I completely drained and refilled my pool. The pool did not have any algae before it was drained, I just felt better about starting new since it was obvious the previous owners were not taking care of anything around the house properly and were using pucks and all kinds of "pool store" chemicals and the water could have been who knows how many years old.
So with just the fresh water, I had (obviously) no chlorine, no CYA, ok CH around 260, high pH around 8, high TA around 180. I had a pool guy come in to replace the dead pump and do the drain/fill, and I, maybe stupidly, let him start up the chemicals since he basically tossed that in for free. He put in a puck and threw in some dry CYA twice. I did a test almost a week later and the CYA seemed like it was maybe 5 or 10 on my test, but pool guy said his test strip said it was 30. I just wanted him gone, so I just said okay.
Since then I put in, over a few days (I was afraid I would add too much), 1 gallon of liquid CYA. Now I am testing it at 30, which seems low for what I think is the size of my pool -- Going by the pool calculator, I was really expecting the CYA to be higher than that, especially since there was already some dry CYA added earlier. Should I put in more CYA? I wanted it to be at 40 or 45 since I have full desert sun shining on it all day long. Even now, we are having to put in 1/2 to full gallon of 10% chlorine every single day, it's not sticking at all. We've also put in muriatic acid a few times to lower the pH and it hasn't been very effective. The pH has been bouncing around like crazy from 7.2-8.2 from day to day.
Could I be grossly underestimating the gallon size of my pool? Should I have shocked it? If you don't raise your CYA to 30 or more in one go, does it not remain in the water? I feel like everything I'm putting in my pool is not having the expected outcome.
I do not have a pool leak, and have barely had to add more water to the pool at all, so that should not be an issue.
So with just the fresh water, I had (obviously) no chlorine, no CYA, ok CH around 260, high pH around 8, high TA around 180. I had a pool guy come in to replace the dead pump and do the drain/fill, and I, maybe stupidly, let him start up the chemicals since he basically tossed that in for free. He put in a puck and threw in some dry CYA twice. I did a test almost a week later and the CYA seemed like it was maybe 5 or 10 on my test, but pool guy said his test strip said it was 30. I just wanted him gone, so I just said okay.
Since then I put in, over a few days (I was afraid I would add too much), 1 gallon of liquid CYA. Now I am testing it at 30, which seems low for what I think is the size of my pool -- Going by the pool calculator, I was really expecting the CYA to be higher than that, especially since there was already some dry CYA added earlier. Should I put in more CYA? I wanted it to be at 40 or 45 since I have full desert sun shining on it all day long. Even now, we are having to put in 1/2 to full gallon of 10% chlorine every single day, it's not sticking at all. We've also put in muriatic acid a few times to lower the pH and it hasn't been very effective. The pH has been bouncing around like crazy from 7.2-8.2 from day to day.
Could I be grossly underestimating the gallon size of my pool? Should I have shocked it? If you don't raise your CYA to 30 or more in one go, does it not remain in the water? I feel like everything I'm putting in my pool is not having the expected outcome.
I do not have a pool leak, and have barely had to add more water to the pool at all, so that should not be an issue.