Post #1: Before I say anything else, I must say thank you to all of you who so generously share your knowledge on this forum. We've had our pool (my wife's dream-come-true) for three seasons so far, this year will be the fourth. Until late last summer, I trusted the pool store who installed our pool. Their solution was generally 'buy a bunch of stuff and put it in'. It cost a lot and didn't work very well in my opinion.
Late last summer after a really busy church pool party followed by two weeks of vacation with no one attending to the pool, it turned a sickly, cloudy green. Pool store instructions were to dump in over 50 pounds of “BioGuard Super Soluable” a few pounds at a time. By the time we closed the pool in late October it was not green, but still a bit cloudy. We closed it, winter hit, and we didn't see the pool cover until March.
We opened on April 29 to a green mess. The folks at the pool store tested the water and the printout said the CYA was 30, and the free chlorine was around 5 ppm, and the rest was 'about right'. Oh, and they said there was no algae present. Right. We decided to scrap a chlorinator I never could get to dispense those hockey puck chlorine things and bought the SWG they recommended for our size pool.
I have to believe they are good folks, I'm sure they were trying, but it wasn't working. So I found troublefreepools.com eight or ten days later, ordered the TF100 test kit that same night, and have been working with it since then. It's still a bit green, but I can see progress.
Initial test results:
FC 11.5
pH 6.8
TA 200
CH 450
CYA >100 – hadn't read the extended test kit instructions yet
salt 5200
CC 2
temp 88 degrees F
I replaced about a third of the water to start with which gave me the following:
FC 4.5
pH 7.2
TA 240 (I discovered my source water from our well has a TA of 240 – who knew!)
CH 300
CYA >100 – still hadn't read enough
salt 3200
CC 1
temp 75 degrees F
I decided to tackle the green first and ran the FC up to 35 with bleach and have kept it there except for last night when I did the OCLT – it dropped 10 ppm overnight so I'm not done. But it's better. I figured out the CYA problem, and determined that it is about 120. With that level, I'm not sure the FC of 35 ppm is high enough to do the job.
My plan is to keep SLAMing, then replace more water once it's cleaned up. I plan to install an aerator in a day or two in anticipation of needing to adjust the TA and pH to more reasonable levels. And I'm still studying the forum – what a wonderful resource!
Suggestions?
Late last summer after a really busy church pool party followed by two weeks of vacation with no one attending to the pool, it turned a sickly, cloudy green. Pool store instructions were to dump in over 50 pounds of “BioGuard Super Soluable” a few pounds at a time. By the time we closed the pool in late October it was not green, but still a bit cloudy. We closed it, winter hit, and we didn't see the pool cover until March.
We opened on April 29 to a green mess. The folks at the pool store tested the water and the printout said the CYA was 30, and the free chlorine was around 5 ppm, and the rest was 'about right'. Oh, and they said there was no algae present. Right. We decided to scrap a chlorinator I never could get to dispense those hockey puck chlorine things and bought the SWG they recommended for our size pool.
I have to believe they are good folks, I'm sure they were trying, but it wasn't working. So I found troublefreepools.com eight or ten days later, ordered the TF100 test kit that same night, and have been working with it since then. It's still a bit green, but I can see progress.
Initial test results:
FC 11.5
pH 6.8
TA 200
CH 450
CYA >100 – hadn't read the extended test kit instructions yet
salt 5200
CC 2
temp 88 degrees F
I replaced about a third of the water to start with which gave me the following:
FC 4.5
pH 7.2
TA 240 (I discovered my source water from our well has a TA of 240 – who knew!)
CH 300
CYA >100 – still hadn't read enough
salt 3200
CC 1
temp 75 degrees F
I decided to tackle the green first and ran the FC up to 35 with bleach and have kept it there except for last night when I did the OCLT – it dropped 10 ppm overnight so I'm not done. But it's better. I figured out the CYA problem, and determined that it is about 120. With that level, I'm not sure the FC of 35 ppm is high enough to do the job.
My plan is to keep SLAMing, then replace more water once it's cleaned up. I plan to install an aerator in a day or two in anticipation of needing to adjust the TA and pH to more reasonable levels. And I'm still studying the forum – what a wonderful resource!
Suggestions?