New Chemical to Lower CYA?

[Kleve13]

I was in Leslie's a couple days ago and heard the guy at the counter mention that they will have a new chemical coming out this year that will reduce CYA. I told him I thought the only way to do that was to replace water and he said that it's brand new, never been on the market before.

Anyone heard of this? Is it legit? I would be nice if that were the case, but if I've learned anything at TFP it's to be skeptical of Pool Stores .

 

[tim5055]

Yes, there is a new product on the market and several folks here have tried it. So far the results are less than stellar - really meaning most got no results with one having minor reduction in CYA. At this point I would not recommend it.

Do a search on BioActive and you should be able to find the threads.

 

[Patrick_B]

We've been keeping those threads in the deep end so they are easier to find. Look there and you'll find some to read through. Some sucess, but not a lot.

 

[duraleigh]

Certainly not enough success for TFP to be interested in it. In fact, from the experiences in those threads, I would call it a failure.

A successful product should perform as advertised maybe at least 80% of the time or more. The reports indicated only ONE instance where it MIGHT have worked marginally.

 

[chem geek]

For whatever reason, the reports from pool professionals on other forums such as the Pool Genius Network show more positive yet still mixed results. I'm talking about pool service people who have no reason to promote the product. In general, they sum up with "the results are good but not nearly as good as the manufacturer posted results." One reported the following:

I am getting a CYA drop of 40 ppm - 80 ppm but in one test pool the results were negative.
:
I think that Combined Chlorine also effects the products effectiveness - the manufacturer noted that the microbe can also bond with the chloramines in the water and not the cyanuric acid and it is one theory why it doesn't seem effective in indoor pools. I am getting good to fair results in my testing also. It does drop the CYA levels so in that regard the product works.

Another person noted that low FC and low pH were both needed for reasonable results:

I have been experimenting with it for about 10 weeks now and find that as long as FC, and CC levels are less than 3 PPM, PH is 7.0 - 7.6 then it works VERY well. High chlorine, High PH stop the microbes and enzymes from working.

We've talked about experimenting with lower FC, but we hadn't talked about lower pH so that may be worth a try for anyone still doing or about to do a test.

This site (which may be biased since the guy reviews products) gives some additional interesting info consistent with what I said about using a lower chlorine level (FC/CYA ratio in particular).

This seems similar to the CuLator where for whatever reason results are mixed, but until we figure out how to make it more consistently effective (if we can), then it's not something to recommend, at least not without significant caveats. At least with the CuLator, the manufacturer works with pool owners having problems with their product. We haven't seen the same level of support with the Bio-Active CYA Reducer product from BiOWiSH.