Ugh ... pass the POP

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jblizzle

jblizzle

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May 19, 2010
43,184
Tucson, AZ
Working on getting the DW to test and add chlorine during the day (while the pump is on ... since I am not home while it is on). Dipped down to FC of 2.5ppm (CYA of 45ppm) a few times in the last few weeks. Noticed we were losing a good 4ppm each day which seemed excessive to me, but the water looks great.

So Saturday, I backwashed the filter, lowered the pH a bit, made sure all the suction and returns lines were open and started the shock process:
3:30PM: FC 3.0 ... added 1 bottle of Walmart 8.25% bleach (should add 4.5 ppm ... and did)
6PM: FC 7.5 ... added 2 gallons of 10% from Lowes (first time using this stuff)
9PM: FC 23.5 ... wha?? should have only raised it by 11 ... must be pretty strong or my testing is off

Sun
9AM: FC 16.0, CC 0.5 ... little late for an OCLT, but seemed like a large drop, added 1.5 bottles of the 8%
8PM: FC 8.0, CC 0.5 ... pretty high % loss for the day, apparently should have checked more often, added 2 bottles of 8%
10PM: FC 17.5 ... as expected

Mon
6:45AM: FC 15.5, CC 0 ... well failed that OCLT, added 1 bottle 8% to boost above shock level
7:30PM: FC 8, CC 0.5 ... pretty high % loss again, added 2 bottles of 8%
10:30PM: FC 18 ... as expected ... Water looks PERFECT, I mean I do not even see anything floating in front of the light, if the wind was a little more still, it would have been impossible to tell there was water in the pool.

Tues
6:45AM: FC 14.5, CC 0.5 ... FAILED again, added 1 gallon 10%

Wife saw me test this morning counting along and then wanted to know why I was adding more chlorine ... I am questioning my sanity as well :shock:

The water looks, well it does not look like anything is even in the pool. And yet I am seeing high daily losses and failed OCLT.

I find it hard to believe that my testing could be that far off, but clearly something is not right. I almost wish the pool did not look so good so that I could see what I am apparently fighting :hammer:

So where does one get the POP :?:
 
My first thought would be that your CYA is lower than you think and the sun is consuming the chlorine. I really can't say how much the ~1.5 hours of sunlight your pool is getting before your morning testing would consume.
 
The sun does not actually hit the water until about 7AM (shaded by the mountains, house and a tree), so I don't think that should matter; but maybe tonight I will try it a little earlier.

I am pretty confident in the CYA number. In the last 2 month I have tested it 6 times and after my major water replacement, it has climbed in accordance with the number of tablets I have used (I have at this point stopped using them).

Started around 20ppm, I used 10 tablets (80 oz) = 18ppm, plus 1 lb of granular stabilizer I found = 7ppm .... should be 45ppm and that is what I have tested the last 2 times.

Thanks for your thoughts.
 
Do you have an automatic fill system, if you have a leak and the auto fill is keeping the pool topped off it could look like overnight chlorine loss.

Ike

p.s. Also did you have constant flow to your solar panels while shocking?
 
I do, but when I have been out at night I can hear that it is not running, or if it does a bit, I would struggle to believe that it was adding enough water to lower the FC ... and the CYA trend would not point that direction.

I actually dumped some bleach in that bucket last night too.

I may turn it off tonight to remove that variable ... thanks :goodjob:
 
Are you having to backwash more frequently then normal (or is your pressure going up faster than normal)?

Warning- War Story: When I was gone last summer for a few days and a certain member of my family (that will remain unnamed, but if you are looking, is the only linen family member in a picture that I put on tfp somewhere :mrgreen: ), thought that a beeping sound coming from the swg was reason to just shut it off. Needless to say, 4 days later I had cloudy water. My water cleared up right within two days, but iirc I did not pass the OCLT for at least a week. Even near the end, when the water had it's wonderful borate induced refractive index sparkle :-D , I still could not pass the OCLT for iirc ~2 nights.
 
Really, the pressure has not been rising. I probably did not even need to do the backwash that I did (pressure with the new DE barely came down any).

This is not helping my reputation pouring massive amounts of bleach into a crystal clear pool ... while the in-laws are paying a company to maintain their swamp :lol: ....

It has literally been green for over a month and I think they are on the verge of draining it. In reality, they have a lot of problems, but are not interested in listening to me. The sand filter is undersized, the pump is a 2.5 HP on a smallish pool, no reason for the power, and it has a pretty bad suction leak somewhere. The backwash valve is leaking and needs replaced ... which results in loss of prime when they turn of the pump ... so they are running 24/7 trying to clear the pool. Personally, I would get a new pump and filter and redo all the pad plumbing.
 
Because they are jealous, maybe your in-laws are sneaking over in the middle of the night to pee in your pool. :shock:
 
There are certainly many vagaries of pool water chemistry....not the least of which is maintaining a steady FC.

I have this issue with my initial dose of chlorine in the Spring turning my water green, yet I have NEVER had any iron (or copper) introduced in the pool. Neither the pool water or the fill EVER tests positive for either metal. I think it may be Elves. (Hmmm, do you ever see any really short folks hanging around the pool at night?)

Like we tell our newbies, only two things consume chlorine....and we all know what they are. :mrgreen:
 

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Did you check your skimmer, pump basket, and filter to see that there isn't anything that got stuck in them that may cause higher chlorine demand? Another variant you can try is to turn off your pump within 30 minutes of adding chlorine for the OCLT and then turn it on and take a water sample within 30 minutes the next morning. That is, you'll be seeing the loss of chlorine in the pool rather than through the skimmer, pump basket and filter. If you notice less chlorine loss, then the loss is mostly in those other areas.
 
Filter and all baskets were and are clean.
From yesterday:

Tues
6:45AM: FC 14.5, CC 0.5 ... FAILED again, added 1 gallon 10%
3:45PM: FC 10 ... again a seemingly large drop, had wife add 2 bottles of 8% to get back to around 19
8:15PM: FC 16 ... added 1 bottle of 8%
10:30PM: FC 18 ... a little lower than expected, but I switched to my older reagents to use them up and may have double counted a drop

Turned off the auto-fill.

Wed
5:45AM FC: 18.5ppm ... Well, that seems like a pass to me, used old kit again. No noticeable water drop.

So, I suppose I will let it drift down and see what happens. Hopefully the loss will not continue to be over 50% a day. I may just have to bump the CYA up a little higher, and since I plan to go SWG soon, that may not be a bad thing.

Wondering if the fill water is introducing something ...

One oddity I just recalled is that the water for the slide (comes from same source as the auto-fill) suddenly got clogged up about a week ago, and I was getting little grass-clipping-like things out of the little 1/4" line. Still have not taken things apart to figure out what it was or how it got there. I think I saw some of the same things floating in the auto-fill bucket. Not sure how something would be in the freshwater pipe large enough to clog the line or why nothing the house was also affected ... could something be growing inside or into the PVC pipe feeding the autofill and slide? I need to pull the 1/4" copper line and valve off and see what is in it clogging things up.
 
jblizzle said:
Wondering if the fill water is introducing something ...
Click to expand...
Many cities, including my own, use CC instead of FC for chlorination because it lasts longer in the pipes so when added to the pool this uses up some of the FC although it should be proportional to the amount of fill water added each day. You might want to test your fill water for CC just to see.
 
We are on a semi-private well (100 houses), nothing is added to the water, although I may check it. I think they occasionally add something, might have to call and see if anything was done to the equipment recently.

Still disconcerting that something is in the freshwater pipe that is large enough to clog up my slide valve ...
 
I should have taken a picture of what was dribbling out of the slide. Lots of little pieces ... maybe 1/4"-1/2" long, pretty thin. They did not smear green or anything on the slide that I could see. I definitely saw some of them in the auto-fill when I opened up the valve while troubleshooting the slide. The auto-fill is before the the slide, so whatever it is starts before the auto-fill.

I do not see any of the little things in the auto-fill any more. I think the slide is still clogged, but, I have not turned it on for the last week. So whatever was in the pipe appears to all be between the auto-fill and the slide now. I guess I should start opening up the pipes and figure out what is clogging it up.

BTW ... tap water just tested 0 for FC and CC as expected.

Going to have wife call the water company (well, really just our neighbors are the board of directors) to see if anything "different" happened in the last few weeks.
 
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