Greetings from South Florida

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So I am finding out as I look deeper into this problem. It would seem my drinking water experience will find it's place into my pool. As for using bleach, considering that a gallon of 6% bleach is about $2 and 2.5gal of 12% pool chlorine is about $5 here I think instead of carrying the water it could just come out of the tap. Bottles are reusable too.
As I do not care for salt water pools, auto injection would seem the way to go. We already have on hand a chem tank, the rest is pump and plumbing. Took a look at the autochlorinating thread which is pretty familiar territory.

I will be running out to grab Taylor kit on my errands shortly and will post test results when I have them.
Until work picks up a bit here we'll be relying on the old fashioned way until a chem pump finds it's way into the budget.
Lots of great folks and knowledge here. Thanks so much for your replies, info and advice.
 
Update:

Retested using new Taylor kit FC now 2.0, CC 0, PH 7.8, CH 90, TA 110, CYA 55
Dropped PH down to 7.3 and added 10.5% chlorine to get FC up to shock lvl of 25 as algae was once again creeping in. Will work over next few days to get CH up where it belongs and recheck this evening to see how FC is going plus do a brush. We'll see how it goes over the next couple days for the algae. No algecide or phos remover used at this time.
Thanks all, I'll keep you posted (like you'd be surprised ;0)
 
OMG!!! I'm so glad I read this thread. I've been having the same issues and am also in South Florida. I had NO idea the tri-chlor tabs contained stabilizer until last week and have been fighting algae blooms for weeks now, not realizing why! I went to the pool store and they told me my 140ppm of stabilizer was ok because my pool gets full sun ALL day. But now I know it's crippling my chlorine....
Just wanted to say thanks, I will drain and start over!!
 
Welcome to TFP! :wave:

You don't need to do a full drain -- just some multiple partial drain/refill to get your CYA lower. You have to be careful about full drains of in-ground pools since the water table can cause the pool to pop out if you drain too far. Usually, you wouldn't drain down further than having 1 foot of water in the shallow end. You could also do a more continuous drain/refill by draining and refilling from opposite ends and depths of the pool when the pump is off (assuming you have a separate sump pump for draining).

Also, most importantly, get your own test kit, such as the TFTestkits TF-100 or the Taylor K-2006, to be sure the CYA reading is correct. Pool stores are notorious for doing tests poorly, especially the CYA test.

If you want to help your pool store out, then you can let them know the following chemical facts that are independent of concentration of product or of pool size:

For every 10 ppm Free Chlorine (FC) added by Trichlor, it also increases Cyanuric Acid (CYA) by 6 ppm.
For every 10 ppm FC added by Dichlor, it also increases CYA by 9 ppm.
For every 10 ppm FC added by Cal-Hypo, it also increases Calcium Hardness (CH) by at least 7 ppm.
 
One tip I got from Taylor is to stand outside with the sun to one's back and hold the tube in front of you so that you look straight down to it with your body shadowing it. This gives it strong indirect lighting which is essentially the standard they use when calibrating that test. You can also buy CYA Standard Solution to practice to see what 50 ppm CYA would look like under different lighting conditions and techniques. Also, don't forget that you can pour back the solution into the bottle and re-add it back to the tube as many times as you need to get that transition point. Look at this link from Taylor on how the dot pretty much completely disappears at the end of the test -- you should be able to drive yourself crazy thinking "is there a dot; isn't there a dot; am I going blind" which pretty much is at the endpoint of the test.
 
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