Pouring method

[Catanzaro]

I have been slowly pouring the 12.5% directly if front of a jet return while filter is on. You can see the liquid chlorine shoot down to the deep end near the main drains as the jet is pointing down.

Q: Is filling up a 5 gallon bucket with pool water and adding liquid chlorine in 2 steps a safer way of pouring? I have been adding 15 ounces in each bucket, and a total of 30 ounces daily. It really is not that much work. My levels have been consistent. The CYA has reached a level of approximately 50 and I increase the daily FC to 6 ppm, with about 2 ppm drop, therefore needing approximately 30 ounces daily based on the size of my pool.

Q: Also, it is safe to shut down your main drains and pull from the skimmers for a few hours per day to collect the debris on the surface of the water? With the main drains on, I am finding that a lot of surface debris is being pulled down to the bottom of the pool. I am finding that this helps. There is only about one more week of debris falling off the trees here in NJ. The time schedule would be about 2 hours off and 8 hours where both the main drains and the skimmers are all functional.

 

[JVTrain]

You can add chlorine in that way if you like or you could also manually brush the bottom area below the return after adding bleach to make sure it doesn't settle. I don't have problems with the bleach settling but I usually brush the bottom of the pool below the returns where I add bleach.

It's perfectly fine to run the pump with the MD off, many pools do not have main drains. Since you have one, I would run at least once per day with the MD open to prevent stagnant water and allow chlorine circulation through the MD plumbing run.

 

[Catanzaro]

I do not believe the liquid chlorine will be pushed all the way down to the main drains. The deep end is 8 feet. You can see the chlorine move down a few feet, but then the cloud of chlorine kind of disappears. I also sometime pour in front of 2 separate jets as a precaution.

 

[Richard320]

There's nothing wrong with diluting the bleach the way you're doing it. I don't, just because the less I handle it, the less likely I am to end up with white spots on my clothes. Just pour slower into the return stream.

I set my main drain up so that it just barely affects the flow in the skimmer. Shut off the drain, watch the turbulence in the skimmer well, and then crack the main drain until you start to see a difference. That's it. Sometimes I'll go full drain when I'm brushing, just to pull the cloud of dust into the filter.

 

[pooldv]

I like to do the 80/20 split on 80% skimmer and 20% drain. So, if my skimmers gets clogged with tree stuff there is still water flow to the pump.