Another BBB convert

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relling2245

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Apr 18, 2012
29
Wichita Ks
Hi all, another convert to the BBB process here. So much good information and so far all questions have been answered with a search in forums.

Bought house year and half ago that had a pool. Since was first pool for me, had a service last year (and very end of prior year when bought house). Anyway, during last year I had a couple outbreaks of cloudy water and never really felt that the pool service was doing squat for me ("keep running the pump and backwash"). Missed a few good swimming days due to that. They closed the pool mid October and since I had started reading this site I had bought the k2006 kit and tested the water at closing.

Closing
FC/CC Didn't write down since I thought they were meaningless over winter.
PH 7.2
TA 220
CH 180
CYA Way over 100, would not be suprised if it was higher than 200 or 300. It took very little to hide the dot.

So, starting this year I decided to handle this myself and began education on this site. Opening was a breeze, except for a leaking fitting, but hey, that was easy to replace. When I tested the water it was early April and in the 60's already. The PH was over 8.2, the TA was so high i got as high as 60 drops with no change, the CH was 110 and the cya was a shocking zero.

That test just killed me. To make matters worse, there was stuff on the bottom of the pool that I thought was dead algea untill I stirred it up. From other posts I have read about it, it was scaling. Floating flakes, would break up in my hand etc. Really regret not taking a picture of it. The pool cleaner sucked up a good two pounds of it. Thought it might have been sand, but it would just disintegrate in my hand when I grabbed a pinch and dissolved in the bucket when rain filled it. Very weird. Don't want that again.

Anyway, numbers scared me so went to pool store and they had the same ph, cya and had no idea where the ta was. They recommended a partial drain. I figured there was enough wrong here, that doing a partial drain was going to be best in the long run. Spent the weekend draining and refilling and got to the point where my numbers were PH over 8.2 still, TA down to 280, CH 110 still and cya reading 0.

This made the hand reach to the top and scratch, so I tested the fill water.
Fill
PH 8.2 (multiple tests by me and pool store)
TA 80
CH 100

Decided at this point in time best thing to do was hit it with acid to drop the ph and ta before doing anything else. So spent time with acid until got ph to about 7.4 and TA about 220. I then did liquid stabilizer (yes, probably should have done the cheaper solid route) and started using the rest of my dichlor (just love shooting myself in the foot) to get the chlorine up. (Have since stopped using it)

Long story short, I paused. Spend the next couple days doing just acid and ordering fas-dpd kit. (Did I mention I hate that the kits have .75 oz of the one you use a couple drops of and then .75 oz of the reagent you use 40 drops of?) Needless to say, my over testing of fc ate up my r-0871. More on the way.

So here I am now with the numbers below, thinking that I have a plan. Still more acid to get the TA down to 90. No more stabilized chlorine. Leaving CH at 160 since vinyl pool. When I get my reagent refill, I shock. Was stupid of me to start that when the bottle was low, now have to start over. On the bright side, the water is very clear now and the brushing got all the scaling off the sides and bottom. Was able to swim around in it a day last week feeling all the walls.

Current
FC/CC over 5 (was 21/2 three days ago on my last reagent test)
PH 7.2
TA 180
CH 160
CYA 60
Salt No idea, dont have test for it.

As for bleach, using the germicidal 182oz clorox that I can get at menards, home depot and lowes.

Thanks for taking the time to read my rant and love the info here.
 
relling2245 said:
That test just killed me. To make matters worse, there was stuff on the bottom of the pool that I thought was dead algea untill I stirred it up. From other posts I have read about it, it was scaling. Floating flakes, would break up in my hand etc. Really regret not taking a picture of it. The pool cleaner sucked up a good two pounds of it. Thought it might have been sand, but it would just disintegrate in my hand when I grabbed a pinch and dissolved in the bucket when rain filled it. Very weird. Don't want that again.

Anyway, numbers scared me so went to pool store and they had the same ph, cya and had no idea where the ta was. They recommended a partial drain. I figured there was enough wrong here, that doing a partial drain was going to be best in the long run. Spent the weekend draining and refilling and got to the point where my numbers were PH over 8.2 still, TA down to 280, CH 110 still and cya reading 0.
.
Click to expand...

what was the purpose of the drain?
 
You are on the right track. :goodjob:

Draining to get CYA down was a great idea, though it appears you didn't need to replace quite as much water as you did.

It looks like you have TA down enough that you can relax about TA a little. You want to keep working the TA down, but you don't need to rush that along any faster than is convenient. With very high TA fill water, you are likely going to be lowering TA just about all the time. So work on finding a routine that works easily and isn't too much trouble.
 
march2012 said:
what was the purpose of the drain?
Click to expand...

I put more weight in my closing test of the CYA being so high at end of last year than I did in the test at open since so many other things were wrong. Saw no point in putting in a bunch of chemicals to lower ta and ph and then possibly have to turn around and drain anyway.

The test at open could have been correct on the cya. That will be a hard thing for me, knowing when to trust the test even though my head says something else.
 
Well, have my reagent refill so trying overnight test tonight. Even though the water looks good and the cl does not seem to be having an issue, i still suspect it to fail due to some brown i see in the bottom portion of the light.

Bought a gasket today so i could pull the light and sanitize the lens.

I am sure this next question is somewhere in the bowels of this site since everything else is, but my first attempt missed.

When doing the oclt, does it matter if i close the autocover? Generaly during cooler nights I leave it covered to retain heat. I can't think of any reason it would matter, but no harm in asking.
 
Well, pulled the light to clean it. I expected junk to be behind it. Expectations exceeded. Yuck. I do not want to do that again. So glad I hit it with shock level before pulling the light. Spent an hour cleaning the light and netting the slimy gunk up that i was able to brush out of the niche. Took a break to test the fc and it had dropped to 16 on me so shot it back up while netting more and put the light back together.

Not a big fan of the pentair sam gasket design, it has repeat leak written all over it.

So, now its maintain fc level and test every hour.

Very glad I ordered the 16z r871 because I still have a problem doing the test consistently. 1 in 3 times I will get a reading that doesn't jive with the previous test and the amount of cl added. I end up doing three tests just to make sure the numbers match. Most of the time, the off test is the first one. I almost think it has to do with the amount of powder I add.

As for the powder, I always seem to have a tiny piece that refuses to disolve. Is that normal?
 
So weird. Been out doing the test again. Last hour I came up with fc 25, cc .5 and added a little over 1/2 gal of 12.5%.

First test (in drops)
42, 18 (didn't seem right since water is pretty clear after the fiasco)
61,0 (could be, sun off pool, added about 3 in last cl add)
31, 26 (What?)
62, 4
61, 0
59, 0

So, it looks to me like 30, .5. Didn't add anything this time since I have it up high with room to go down. It shouldn't be this hard, its a pretty easy set of instructions to follow.
 
I should go work for a pool store as inconsistent as I am at the fas test.

Received new powder and speedstir today.

Tested two times at 4pm, fc 15.5 cc 0.5, fc15 cc 0.5, so i thought great same two times in a row.

Fast forward to 9pm, ran 4 tests because i was all over the place.
fc 7.5, cc 6
fc 10, cc 4
fc 5.5 cc 8.5
fc 9.5 cc 5

Water is clear but i know it has stuff that needs killed. It will really make the shock process a pain if I cannot trust a test result.

I really cannot believe that I am all over the place. I watched the Taylor video of the test and not doing anything different (except speedstir now, :goodjob: to that little helper)
 

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Well, no more chance to be hired at the pool store. Seems like i have a routine down now and have gone the last week and a half consistent test results.

No cc and nightly fc loss is less than 1 and the water is clear. Held up over the weekend with swimmer load and high temps and wind (go figure). Hopefully no snapping turtles in the pool this year :shock:

Thanks all for the kind words and helpful comments. I figure I am on the right path now since i'm bored with the consistent readings. :).
 
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