New to the forum - new problem... I think.

[Philmat11]

This will serve as my introduction post, so here goes. This is our 3rd pool, 4th if you count the old Dough Boy that was left in the back yard of our first home that we put a new liner and pump on and used for a couple of years. All the other pools were in California. We moved to the Austin area 9 years ago and two years ago put in a new pool (see the details below). Turns out running a pool in TX is different than in CA. The dry climate and cool nights along with the lack of rain made it pretty easy. Cheap tablets, some MA once a month or so to adjust Ph. Shock it if it got a little cloudy and its good as new the next morning. Running a pool in CA is like only playing golf on a Par 3 course. You think it's easier than it really is. We started up the new pool on Labor Day 2014, paid little attention to it through the winter, ran it all summer in 2015 with no issues and neglected it again through that winter too. The mild winter with El Niño rains brought robust plant growth and lots of pollen. Fought algae in the early spring and though I had beat it but two weeks later it came back and would not budge with my efforts to shock it. With a family reunion planned a few weeks out I was in a panic. I called a guy who came out and tested my pool. We said my CYA was off the charts and sold me on draining/refilling it, cleaning it and putting a ionization unit on it. I also signed him up for weekly maintenance. I have to admit it has been crystal clear all summer. I just couldn't stand watching him to come out and spend an hour a week on it for what I was paying. So I started reading this forum and decided to take it over myself. I've been testing it every evening for FC, CC, ph, and TA. I'm putting about a quart of 8.25% beach a day in it and maintaining levels between 1 and 2. Have wrestled with the ph and TA (MA and Baking Soda) trying to find a happy medium and it seems to have come into balance at 7.5ph and 60-70 TA. I went and bought a bigger kit today at Leslie's so I could test CYA and CH. The CYA is testing at 90 and the hardness at 400. I can understand the CH since the water here is pretty hard but it's disturbing that the CYA is high when I just replaced all of the water 3 months ago.
So, my questions, do I really need to chuck the Carefree system? I just paid a hunk of money for it and it's working on the algae. Do I need to do something right away about the CYA? What about the CH?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Phil M.

 

[Isaac-1]

The CH is manageable at the current level with no problem, we have members here that would almost kill for 400 ppm CH FILL WATER. The CYA of 90 ppm is more of a concern, but as long as you stay on top of thing and don't let algae get started then you can live with it for now, hopefully through the rest of the swim season and maybe get it down through water replacement over the winter if we get a lot of rain.

Now the ionizer is another matter, if it were mine I would remove it right away as it is adding metals, specifically copper to your pool water, unless you enjoy green hair and a stained pool. If you search the forum for copper ionizer you will find hundreds if not thousands of threads on this topic.

Also how are you chlorinating, all forms of dry chlorine add things you don't want to your water, Dichlor and Trichlor add CYA in addition to chlorine and Calhypo adds Calcium, we therefore advise that manually chlorinated pools use only liquid chlorine / bleach for routine chlorination.

Ike

 

[Philmat11]

Thanks for the reply, Ike. I have read many of the posts about the ionizer. Feeling I little foolish for not looking for a forum like this before I bought the thing. That said, I have had no problems so far. I keep the FC level on the low side. No blondes in the house but my hair is pretty much silver at this point and has not turned green yet. The pool has a chlorinator that uses the 3" tablets. The pool service guy was using them but since reading here, I have been using liquid bleach only for a week now. I've been stingy with the liquid so far only adding about a quart a day. Is that normal to expect to test and add every day? There will be times when I cannot do that.

thanks, again
Phil M.

 

[Isaac-1]

The danger with the ionizer is the ever building levels of copper in the water and all it takes is a slight pH shift at some point for stains that are very hard to remove to appear like magic.

 

[pooldv]

Exactly, the copper level slowly builds up over time and once it reaches 0.3 or 0.4 ppm then the stains and green dogs start showing up. The only proven way to remove copper is to drain water.