All,
Thought I share my story of how I achieved a very fast slam.
When I opened my pool in the spring, it was filled with leaf debris and who knows what else. The sides of the vinyl were covered in calcium and muck. Water was surprisingly clear and a beautiful shade of green. The previous owners decided not to clean before they winterized so I knew I had quite a bit of time to get this fixed.
The pool was only half full so I started off by trying to get all the big pieces of nasty up from the bottom while It was filling. I was really hesitant about using “old” water but once I realized the broken down material wasn’t coming up without the pump, I let the water rise. Once full, I stirred up the gunk a bit to get it thru the filter while scrubbing the best I could with zero vis. I watched the pressure gauge very closely waiting for pressure spikes and as soon as it went up or I could hear a change in the pump, I backwashed the filter. Must have done it about 30 times before the water was clear enuf to get a glimpse of the bottom. Like all new pool owners, I knew about the shock process so that was my direction… 3 bags of 7 in 1 HTH from Walmart later, my pool was finally blue… Cloudy, but blue.. PROGRESS!! It wasn’t till a few days later, and the pump running the whole time did the water clear up a bit.. In the mean time, I found TFP and read hundreds of post about chemicals and slams and this and that… Looking back at the process, I wish I wouldn’t have spent the money on the bags of shock but apparently, I didn’t hurt my process at all.
Anyways… Found out my test kits were horribly inadequate (HTH OTO, old dpd kit found in the garage), so I ordered a K-2006C but it wasn’t going to be here for a few days… I knew I needed to slam but like most of us, I cant spend hours everyday testing and maintaining, so I had to do something to get it going. I knew my TC was 0 even tho I had trichlor tabs floating around but I found out that wasn’t the best approach. 3 gallons of bleach later, I finally had an TC reading. Had no clue what it actually was but the color changed to a shade of yellow. Had to guess it was over 10 but couldn’t be too sure. So I circulated and backwashed and cleaned and filtered until my kit showed up. Kit showed up on Wed so I planned to slam Friday. Tested FC at 9 CC at 1 (early chlorine prep helped to get my cc lower) PH 7.6, TA 230, CYA 0 and so on. Lowered my ph with a bunch of MA and once it was at 7.2 I added 3 lbs of CYA to try to get a reading so I could find a target FC. Thursday I finally had a slightly cloudy sample and checked the pool calc a few times and decided if I was slightly above 0 CYA and added 3lbs I would be around 30 or a bit higher. Decided to target 40. Chucked a bunch of bleach in Thursday evening and by the morning I was sitting at 16.5 FC. I just tried to maintain that while the sun was pounding the pool all day. Checked every hour and didn’t let it drop below 15. Once the sun set and about 4 hours after my last bleach add, I check and it was still sitting at 16 and CC .5. Time for the OCLT. I was kinda nervous about my results the next morning because I didn’t want to monitor the pool all day again. I read some posts about slams lasting a few days and I didn’t have that kind of time.. Woke up early the next day to test… FC 16 CC .25.. OCLT pass on the first go.
Its about a week later, and my FC levels are still dropping into the normal range and cc is pretty much non-existant. Looking back, I am glad I took a few extra days to prep with a higher amount of chlorine to start the process prior to the actual slam. Took less than 24 hours to pass so if you want a quick slam, put in the prep work and itll pay off in the long run..
Thought I share my story of how I achieved a very fast slam.
When I opened my pool in the spring, it was filled with leaf debris and who knows what else. The sides of the vinyl were covered in calcium and muck. Water was surprisingly clear and a beautiful shade of green. The previous owners decided not to clean before they winterized so I knew I had quite a bit of time to get this fixed.
The pool was only half full so I started off by trying to get all the big pieces of nasty up from the bottom while It was filling. I was really hesitant about using “old” water but once I realized the broken down material wasn’t coming up without the pump, I let the water rise. Once full, I stirred up the gunk a bit to get it thru the filter while scrubbing the best I could with zero vis. I watched the pressure gauge very closely waiting for pressure spikes and as soon as it went up or I could hear a change in the pump, I backwashed the filter. Must have done it about 30 times before the water was clear enuf to get a glimpse of the bottom. Like all new pool owners, I knew about the shock process so that was my direction… 3 bags of 7 in 1 HTH from Walmart later, my pool was finally blue… Cloudy, but blue.. PROGRESS!! It wasn’t till a few days later, and the pump running the whole time did the water clear up a bit.. In the mean time, I found TFP and read hundreds of post about chemicals and slams and this and that… Looking back at the process, I wish I wouldn’t have spent the money on the bags of shock but apparently, I didn’t hurt my process at all.
Anyways… Found out my test kits were horribly inadequate (HTH OTO, old dpd kit found in the garage), so I ordered a K-2006C but it wasn’t going to be here for a few days… I knew I needed to slam but like most of us, I cant spend hours everyday testing and maintaining, so I had to do something to get it going. I knew my TC was 0 even tho I had trichlor tabs floating around but I found out that wasn’t the best approach. 3 gallons of bleach later, I finally had an TC reading. Had no clue what it actually was but the color changed to a shade of yellow. Had to guess it was over 10 but couldn’t be too sure. So I circulated and backwashed and cleaned and filtered until my kit showed up. Kit showed up on Wed so I planned to slam Friday. Tested FC at 9 CC at 1 (early chlorine prep helped to get my cc lower) PH 7.6, TA 230, CYA 0 and so on. Lowered my ph with a bunch of MA and once it was at 7.2 I added 3 lbs of CYA to try to get a reading so I could find a target FC. Thursday I finally had a slightly cloudy sample and checked the pool calc a few times and decided if I was slightly above 0 CYA and added 3lbs I would be around 30 or a bit higher. Decided to target 40. Chucked a bunch of bleach in Thursday evening and by the morning I was sitting at 16.5 FC. I just tried to maintain that while the sun was pounding the pool all day. Checked every hour and didn’t let it drop below 15. Once the sun set and about 4 hours after my last bleach add, I check and it was still sitting at 16 and CC .5. Time for the OCLT. I was kinda nervous about my results the next morning because I didn’t want to monitor the pool all day again. I read some posts about slams lasting a few days and I didn’t have that kind of time.. Woke up early the next day to test… FC 16 CC .25.. OCLT pass on the first go.
Its about a week later, and my FC levels are still dropping into the normal range and cc is pretty much non-existant. Looking back, I am glad I took a few extra days to prep with a higher amount of chlorine to start the process prior to the actual slam. Took less than 24 hours to pass so if you want a quick slam, put in the prep work and itll pay off in the long run..
