New Guy needing help analyzing water analysis report

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1critter

0
Apr 28, 2010
13
Friendswood, TX
Hi all, first time poster and love the site so far!!

I want to start maintaining my pool using the BBB method this summer; currently I am using the 3" chlorine pucks the chlorinate my pool but am ready to stop that and make the switch to liquid bleach :-D

To start off, I took my pool water to the local pool store for analysis, please see the results below and maybe offer some suggestions on what changes need to take place and how I go about doing that. Thanks in advance for everyones help and looking forward to awesome water quality this year.

FC: 2.0ppm
TC: 2.0ppm
CC: 0.0ppm
PH: 7.0
CH: 325ppm
TA: 75ppm
CYA: 80ppm
 
Welcome to the forum 1critter,

Your figures don't look too bad but there are two things to adjust initially if you want to keep your pool clear.
Your PH is a little low and should be between 7.4-7.6

Your Cyanuric acid level is quite high and that means you need to increase your free chlorine to around 9ppm.
http://www.troublefreepool.com/pool-school/chlorine_cya_chart_shock

Visit pool school for more information
 
Welcome to TFP.

You are making the right choice!

Your chlorine level is too low for your CYA. That is one of the hardest things for most people to accept about our philosophy.

As others have said, your pH is a little low. The action you need to take for pH depends on what you may have added recently and how your pool's pH normally tends to move. If your pH tends to climb and you've recently added acid to lower it, you probably just want to aim your returns toward the surface and let aeration raise the pH.

Your CYA is on the high side, but you are in a high sun area. You can deal with it just by running higher chlorine levels. You want your chlorine between 6 and 9ppm at 80ppm CYA. You can see how chlorine and CYA relate at this link Chlorine CYA Chart


Here are some links to articles that you should find useful: Recommended Levels
ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry
but you may also want to just read through Pool School
to see what else is there.

I'd highly recommend you consider your own test kit. They are easy to use, the results are usually far more accurate than pool store testing, and the instant knowledge of your water condition is much more useful than a delayed analysis from the store.

The Taylor K2006 and the TF-100 at TFTestkits.net are both good kits. They are better than what most homeowners own, but we feel that the key to taking care of your pool is knowledge, and you get that knowledge from accurate, timely water test results.
 
What I would recommend is you drain out about 1/3 of your water and replace it with fresh, recirculate and have the water retested. This should lower your CYA to a more manageable number. It may also affect your other levels, so before you adjust PH or add chlorine, I believe you should drain and refill so you aren't wasting chemicals and money on them.

Post the new numbers and we'll help you adjust from there. In the meantime I would order your own test kit as advised above.

If you aren't sure about anything just post back and we'll help you :)
 
frustratedpoolmom said:
What I would recommend is you drain out about 1/3 of your water and replace it with fresh, recirculate and have the water retested. This should lower your CYA to a more manageable number. It may also affect your other levels, so before you adjust PH or add chlorine, I believe you should drain and refill so you aren't wasting chemicals and money on them.

Post the new numbers and we'll help you adjust from there. In the meantime I would order your own test kit as advised above.

If you aren't sure about anything just post back and we'll help you :)
Click to expand...

Hmmm....I'll have to take a guess on what a 1/3 would look like in my pool but will give it a shot. I have a couple test kits in the garage but they are probably a couple years old. Planning to one of the recommended test kits soon.
In the mean time do you think my current test kit would be okay for use or do you think the pool store would give more accurate results?
 
1critter said:
In the mean time do you think my current test kit would be okay for use or do you think the pool store would give more accurate results?
Click to expand...

Accuracy on some of the cheaper kits can depend on the user and how good they are at matching colors. The kits we recommend can test chlorine at very high levels, and the test is done by adding drops to the sample until it becomes clear. No color matching required. With your CYA level, you'll need to run between 6 and 9ppm chlorine, so your test probably won't be able to measure it. Most pool stores can't measure it either.

Pool store accuracy is a Crud shoot. Some are great, some are terrible.

:eek: The ****refers to a game played with dice that the auto-censor doesn't like.
 
JohnT said:
1critter said:
In the mean time do you think my current test kit would be okay for use or do you think the pool store would give more accurate results?
Click to expand...

Accuracy on some of the cheaper kits can depend on the user and how good they are at matching colors. The kits we recommend can test chlorine at very high levels, and the test is done by adding drops to the sample until it becomes clear. No color matching required. With your CYA level, you'll need to run between 6 and 9ppm chlorine, so your test probably won't be able to measure it. Most pool stores can't measure it either.

Pool store accuracy is a **** shoot. Some are great, some are terrible.

:eek: The ****refers to a game played with dice that the auto-censor doesn't like.
Click to expand...
With that being said. Should I try to raise the FC level with the kits I have now or would the other suggestion of partially draining the pool and refilling be a better method?
 

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frustratedpoolmom said:
If you go down about 2 feet from the top that should be roughly a third, close enough for our purposes - it doesn't need to be exact. Just getting the level closer to 50 will be much more easier for you to manage with. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks poolmom, I'll give it a try and let everyone know what the results are. Thanks again for all the quick responses from everyone. This is by far the best, most informative pool site on the net :goodjob:
 
Ok....so I drained about a 1/3 of my pool and the following is what my measurments came out to be. Besides the obvious chlorine level does anything else need to be changed? Thanks.

FC: 0.2ppm
TC: 0.2ppm
CC: 0.0ppm
PH: 7.6
CH: 250ppm
TA: 100ppm
CYA: 60ppm
 
awesome!!! Thanks for the suggestions for partially draining the pool water, that seemed to take care of all my issues :-D

Once I get the water balanced and easy to manage I think want to add salt to the water to improve the feel. Before when we would get out of the pool it seemed like our skin would be dry afterwards so I'm hoping that will improve it unless yall (Texas Slang :-D ) have any other suggestions.

One question on the pool calculator....I'm assuming that the numbers I plug in on the left are from the test results of my pool and the numbers on the right will be the target numbers correct?
 

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