Hi everyone,
New to the forum... bought a home here in Phoenix in November (my first pool ever - no knowledge of pool care...) and the pool water was really clear at the time, so all I did was add a chlorine tablet (neighbor's advice) once a week over the winter and kept the leaves out. That kept the pool water clear... until temperature started getting into the 90s consistently, then I had a yellow algae bloom! Called the local pool guy and he said to add 6 bags of shock, which seemed to make the yellow/brown clouds on the sides/bottom of the pool go away (hooray!). Water temp was in the low- to mid-70s at the time. About a month ago, looked like I had some yellow algae coming back, not as bad as first time, but didn't want it to get that bad again... so I called the local pool guy and he said it might be good to add some copper algaecide and throw in a bunch of shock again (in the reverse order). That cleared up the problem again, and for the last month the water has been clear. Now I'm doing maintenance dosage on algaecide 1x/week (although switched away from copper over to InTheSwim's Algaecide 60). Local pool guy also said I needed to keep more chlorine tablets in the floating dispenser, so now I have 4 tablets at a time in the floater, adding on average 1 more per day to keep 4 in there at a time. My kids swim every day for at least an hour or two during the summer. I've also been adding 1 bag of Aqua-Chem (from Costco) shock every 2-3 days to keep some chlorine in the pool... it seems to burn right through the chlorine. In trying to figure out why it's burning through so much chlorine, I started to research pool chemistry and came across the forum a couple weeks ago... so ordered my test kit and got my results last night:
FC = 1ppm
CC = 1ppm
pH = 7.2
TA = 180
CH = >820 (I put in 82 drops and the test tube still hadn't turned blue... my back was getting tired, so I gave up at 820... realizing this was probably off the charts on the high end and would require fixing anyhow...)
CYA = >100 (the black dot disappeared well below the 100 line on the test tube... if I had to guess, I'd say 140-150 based on the intervals between 80-90-100 further up the tube)
I shocked the pool (w bag of shock from Costco) on Sunday, and did the maintenance dosage (2 oz) of Algaecide 60 on Saturday. Test results are from Monday night (last night). I've also had to add some soda ash over the past month to keep pH up to 7.2, it has dropped to 7.0 a couple of times lately. TA is very high at 180... I added a little bit of muriatic acid to lower it about a week ago, but didn't seem to help for more than a couple of days.
With CH and CYA levels as high as they are, I'm guessing I need to drain the pool and start fresh? Like I said, I bought the house in November, and not sure when the water was last replaced...
Help?
Thanks in advance!
-Pete
New to the forum... bought a home here in Phoenix in November (my first pool ever - no knowledge of pool care...) and the pool water was really clear at the time, so all I did was add a chlorine tablet (neighbor's advice) once a week over the winter and kept the leaves out. That kept the pool water clear... until temperature started getting into the 90s consistently, then I had a yellow algae bloom! Called the local pool guy and he said to add 6 bags of shock, which seemed to make the yellow/brown clouds on the sides/bottom of the pool go away (hooray!). Water temp was in the low- to mid-70s at the time. About a month ago, looked like I had some yellow algae coming back, not as bad as first time, but didn't want it to get that bad again... so I called the local pool guy and he said it might be good to add some copper algaecide and throw in a bunch of shock again (in the reverse order). That cleared up the problem again, and for the last month the water has been clear. Now I'm doing maintenance dosage on algaecide 1x/week (although switched away from copper over to InTheSwim's Algaecide 60). Local pool guy also said I needed to keep more chlorine tablets in the floating dispenser, so now I have 4 tablets at a time in the floater, adding on average 1 more per day to keep 4 in there at a time. My kids swim every day for at least an hour or two during the summer. I've also been adding 1 bag of Aqua-Chem (from Costco) shock every 2-3 days to keep some chlorine in the pool... it seems to burn right through the chlorine. In trying to figure out why it's burning through so much chlorine, I started to research pool chemistry and came across the forum a couple weeks ago... so ordered my test kit and got my results last night:
FC = 1ppm
CC = 1ppm
pH = 7.2
TA = 180
CH = >820 (I put in 82 drops and the test tube still hadn't turned blue... my back was getting tired, so I gave up at 820... realizing this was probably off the charts on the high end and would require fixing anyhow...)
CYA = >100 (the black dot disappeared well below the 100 line on the test tube... if I had to guess, I'd say 140-150 based on the intervals between 80-90-100 further up the tube)
I shocked the pool (w bag of shock from Costco) on Sunday, and did the maintenance dosage (2 oz) of Algaecide 60 on Saturday. Test results are from Monday night (last night). I've also had to add some soda ash over the past month to keep pH up to 7.2, it has dropped to 7.0 a couple of times lately. TA is very high at 180... I added a little bit of muriatic acid to lower it about a week ago, but didn't seem to help for more than a couple of days.
With CH and CYA levels as high as they are, I'm guessing I need to drain the pool and start fresh? Like I said, I bought the house in November, and not sure when the water was last replaced...
Help?
Thanks in advance!
-Pete