I'm really sorry this is so long – but I’m desperately seeking direction.
A week ago, my husband and I bought a house with a pool (pool stats below in signature). The previous owners opened the pool when they listed the house in December, and it appears that they were just chunking a bag of Walmart powdered shock in the pool every few days, but no other maintenance was done.
I bought a K-2006 test kit and began tackling the pool immediately. The pool is unbelievably clear considering I can’t keep FC in the thing to save my life. I know (NOW) that I should have been dumping bleach in the pool more frequently – and plan to remedy that beginning tonight.
The Issue
The pool gets direct (and I mean FULL ON DIRECT) sunlight from about 9:30 am until about 7:30 pm. I’m concerned that because of the sun, I'm not getting the shock level high enough, and that the other chemical levels are causing the system to be out of balance. Again – the pool appears clean – so much in fact that we’ve taken a dip a couple of times with no ill consequences (to us at least). The CYA mix bottle was missing from my K-2006 kit (a replacement is on the way). The last time I took a water sample to the pool store – the CYA was 75. The filter has been running 24/7 and the PSI is between 8 and 10. We had rain every day last week, so I ended up backwashing about 4 inches of water out of the pool last Friday. I haven’t backwashed this week. Prior to last night, I was adding roughly 2-4 bottles of 6% bleach to the pool daily.
Last night at dusk, I added 6 gallons of 12.5% LC to the pool (the recommended shock value to get the pool to a FC=31 with a CYA of 75) – I tested about an hour later and got the following results:
FC: 1.8
CC: 1.0
pH: 7.2
TA: 120
CH: 290
CYA: ??
According to the pool calculator, I needed to add another 4.8 gallons of bleach and some borax to bring up the pH. I added 5 gallons of bleach and a box (77 oz) of borax (this was about 10 oz short of the recommendation).
After 45 minutes, I tested again.
FC: 28
CC: 0.5
pH: 7.4
This morning (before dawn)– I had 0 FC, 1 CC – and a pH of around 7.3
So again – my question is – with a past CYA of 75 – should I be adding bleach to get to a FC level of 30-31 every hour until the FC stops decreasing? Or because of all the direct sunlight, should I be trying to push it to a FC=40-44 number? Are the other chemicals playing a factor? With a CYA of 75+ -- is this a hopeless cause without draining (I really really REALLY don’t want to drain – the cost of H2O is outrageous right now)?
Finally: We inherited a Polaris 180 – should we be running him during the process or should he stay out of the pool until we’re done shocking?
A week ago, my husband and I bought a house with a pool (pool stats below in signature). The previous owners opened the pool when they listed the house in December, and it appears that they were just chunking a bag of Walmart powdered shock in the pool every few days, but no other maintenance was done.
I bought a K-2006 test kit and began tackling the pool immediately. The pool is unbelievably clear considering I can’t keep FC in the thing to save my life. I know (NOW) that I should have been dumping bleach in the pool more frequently – and plan to remedy that beginning tonight.
The Issue
The pool gets direct (and I mean FULL ON DIRECT) sunlight from about 9:30 am until about 7:30 pm. I’m concerned that because of the sun, I'm not getting the shock level high enough, and that the other chemical levels are causing the system to be out of balance. Again – the pool appears clean – so much in fact that we’ve taken a dip a couple of times with no ill consequences (to us at least). The CYA mix bottle was missing from my K-2006 kit (a replacement is on the way). The last time I took a water sample to the pool store – the CYA was 75. The filter has been running 24/7 and the PSI is between 8 and 10. We had rain every day last week, so I ended up backwashing about 4 inches of water out of the pool last Friday. I haven’t backwashed this week. Prior to last night, I was adding roughly 2-4 bottles of 6% bleach to the pool daily.
Last night at dusk, I added 6 gallons of 12.5% LC to the pool (the recommended shock value to get the pool to a FC=31 with a CYA of 75) – I tested about an hour later and got the following results:
FC: 1.8
CC: 1.0
pH: 7.2
TA: 120
CH: 290
CYA: ??
According to the pool calculator, I needed to add another 4.8 gallons of bleach and some borax to bring up the pH. I added 5 gallons of bleach and a box (77 oz) of borax (this was about 10 oz short of the recommendation).
After 45 minutes, I tested again.
FC: 28
CC: 0.5
pH: 7.4
This morning (before dawn)– I had 0 FC, 1 CC – and a pH of around 7.3
So again – my question is – with a past CYA of 75 – should I be adding bleach to get to a FC level of 30-31 every hour until the FC stops decreasing? Or because of all the direct sunlight, should I be trying to push it to a FC=40-44 number? Are the other chemicals playing a factor? With a CYA of 75+ -- is this a hopeless cause without draining (I really really REALLY don’t want to drain – the cost of H2O is outrageous right now)?
Finally: We inherited a Polaris 180 – should we be running him during the process or should he stay out of the pool until we’re done shocking?