New to TFP and need guidance

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plas

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Jun 3, 2015
6
NC
First, let me say THANKS for the wealth of knowledge that is available here! You guys seem to be the true professionals!

We have a 14 year old pool with newly replaced vinyl liner, filled with municipal water about 3 weeks ago. Started putting chemicals in based upon pool store recommendations, then stumbled upon your site. What a blessing!!! We spent the past 2 summers fighting algae, and no one at the pool store could explain it. Just kept telling us to add more "shock" and algaecide. I have old print-outs of pool store testing and the CYA level was up as high as 170! Funny that nobody ever mentioned that this was a problem! Anyway, with the new liner and fill, I'm so glad that we found TFP!!!

Using Aqua-Chem strips and bleach and using the pool calculator, we've been trying to get the FC level up until we ordered a testing kit.

Got the TF-100 in today. Here are the numbers:

FC = 4.5
TC = 5 (best guess at reading the yellow color)
CC = <.5 (maybe turned slightly pink after adding R-0003, but 1 drop R-0871 cleared it)
pH = 7.8 (best guess trying to color match, somewhere between 7.5 - 7.8)
TA =90
CH = 225
CYA = 30 (isn't this low?)

So..... what do we do next? The water is actually clear, and I'm sure that you guys can help us keep it that way. It has rained quite a bit today and more is expected tomorrow. Not sure how that affects things... Thanks in advance for your help!!
 
Welcome plas, I like you am new around here. You've started off great by getting a GOOD test kit. I will defer to the true experts here in a moment, but in the meantime now that you have true numbers you can plug those numbers into pool math along with your pool info. Oh and don't worry if you have trouble with some of the tests at first, it gets easier with time and practice. Some of us still cuss the CYA test, though it might be SOME of us are too finicky in our testing.:D
 
It looks like you are in the ball park, but, really, you need your OWN test kit and accurate numbers from that. Looking at the posted numbers, you seem to be in pretty good shape.... but, again, without knowing the numbers, for sure, we're kinda just guessing. You don't say where you are, but it looks like we got about 4 inches of rain, last night and today.
 
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The numbers are from my own kit (TF100) that I just got in today. Once again, I'm new at testing, so I guess they are close. I'm a little unsure about the pH and TC since that seems more subjective since you are "color matching." From what I am reading around the forum, my CYA maybe seems a little low?? Also, with the rain, it looks like we may have to pump off some water. I assume that we should pump off the water before adding anything else. Just don't want the chlorine level to get too low at any time....
 
I can relate to the new liner, replaced ours last year. I didn't notice how you chlorinate, Liquid or SWG. if not SWG than ewkearns is right, your close. Your on the low end of CYA, but that's okay. Depending on how much water you have to drain off you will most likely have to add stabilizer. You say water is clear, so that's good. Keep the FC in range to avoid algae bloom and if you drain water, recheck CYA again and poolmath can tell you what to add.
 
We use liquid chlorine, not SWG. Now that we have a kit, how often do we test? Should we do the OCLT to make sure everything is ok, or just assume that it's fine because the water is clear? Also, all this rain makes me nervous. We've always associated rain with dirt and algae blooms. According to poolmath, adding 1 gal. of 8.25% bleach will raise FC by about 3. Current number this afternoon was FC = 4.5, which with CYA of 30 is within target range. We don't know how much normal loss of chlorine is yet, so should we just add a gallon tonight to boost the FC to about 7.5 until we figure all this out?? So many questions.....sorry.
 
Don't worry, I still ask a lot of questions. I would say if your water is clear, check your FC this evening and first thing in the morning to check for chlorine loss. The way I understand is if you are losing more than 1.0 FC or CC is above .5 than there is something in there the chlorine is attacking. You could bump the FC up to your high side tonight, just remember to wait an hour before checking chlorine tonight to let it mix in. Unless you are over running your skimmer with rain water it shouldn't lower your FC that much. Today we had enough rain this morning that I had to drain 2" to get below top of the skimmer and it made no change in my FC from this morning. If I'm off or missing something, someone will jump in here and set us both straight !;)
 
With 30 CYA, your target Chlorine is 4 and minimum (never let it get less than) is 2. So I think you're fine with the 4.5. You don't lose much, if any, chlorine at night unless there are organics in the water. For the first couple weeks you want to test your chlorine and pH daily; those two make the most movement and need the most adjusting. What I do: Make a pool-log in a notebook, and note the date and time of the readings, and how much chlorine or muiratic acid you added (assuming pH trends upwards), and when, based on Poolmath. That will give you a good idea of what you need to be adding daily, so will allow you to move onto every other day checking while adding your daily chemicals. I check about every third day but i have a SWG so don't manually add chlorine. Once a week test your TA. Test your Calcuim hardness and CYA about once a month--these two tend to change very slowly once established, since they don't evaporate or otherwise leave your pool unless water is also leaving. In times of high pool usage or intense sun, I'd test Chlorine and pH at the end of each day to replace what's been depleted by oily bodies, sunlight and splashing.

i agree with Lefty on the OCLT. I don't think you need to do an OCLT, but if it give you peace of mind there is no harm. Welcome!
 
morning plas, just reread your original post and thought I might clear something up if you hadn't caught it yet. I'm new at the TF100 too. The basic TC and Ph test is for regular testing to see if your still on track. TC = FC + CC.
The chlorine drop test is when you want to tell how much of your TC is FC (available chlorine for fighting bad things)and how much is CC(chlorine that has already killed the bad guys). So you don't need to use the drop test everytime (saves on reagents). Now I'm not sure how often we should do the drop test, but if we wait long enough one of the real pros will let us know. ;). Have a great day
 

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