CYA to Ammonia

[aussieta]

Moderator comment: This post was separated out from this thread: LAST DITCH EFFORT....and I don't know what to do now

Once we have verified no ammonia, or you have removed it with bleach you need to add CYA via the sock method to get your level up to 30.

just trying to learn here but where did you find this information
never heard you had to wait, i believed the cya to amonia conversion was a long process
i always understood to add enough cya to get to 30 and enough fc to slam at 12

 

[pooldv]

Re: LAST DITCH EFFORT....and I don't know what to do now

This is still a working theory that has been more prevalent this pool season. The idea is that if there is bacteria in the water converting cya to ammonia that first we need to get rid of ammonia and the bacteria by slamming. Then we need to add cya and continue slamming. That way we aren't adding more cya for the the bacteria to convert to even more ammonia.

 

[tim5055]

pooldv is correct, it is kind of a work in progress. We are finding that sometimes it is best to hold off additions of CYA until the ammonia in the water can be dealt with. From Chem Geek:

Yes, I think it's safest to not add CYA to the water until at least one starts holding some FC even if it drops over time. During that initial stage where chlorine very quickly (usually within one minute) combines with ammonia to form monochloramine there's not much sense adding more CYA to the water. It may not hurt since the monochloramine should prevent the bacteria from continuing to grow, but it doesn't help either. Once the ammonia is mostly all converted to monochloramine and you start to register some FC that lasts at least a little while, then adding CYA makes sense to have that FC not break down as quickly in sunlight.

 

[aussieta]

thank-you
as i had not heard that approach before
i wanted to be sure before i repeat it

 

[tim5055]

thank-you
as i had not heard that approach before
i wanted to be sure before i repeat it

This is how our methods change over time, by carefully paying attention to the little nuances of reported problems with pools. There is a lot of discussion behind the scenes by "staff" trying to figure how best to treat this subject.

 

[aussieta]

i am seeing a few posts lately where op has 0 fc and 0 cya
but no-one is suggesting the BoDarville ammonia start to slam
eg
A start to my SLAM
0 cya 0 fc
am i missing something or is it best to wait until it appears a conventional slam is failing and then do the ten minute fc tests
eg
Please help, I have 0 FC and 0 CYA totally lost.
sorry to be a pain, but i would have thought to test fc more frequently at the start with a 0 cya would be the new norm
then add stabilizer

 

[chem geek]

Most of the time when CYA disappears over the winter there isn't ammonia leftover and presumably bacteria took the CYA all the way to nitrogen gas. So the question becomes whether anytime one opens the pool to 0 ppm CYA and 0 ppm FC should they either test for ammonia (which means spending money on another kit) or add 10 ppm FC and check 10 minutes later to see if this results in 0 FC and a lot of CC (up to 10 ppm). It's probably not much effort to do this latter approach of checking in 10 minutes. If the FC is holding and not a lot of CC is formed, then continue with a normal SLAM but adding CYA first (or using Dichlor which adds both chlorine and CYA). So don't add CYA until one does this 10 minute test. That's my 2 cents worth.

 

[aussieta]

thanks chem that makes more sense