actually swim this summer :D
 

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