Just Drained and filled my pool here in AZ overnight

[Jeff_AZ]

Hi All! I am new to this board. I stumbled upon it when I was searching the internet for some answers.

I have an ~11000 gallon in ground pool here in Arizona. I had a miserable time last summer with keeping my chlorine levels above 0 after a couple of days. A few water tests last summer at Leslie's Pool Supply said the water had very high TDS and I'm 99% sure I had a high CYA level also. I just drained my pool last night and it is a few hours from being done. I am very confused on where to go from here. I was using the 3" tabs that they sell. I know they add CYA to the water so I am wanting to use liquid chlorine this time around and no shock ever in the water. Do you guys have any advice for me on getting things stable and going good? The weather here will be in the 80s+ every day starting next week, so pool season is just around the corner.

I have just a basic 6 test strip that doesn't read very accurate. I found an old liquid test kit from the previous owner and got the following results:

FC 1.0
Ph 7.5

I plan on going to the pool supply store today to 1) get the water tested to see where I am at and 2) buy a much better test that will let me track everything at home better.

Thank you for all your advice!

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!!!

First. the strips are worthless and likely the old kit may not be much better, so getting a new test kit is a good idea.
Second, do NOT buy a test kit locally. They will NOT have one that we recommend. See: pool-school/pool_test_kit_comparison

Order a kit online (TF-100 is the best value and there is a West coast distributor that should get it to you quickly).

Use poolcalculator.com to determine how much of each chemical you need to accomplish your goals.

It is usually best to use pure CYA to get the levels up more quickly than the tablets will allow. The tablets are good for vacation, etc if you CYA level is not already too high.

Read through Pool School (button at upper right) to better understand the chemistry and the methods we recommend.

Feel free to ask more questions here as they come up.

 

[Jeff_AZ]

Ok, pool is just about done filling and I took some water to Sun Devil Pool Supply. They say the water tested as follows:

FC 0.6
TC 0.6
Bromine N/A
PH 7.8
TA 160
CA 0
CH 200
TDS 1000
Phosphates 100

The said I should do the following to start up the pool:

1) Add 1 quart (32 oz) Muratic Acid. Run pump 4 hours.
2) Thoroughly brush the pool.
3) Backwash filter. Add 1 gallon liquid (128oz) conditioner directly to the skimmer basket. Run pump 4 hours.
4) Add 2 pounds of shock. They had me buy a clean shock that had no Calcium in it.

The pool calculator says differently:

17oz of 29% muratic.
145oz of liquid conditioner.
6.9oz of cal-hypo shock.

UGH! I am so confused. Which do you think is the best? I will be ordering a TF100 kit tomorrow and should have that by end of the week hopefully.

Thoughts?

 

[JasonLion]

You can lower the PH a lot or a little, the only difference it makes is how long until the next time you need to lower PH. With your TA fairly high, I suggest lowering PH a little more than usual, so a quart of muriatic acid sounds good.

Liquid conditioner is significantly more expensive than granular conditioner. If you want to spend the money then at least a gallon. You want to aim for a CYA level of 50, but not go all the way there in one step (easy to raise, difficult yo lower, so don't overshot).

Since CYA is really really low you don't need much chlorine, one quart of bleach or 5 oz of cal-hypo in the evening (assuming the water is clear).

Take a look at the recommended levels chart in Pool School.