REcents tests and seems "out of whack"

[Guest]

New to the forums and recently decided to ditch the pool guy. As far as my test kit the wife bought a HTHG one from Walmart to get started becasue it was inexpensive. I have a SWG and added salt yesterday to bring it up and retested today. Here are my latest results.

FC=3.0
Ph=7.5
TA=120ppm
CH=Well not sure since the test water didn't even turn red......
CYA-Looks to be at 100 or just above that, the highest the test kit went was 100 and it was a couple of mm less than the line.

Salt level as of today is 2400 (gonna add 1 more bag today) and water temp is 65.

Water doesn't look too bad but I'm worried about the high CYA and the hardness.

Here are a couple of pictures I took just now:

 

[JasonLion]

The CYA test will report any CYA level above 100 as being 100, so there is no telling what your CYA level really is. You can do the CYA test with dilution, mix equal parts pool water and tap water, do the CYA test on that, and multiply the result by two, which will give you a vague idea if the CYA level is closer to 100 or more like 200+. Keep in mind that the WalMart kit only has enough CYA reagent to do the test two or three times.

What color did you see when doing the CH test, did that color change, and how many drops did you try before giving up?

 

[Guest]

As far as the CH I used the 25ml of water and added 5 drops to it and its supposed to turn it red. After 5 drops in turned yellow and not even close to red. I didn't even get to the point of adding the tirate.

 

[Guest]

Ok I just did the CH test again. THis time I added drops until it turned red.

It took 10 drops of hardness indicator to turn the water red.
It took 30 drops of the tirate to turn it from red to blue.

I did the dilution test for CYA and the black dot disappeared at about 52.

 

[JasonLion]

So your CH level is around 300. That is a very reasonable CH level.

The CH test in that particular test kit is not well compensated against interference, thus red coming out as yellow. Your approach to get it working is a good one, though chances are it would have worked starting yellow and turned green/blue/clear when you got to 30 drops.

 

[Guest]

Oh thanks.....now the CYA seems a touch high. I know that I need to drain my spa here in the near future to fix the spa light and they are connected through an equalizer. How much should I drain to lower the CYA...50%?

 

[JasonLion]

To lower CYA by 50% you need to replace 50% of your water.

 

[Guest]

So what do you think a good CYA level,ismformamSWG pool.....everything I've read says 70-80. I've used a pool maintainence for a while now and I think that's where I got my high CYA levels. It seems twice a year they would add "conditioner" and who knows if it really needed it or let alone if they even tested for it.

 

[JasonLion]

With a SWG we recommend CYA be between 70 and 80. You can get by with CYA at 90, and it will slowly drift down (assuming you don't add any) over the course of the swim season.