New to the forum and new to pool maintenance. I recently purchased a house with a 20+ year old in-ground pool so I'm now a pool maintainer. I'm also an engineer with google skillz so I've done research and not at square one. Still, I can use some advice on what to do in my particular situation.
K-2006 test kit results:
pH = 7.0
CH = 320
TA = 150
FC = 2.5 ppm
CC = < 0.5
And now the kicker...
CYA = Through the roof! Couldn't see the black dot after only filling up to the black background of the comparator tube which is completely off the chart. Re-performed the test with 50/50 pool/tap water. Couldn't see the black dot before I reached the 100 line. I guesstimate CYA is around 220-240 ppm.
I'm pretty sure this is from the previous owner using Trichloro pucks for years and not monitoring CYA (it's not the only thing he maintained poorly that needs TLC). I realize that this calls for the hard reset of drain/refill but I'm in Utah, a high altitude desert, and this is not the time of year to use that much water. That should be done during the spring snowmelt. Especially this year as we had below-average snowpack and didn't get the reservoirs completely full.
However, I see no signs of what I read results from high CYA. No cloudiness, water is clear to bottom. No algae. No smell. It looks perfectly OK. It's also only used by 2 clean adults, no children (and no chance of pee or feces incidents).
So two questions:
1) Could I have messed up the CYA test? (I did it 3 times following instructions. One all pool water, one 50/50 pool/tap, one all tap as a control. Both pool water resulted similar high CYA and tap control was zero)
2) Can this pool be made safe to use given the super high CYA levels until I can change the water next spring?
K-2006 test kit results:
pH = 7.0
CH = 320
TA = 150
FC = 2.5 ppm
CC = < 0.5
And now the kicker...
CYA = Through the roof! Couldn't see the black dot after only filling up to the black background of the comparator tube which is completely off the chart. Re-performed the test with 50/50 pool/tap water. Couldn't see the black dot before I reached the 100 line. I guesstimate CYA is around 220-240 ppm.
I'm pretty sure this is from the previous owner using Trichloro pucks for years and not monitoring CYA (it's not the only thing he maintained poorly that needs TLC). I realize that this calls for the hard reset of drain/refill but I'm in Utah, a high altitude desert, and this is not the time of year to use that much water. That should be done during the spring snowmelt. Especially this year as we had below-average snowpack and didn't get the reservoirs completely full.
However, I see no signs of what I read results from high CYA. No cloudiness, water is clear to bottom. No algae. No smell. It looks perfectly OK. It's also only used by 2 clean adults, no children (and no chance of pee or feces incidents).
So two questions:
1) Could I have messed up the CYA test? (I did it 3 times following instructions. One all pool water, one 50/50 pool/tap, one all tap as a control. Both pool water resulted similar high CYA and tap control was zero)
2) Can this pool be made safe to use given the super high CYA levels until I can change the water next spring?