Why is my Chlorine level dropping ?

[vanmor]

I went to St. louis for a few days and came home to a green pool.

I have shocked and shocked. The pool is not green anymore but my Chloring levels just won't stay up. My CYA level is almost non existant and I'm putting in three gallons of 6.6% bleach a day to keep the shock level up. For a 13,500 gal 24' round pool, thats a lot.

Where the heck is my chlorine going ?

 

[JohnT]

With non-existent CYA, you are probably losing a good bit to the sun and the rest to remaning organics in the pool. Test your FC in the evening and again in the morning before the sun hits the pool. That will give an indication of how much organic load you have.

 

[vanmor]

My test kit will not test FC only CL itself. I guess thats total Chlorine.

I just dumped 174 oz. of 6% bleach in pool. How am I going to lower the organic load and raise my cya ?

I was using the tablets and I hear there is CYA in those. I didn't want to get into a situation where my CYA was high and my chlorine was ineffective.

 

[dmanb2b]

Van...you should raise your CYA level to 30 with stabilizer/chlorine...should be around 3 lbs...only if you are comfortable that your CYA is actually zero or close to it. Second you need a test kit that can measure FC and CC...TFtestkits.net has the FAS-DPD kit for around $25.

You state that you are shocking, but unless you know for a fact that you are raising your FC to a certain level and keeping it at that level until the water clears, you'll never be sure your shocking.

The $25 is cheap insurance vs. dumping a bunch of bleach in and not knowing you are at shock level

 

[vanmor]

I have had it up to 4 and 5 on the scale. So I assume thats parts per million.

The water has cleared up a lot as far as the green. But it's really white and cloudy now. I guess thats the dead organic material.

I will get a better test kit.

 

[matt4x4]

What's happening at this stage is that it is still killing off the bloom you got, as well, the sunlight is eating your chlorine.
Yes - the white is the dead organic materials, there's probably still some live stuff in there too, are you scrubbing walls etc or at least running your vac?
Take a 1kg container of stabilizer and put it in a sock and tie it to your stairs - about a week and it should all be dissolved. You can do this while you're cleaning up the algae.

 

[vanmor]

Yep, scrubbing the walls. I had the vac just sitting on the bottom and running. I disconnected it. Do I need to reconnect ? I am back washing and rinsing the filter daily. Had to add some water to the pool yesterday.

Update:

The only thing I could find this late was some Arm and Hammer stuff at Wal Mart. It is mostly baking soda with a stabilizer. It says use one tablet per two tablets of Chlorine or at least two per week. It only lists sodium bicarb as 80% and the other 20% as a stabilizer.