Rookie bromine pool owner trying to get my feet wet

[intheory]

Hi All,

Just bought a house with a pool and still trying to get the hang of things. I grew up with a vinyl pool but the old man took care of it mostly and now that I just purchase a new house I am getting my taste of what he went through taking care of it while I enjoyed the benefits of it. Hoping to do the same for my kids, but it's been quite a struggle so far. I opened the pool late last season not know much if anything about the pool besides that it needed lots of work. This season started out the same with the pool being such a swamp and green. Followed most of the awesome and great advice on this forum and it got me I think half way there at least. The issue I am having is that I have a bromine pool with a bromine feeder but will be converting it to a chlorine pool soon and hopefully renovating it.

I was able to get my pool from green to clear now using the SLAM process, and bought a Taylor k-2006 kit and tested it with these results:
FC = 5
PH = 7.0
TA = 70
CH = 390
CYA = < 10, when testing it I could see the black dot pretty easily so I assume I have no CYA in my pool

Using the pool calculator it seems I must add these things:
- 57 oz of soda ash
- 154 oz of baking soda (I assume buying two 5lb bags will take care of this)
- 88 oz of liquid stabilizer

My questions are:
1. What needs to be added first and get stable?
2. Is it bad to add any of the chemicals at the same time?
3. I still see some water bugs and backswimmers in the pool, does it mean I still have lingering algae when I don't see anything really? How do I get rid of these bugs?
4. After stabilizing my pool and getting everything straighten out, can I go back to using the non-chlorine shock treatment weekly should suffice?

Thanks,
Andrew

 

[Texas Splash]

Re: Rookie pool owner trying to get my feet wet

Hi Andrew! We're not ignoring your post, but we don't normally have a lot or bromine questions for an outdoor pool. But I'm going to try and address your 4 questions and give this a to keep it going:
1 - Bromine doesn't fair well in the sun, so you'll need to monitor an ideal FC target level for your pool to help preserve your bromine based on bromine (bank) reserves.
2 - Generally bleach and muriatic acid are the two big "no-no's" to add at the same time. Separate them by about 30 minutes or so with the pump running.
3 - Sometimes those bugs end-up in all of our pools even when clear. It may not be directly related to a problem, they just found your pool and like it.
4 - I suppose so. I suspect you have quite a bromine bank in reserve there, so you can probably pick-up where you left off.

Hope this helps a little and keeps your thread more visible. Have a nice day.

 

[pooldv]

I added bromine to your title to see if that helps with responses. Is this an indoor pool? Is there a reason for using bromine instead of chlorine? As Pat says we don't have many bromine pool experts here. I am not aware of anyone using bromine in an outdoor pool.

Here is an article on how to use bromine in a hot tub that might be helpful, How do I use Bromine in my spa (or pool)?

 

[Texas Splash]

intheory, please note I also modified my number 1 response to you in post #2 above. Initially I had made mention about CYA, but in reality CYA plays next to no part in your set-up since Bromine is not protected from the sun by CYA. I didn't want my response to seem confusing. I confuse myself enough as it is.