Water change initial treatment

[beleau]

Hello. Newly registered but have been lurking for a while. First season with new house/ pool. Approx 40k at my best estimate. Vinyl. Long story short, I had a lot of leaves build up this fall due to me being a novice and my aquabot breaking. ( just bought a dolphin premier by the way and love it). Anyway. I had a lot of stains and I assumed it was organic from the leaves. Leslie's sold me a bunch of Crud bla bla bla and that didnt work. After extensive reading mostly on here, I relized that vitamin c cleared the stains. So I did the entire ascorbic acid treatment, bought the tf100 and am rapidly on my way to understanding how this actually works. Problem was my cya is very high. As far as I can tell probably 100-140. Pool store tested and said it was 60 but I've done it 5 times and test over 100, this includes diluting method. Obviously the cya came from previously using pucks in a feeder, and all the quadruple shocks Leslie's told me to do. Anyway, I drained 50% of the water last night and am in the process of filling it back up now to use the BBB method.

My question is; can I just start the process with simple balancing to my levels using the pool calculator or do I need any special methods ie shock to treat 50% new water?

Thanks

Steve

 

[duraleigh]

Welcome to the forum. :lol: Get your CYA right before anything else. Manually chlorinated pools should be around 40-50ppm so a 50% drain may not be adequate.

If your water is crystal clear, there is likely no reason to shock your pool BUT we need a more complete picture. Once your CYA is at the correct level and the pool is back up to level, it would be very helpful if you post a complete set of current test results......it may change what advice is given.

 

[257WbyMag]

Good advice from duraleigh. Welcome to TFP!

 

[beleau]

Awesome. I will run all the test when full and post back. I am really hoping my cya is good so I don't need to drain again but we will see. I was a little afraid of draining more because of the vinyl. Thanks SO much for the advice. And I just got my new speed stir in the mail today so I can test it out!

 

[beleau]

ok so water is full and here are the readings;
FC = 0
PH = 6.8
TA = 80
CH = 40
CYA = 60

Water is crystal clear. So can I simply ajust now based on the pool calculator? I am using 8.25% bleach, 20 mule team borax, baking soda, and I also have soda ash.

thanks
steve

 

[JasonLion]

Raise the PH, and then retest the TA, before adjusting the TA.

The first step is to get the PH up, then chlorine, and only after that everything else.

 

[beleau]

Great. That's what I did. Oh first with borax. Now:

TA 100
FC 5.5
CC .5
PH 7.5
TC 6

 

[JasonLion]

Looking good.

 

[beleau]

ok, so here's the deal. Stains are very slowly coming back, I mean barely but I can see a few popping up. Any suggestions? I am wondering. I did find out that our community water system does come from a well but I have no idea how much metal is in it. I am wondering if that has anything to do with it or if I let the ph get too high? It is at 7.5. I do realize that the treatment said not to get it above 7.2. Does that mean I need to keep it at 7.2 forever? Should I try and bring the ph back down to 7.2 and then try sequestrant? I have 5 quarts of jacks pink stuff. I am hoping that I don't need to be continually adding this stuff as it aint cheap. I also still have 5 lbs of acsorbic acid. I ordered extra when I did the initial AA treatment.
thanks
Steve

 

[linen]

Sounds like you have metals in your fill water since the ascorbic acid removed it last time, and I assume you are using the same fill water this time. Metals are common in well water. Unless you replace your water with metal free water, you most likely will need to use a sequestrant and then continue to use maintenance doses. Keeping your ph lower end will also help, but you do not want to be below 7.2 Have you read?:http://www.troublefreepool.com/pool-school/metal stains

 

[beleau]

I have read it. I am confused though as to why I didn't have any problems all summer and now I have all these metal issues. It is winter here, does water temp have anything to do with this? So should I aim to keep my ph right at 7.2? Any thoughts on where I should keep TA at?
thanks

 

[UnderWaterVanya]

If I recall correctly, the pH of water in a pool tends to rise when the water gets cold. Perhaps it went too high the first time you saw the stains. Also, the pucks drive down pH constantly, so pH tends to drift down in a trichlor pool.

Sent via Tapatalk...

 

[beleau]

yeah I always seemed to struggle with keeping the ph up last summer when I used the pucks, of course now I am not using them anymore