Hello everyone.
I’m pretty new to this pool stuff, bought a house in November with a 13600 gal fiberglass pool. It is setup with a Pentair pump and filter system. Throughout the winter the pool was easy to maintain. Kept my eye on Cl and Ph and augmented as necessary. With the weather warming up I’m having some issues an am very frustrated, looking for some help.
Last week I noticed that I could not maintain chlorine in the pool. The previous owners and myself had been using the trichlor tablets, and augmenting with liquid chlorine as needed. Weather just starting to warm up here, and no matter what I did I could not hold chlorine. No evidence of algae at all, pool crystal clear. I finally broke down and went to the pool store to get a water test. 0 FC and TC, CH @ 150, CYA @ 50, TA @ 80, PH @ 7.4, 0 copper/Iron.
Pool store # 1 said I should add 15lbs of CH, and add 2 lbs of 73% Ca Hypo to shock the pool. Over the next 2 days I did as instructed. But chlorine continues to disappear rapidly. In addition, my water is somewhat cloudy, and the first couple days some brown dusty looking particles would be present in the bottom of the pool. I would manually vacuum these up (sometimes twice a day) and then proceed to manually clean the filters as so particles wouldn’t get washed back into the pool. I called the pool store and they said sometimes the cloudiness/particles are normal when adding CH and Ca Hypo and to continue to vaccum. The cloudiness is slowly improving, but the ability to hold chlorine is not. The shock pretty much burned up in 24hrs or less.
After starting in on some research I found your site. I purchased a TFT CYA and HAS/DPD chlorine test to go along with the Alk/Cl/Ph test I already had. While waiting for the tests to arrive I continually was adding liquid 10% chlorine to try and maintain Cl levels, but felt as if I was spinning my wheels. Decent levels (10-15ppm) in the morning, 0 chlorine by the evening..I also removed all the trichlor tabs.
Test arrived yesterday afternoon. I decided to perform an OCLT and the CYA test. I added an entire gallon of 10% chlorine at dark, ran the pump for an hour and than ran the two tests. CYA 70-80, and FC 9.5, CC .5.
Up at 6am, prior to the sun on the water and tested the Cl levels again. FC 7ppm, CC .5ppm. So I figured I lost roughly 2.5ppm overnight using the HAS/DPD test. I waited 4.5 hours and at 10:30 am tested again. FC 1.5, CC 0, a 5.5 drop in FC in about 4.5hrs.... Still no noticeable algae present, just a bit of cloudy water. But that is still improving. Again prior to adding CH and Ca Hypo 3 days ago the water was crystal clear.
Frustrated I opted to double check my reading at pool store # 2 and to get some more advice. I arrived at pool store # 2 at roughly 11:30 or an hour after my 10:30 am HAS/DPD test. They recorded CYA 75, TC .6, FC .6, Alk 91, CH 289, Ph 7.6 and no metals. This pool store requested I shock with 2lbs of bioguard smartshock sodium dichloro-s-tri…. 63.05%, available cl 39%. I inquired about cya levels and adding this shock (from all the reading I’ve been doing from you guys) Pool store said no cya in this shock (which again after all my reading seems to be false, correct?). They also blew off the cya deal, and told me to fill my floating chlorinator up with trichlor tablets and let her rip. This is basically the same advice the first pool store gave me, (shock and add trichlor back) and 24hours later shock burned up and chlorine disappearing fast when added during the following days.
I’m pretty much lost at this point. I opted to buy a couple bags of pool store #2 shock and give it a try, but it seems like after all the reading I’ve done about cya I’m just spinning my wheels again and am not accomplishing anything other than bringing up the cl for a short period of time and adding more cya to my water. I haven’t added this shock yet.
Would draining off 1/4 or so of pool water a couple times (have to be careful with the fiberglass pool, but not too worried about the water table with as dry as it is in California this year) and refilling be a smart move? I would hope to get the CYA down to 50ish, and bring the CH level down a bit as well (not that the CH matters all the much in a fiberglass pool, again from what I’ve read). I’m guessing you guys are going to say to jack the Cl levels way up and hold based on my CYA. For how long I don’t know. I really just don’t want to spend a fortune in Cl to accomplish this, and from what I’ve read draining and refilling at least some might help with that by lowering CYA and making the chlorine more effective??
I’m open to whatever at this point. Waving the white flag…..HELP!!!
I’m pretty new to this pool stuff, bought a house in November with a 13600 gal fiberglass pool. It is setup with a Pentair pump and filter system. Throughout the winter the pool was easy to maintain. Kept my eye on Cl and Ph and augmented as necessary. With the weather warming up I’m having some issues an am very frustrated, looking for some help.
Last week I noticed that I could not maintain chlorine in the pool. The previous owners and myself had been using the trichlor tablets, and augmenting with liquid chlorine as needed. Weather just starting to warm up here, and no matter what I did I could not hold chlorine. No evidence of algae at all, pool crystal clear. I finally broke down and went to the pool store to get a water test. 0 FC and TC, CH @ 150, CYA @ 50, TA @ 80, PH @ 7.4, 0 copper/Iron.
Pool store # 1 said I should add 15lbs of CH, and add 2 lbs of 73% Ca Hypo to shock the pool. Over the next 2 days I did as instructed. But chlorine continues to disappear rapidly. In addition, my water is somewhat cloudy, and the first couple days some brown dusty looking particles would be present in the bottom of the pool. I would manually vacuum these up (sometimes twice a day) and then proceed to manually clean the filters as so particles wouldn’t get washed back into the pool. I called the pool store and they said sometimes the cloudiness/particles are normal when adding CH and Ca Hypo and to continue to vaccum. The cloudiness is slowly improving, but the ability to hold chlorine is not. The shock pretty much burned up in 24hrs or less.
After starting in on some research I found your site. I purchased a TFT CYA and HAS/DPD chlorine test to go along with the Alk/Cl/Ph test I already had. While waiting for the tests to arrive I continually was adding liquid 10% chlorine to try and maintain Cl levels, but felt as if I was spinning my wheels. Decent levels (10-15ppm) in the morning, 0 chlorine by the evening..I also removed all the trichlor tabs.
Test arrived yesterday afternoon. I decided to perform an OCLT and the CYA test. I added an entire gallon of 10% chlorine at dark, ran the pump for an hour and than ran the two tests. CYA 70-80, and FC 9.5, CC .5.
Up at 6am, prior to the sun on the water and tested the Cl levels again. FC 7ppm, CC .5ppm. So I figured I lost roughly 2.5ppm overnight using the HAS/DPD test. I waited 4.5 hours and at 10:30 am tested again. FC 1.5, CC 0, a 5.5 drop in FC in about 4.5hrs.... Still no noticeable algae present, just a bit of cloudy water. But that is still improving. Again prior to adding CH and Ca Hypo 3 days ago the water was crystal clear.
Frustrated I opted to double check my reading at pool store # 2 and to get some more advice. I arrived at pool store # 2 at roughly 11:30 or an hour after my 10:30 am HAS/DPD test. They recorded CYA 75, TC .6, FC .6, Alk 91, CH 289, Ph 7.6 and no metals. This pool store requested I shock with 2lbs of bioguard smartshock sodium dichloro-s-tri…. 63.05%, available cl 39%. I inquired about cya levels and adding this shock (from all the reading I’ve been doing from you guys) Pool store said no cya in this shock (which again after all my reading seems to be false, correct?). They also blew off the cya deal, and told me to fill my floating chlorinator up with trichlor tablets and let her rip. This is basically the same advice the first pool store gave me, (shock and add trichlor back) and 24hours later shock burned up and chlorine disappearing fast when added during the following days.
I’m pretty much lost at this point. I opted to buy a couple bags of pool store #2 shock and give it a try, but it seems like after all the reading I’ve done about cya I’m just spinning my wheels again and am not accomplishing anything other than bringing up the cl for a short period of time and adding more cya to my water. I haven’t added this shock yet.
Would draining off 1/4 or so of pool water a couple times (have to be careful with the fiberglass pool, but not too worried about the water table with as dry as it is in California this year) and refilling be a smart move? I would hope to get the CYA down to 50ish, and bring the CH level down a bit as well (not that the CH matters all the much in a fiberglass pool, again from what I’ve read). I’m guessing you guys are going to say to jack the Cl levels way up and hold based on my CYA. For how long I don’t know. I really just don’t want to spend a fortune in Cl to accomplish this, and from what I’ve read draining and refilling at least some might help with that by lowering CYA and making the chlorine more effective??
I’m open to whatever at this point. Waving the white flag…..HELP!!!
