I need a "hold button" before SLAM...

Jump to latest Follow Reply
When I saw the price of Cal-hypo, I decided that I should take an inventory of what Herman Munster, I mean "the previous owner" left behind for me. I have a closet full of pool store containers. I'm hoping that's one of them.

For CYA, I'm still applying your strategy of using numbers to bump from 10 to 20. (a little gun shy from my initial chlorine spike)
 
The closet is stocked with bromine tablets, lots of lots of muriatic acid and assorted magic potions. I saw nothing with that mentioned calcium. What IS the first choice?

Tests last night showed FC fairly steady, and CC went down. I'm hoping that's a trend.

FC 9
CC 1.5
TC 10.5
CYA <20

I thought I was being clever by using a floating chlorinator to dispense the CYA, but that stuff really doesn't like to dissolve!

I'm back to the Hold Button issue for the wkd. I added some bleach last night and some more again this morning, hoping to keep FC from going too much below 10 by Sunday.

I backwashed the filter last night for 3.5 minutes before the discharge water was somewhat clear. :eek: I started to panic about water loss at that point, but it didn't really cost me as much water as I expected - less than an inch. I'll probably repeat that next week even if pressure doesn't rise significantly.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
The answer is probably yes, the bromine has an impact on the SLAM. Pending someone showing up who know more about bromine than I do, which is most folks except Yippee. :)

When you add chlorine/bleach some amount of it will be used to re-activate the used up bromine. The only way to "convert" from bromine to chlorine is to drain the pool. My guess is that it might slow down the SLAM a bit. Let's see what other folks say.
 
Hello, Yipee asked for some help so I will try to fill in the blanks. Since this is an indoor pool with buckets of bromine tablets then you will want to assume it is a bromine pool. Small adjustments needed on the SLAM, but nothing too crazy.

Since bromine is not stabilized by CYA you can ignore that number now. Your FAS-DPD test can still be used, use a 25 ml sample and treat each drop as 0.5 ppm Br. For a bromine pool you want your day-to-day Br level to be around 1-5 and SLAM level should be 20. Use liquid chlorine the same as you would if it were a chlorine pool, it will convert to bromine when it enters the pool at a rate of roughly 1 ppm FC to 2.25 ppm Br. The rest of the SLAM should be the same, try to keep your Br level at SLAM and brush/vac often.
 
Not sure how I missed, until just now, that this is an indoor pool. Signatures are important. That makes the bromine make much more sense now. Although, I still wouldn't use bromine.

When you do decide to refinish the pool adding 30 ppm of CYA and using chlorine/bleach is the way to go IMO.
 
This evening testing has me confused. I'm not sure I understood the Br test. I added 870 to a 25ml sample of pool water and counted drops of 871. It went clear at 46. Does that mean the Br is at 23?

For the sake of comparison, I ran the regular Cl tests. FC came back at a steady 10, but CC has spiked to 2.5! Are these tests simply invalid because of the Br?

I hooked up the vacuum for the first time tonight, and spent over half an hour vacuuming. I haven't added anything to the pool since Thursday morning.

I don't know what to do next.
 
If you mean you did the 10 ml test, then your results are equal. If you have a bromine pool and do the 10 ml test then each drop equals 1.12 ppm of Br, so 20 drops would equal 22.4 ppm Br, which is within margins for the test. The test doesn't magically change from bromine to chlorine depending on the amount of water you use, it is testing whatever -ine is in the water.
 
I'm good with the proportions - I'm not suspecting any magic, I promise. What has me confused is FC vs CC over the long wkd. The bleach dose I added on Thursday was conservative. Was I wrong to expect tests last night to show fewer FC and CC levels? Steady FC and higher CC levels is curve ball to me, and the water clarity hasn't changed in a week.
 
As I was brushing last night, I realized that I could see the brush head when it was at the bottom of the deep end. ...the little things in life!

Br is still holding (22), and I still don't understand how/why that is. CC is also still high at 2.5

I backwashed the filter again. It wasn't nearly as dirty as it was the last time, so I'll back off on that part of my regimen. When I studied the waterline to determine how much water I'd need to replace after the backwash, I noticed that the coping grout was green at the waterline. The pool brush is too awkward to do a good job at that, so I'm planning to put a bleach & water solution in a sprayer and work my way around the pool with a handheld scrub brush. (unless anyone has a better suggestion?)
 
Congrats on seeing the brush! That is progress. A handheld brush and a squirt bottle works great. We get a little algae in the rocks under the waterfall occasionally and it works great. There is an interaction between chlorine and bromine that I do not fully understand so I can't answer your question on the levels varying.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply