Helping neighbor w/ SLAM - ammonia nightmare?

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Slowrider5

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May 28, 2015
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Indianapolis, IN
After finding the forum and going thru a successful SLAM 2 years ago, I thought I knew what I was doing. My neighbor has no technical or mechanical ability whatsoever and still uses the same pool guy I used 2 years ago. Constantly having issues and his water is yet to get clear 1 month after opening this year. The water is just hazy, not dark green and no visible algae on walls, etc. He uses tabs with an inline Pentair feeder and floater in the pool, vinyl liner, 26K gallons. I was begging to test his water and he finally agreed.

FC 1.5 (had issues with sample turning pink again within seconds - some research on forum indicated this can be seen with high CC)
CC 11
TA 500
PH 7.2
CYA ~25

I suspected ammonia like I experienced 2 years ago and got out my ammonia test. The sample turned a much darker shade of green than the dark green associated with 8ppm, so who knows what it really is but it is there for sure. I had quite a battle two years ago personally and that was with 3ppm ammonia. Took me about 4 rapid heavy doses over 1/2 day to overcome the rapid FC loss at the beginning of my SLAM.

So, I convinced neighbor to go out and get 20 gals of 12.5% LC today and I knew I had another 9 in the shed. Took out his floater and turned off pentair tab feeder. Starting the SLAM, I saw something very odd. Whatever LC we poured into the deep end immediately starting fizzing like an alka-seltzer tablet and the off-gassing was horrendous. I had major eye/throat irritation as it wafted several feet to where I was watching. This only occurs in the deep end. I've never seen fizzing like this, but again some forum research indicated this has been seen with really high ammonia.

I did tests at 60 minute intervals. The first 3 were essentially all the same.

FC 2.5 (I did 5 drops fast while swirling and it would get clear, but still turn pink in 7-10 secs).
CC 11

Then I did a 30 min test after dosing it up 17 and I got the same FC 2.5 / CC 11 result. Seems strange to me why it's not going all the way down to zero.

Then I did a 10 min test just now before bed after dosing it up to 36 and I got FC 20 and forgot to test CC. So that is a loss of 16ppm in 10 mins.

We went overboard and dumped in everything else we had to dose it up 50 and we'll see what we got in the morning. The last gallon was still fizzing away in the deep end which doesn't seem like a good sign for overcoming ammonia anytime soon. If FC is almost down to zero in the morning, does continuing w/ SLAM make sense or should I consider recommending he do a drain and fill?

Clearly he can see what is happening but I feel bad telling him to buy more LC when we have absolutely no idea when we might overcome the ammonia. If he had really high CYA last fall (let's say 80) and it all converted to ammonia, then based on chemgeek post that means ammonia could be as high as 26ppm and I would need 239ppm of FC to get rid of it. That's pure speculation, what if his CYA was 100 or more and it all converted to ammonia, not to mention the ammonia was still being fed by tri-chlor and di-chlor usage this spring. How high can ammonia get?

Appreciate any thoughts/advice from the elders!
 
I can't speculate on how much ammonia may be in the water based on previous CYA levels, but if the ammonia is really high, you really have two options:
1 - Replace some water to help reduce the ammonia. At the same time, ensure the owner knows not to add anymore stabilizer products as they will only feed the ammonia. Then follow the notes below.
2 - Continue with the FC applications, but in more timely/accurate 10-minute segments. You shouldn't wait so long between tests and dosages. We typically advise increasing the FC only to "10", then testing in 10 minutes. I suspect the FC will have dropped in 10 minutes, so increase again back to 10 and retest in another 10 minutes. Continue this drill until the FC hold between 6-10 for at least 10 minutes. This FC level combined with quicker tempo of testing seems to work well. Now in this case, with a potentially high ammonia level, a partial water exchange may be advisable, but that's your call (or owner's call). Hope that helps.
 
Good news and bad news this morning. As I feared pretty much everything we put in was consumed. The good news was you can see the bottom in the deep end And the CC was cut in half.

FC 2.5
CC 5.5

Still seeing that strange behavior on the free chlorine reading where sample will turn pink again in less than 10 seconds
 
Well, at least there is some positive movement. Your neighbor's best bet might simply be the consistent 10-minute routine until the water breaks-through that ammonia wall. Consistent/aggressive testing and reapplications of bleach to the FC of 10 should work. Remember that once the FC test reading is complete, the sample will revert back to pink when allowed to sit still. Simply discard.
 
Ecoke said:
Just a new TFP guy here trying to learn...Hopefully will never experience this but I am curious...when pools have the ammonia problem...can you smell it when you are near the pool or disturb the water?
Click to expand...

I haven't had the issue, but I'd doubt you can smell it. Even at outrageous pool concentrations of 50ppm ammonia, that's still a thousand times less concentrated then Windex. I bet you can easily smell the chemical reaction it has with chlorine though!
 
Ecoke said:
I bet you are right..after I posted the question...thought geesh, is a low concentration...then again can smell chloramines so I wasn't sure.
Click to expand...

Huh, I'm wrong here. Apparently the threshold for smelling ammonia is much, much lower: http://www.ccac.ca/Documents/Standards/Ammonia.pdf. However, I'd bet this is mixed in air, and for a pool this would require outgassing to occur. Ammonia is volatile, but also would enjoy being mixed into solution, so I'm not sure how much outgassing occurs - obviously not much given the amount of people dealing with it! Still, an interesting question. I used to work with air monitoring equipment; makes me wish I had access to it and an ammonia-filled pool to see what is going on!
 
Continue to slog away today. At one point I did 10 min intervals for 2 hours. Continuing to get very similar readings with high chlorine loss as posted above. Decided to get more prescriptive. Thought I was stuck figuring out actual ammonia amount because my ammonia test only goes up to 8ppm. and I was getting 8PPM+ on every reading. Found a forum article about diluting with bottled water so I could measure beyond 8 ppm. I had to go all the way up to 1 to 5 dilution to get a measurement that was the same color as 4 ppm on the scale, so 4 x 5 means the PPM of ammonia is around 20. Keep in mind this reading is after 60+ gallons of liquid chlorine have been added.

I have a good picture of the fizzing, will upload later when I'm back at my PC
 
Slowrider5 said:
Continue to slog away today. Continuing to get very similar readings with high chlorine loss. Decided to get more prescriptive. Thought I was stuck because my ammonia test only goes up to 8ppm. and I was getting 8PPM on every reading. Found a forum article about diluting with bottled water so I could measure beyond 8 ppm. I had to go all the way up to 1 to 5 dilution to get a measurement that was the same color as 4 ppm on the scale, which x 5 means the PPM of ammonia is around 20. Keep in mind this reading is after 60+ gallons of liquid chlorine have been added.

I have a good picture of the fizzing, will upload later when I'm back at my PC
Click to expand...

So it looks like roughly 1ppm ammonia needs 10ppm FC. So with ammonia at 20ppm I need 200ppm FC. Each gallon should be yielding me 4.8 FC ppm, so that is 42 gallons to go. I've got about 34 on hand. We'll see if that math works out!
 

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If I had found the secret of diluting the ammonia test at the beginning so I had a better idea of what the actual ammonia level was, I wonder if we would've taken a different route. But we live on the outskirts of town and have wells with high iron content. So the cost of trucking in water for a complete drain and refill would've been approaching $940. We may be looking at 100 gallons of liquid chlorine total, at average cost of $4 a gallon, so the chlorine method would be the most economical.
 
No real improvement in clarity overnight. I dosed it up to about 35 ppm it before bed. Measured FC at .5 this morning , but the good news was I measured CC at just 1.5. That's down from 11 when I started.

Also the FC test didn't turn pink again in less than 10 seconds. That was the first time that's happened since I started the slam. There were some other posts on the forum about folks who had the sample turning pink again very rapidly mentioning that sometimes very high CC can cause some kind of bleedthrough on the FC test. I wonder if that's what was going on.
 
It's called chloramine breakthrough when there are high CCs and the clear DPD test rapidly turns pink after titrating. It's a well known problem with the DPD chemistry and high chloramine levels.

It certainly sounds like ammonia. There have been reports in the past if people seeing the kind of fizzing you describe. In all cases, it's just a pool that is heavily contaminated with ammonia. The SLAM will fix it but at a fairly high cost.

Your neighbor should fire the pool guy as that pool was not properly maintained. Once you get the FC to hold and the CCs are low, I would suggest you pause the SLAM and let the FC get below 10ppm so you can measure pH, CYA and TA. You may need to adjust pH and CYA in order to have an effective SLAM (or know if water needs to be drained to correct CYA).
 
Yeah baby! Got neighbors wife to put in couple gallons of LC throughout the day today based on some assumed FC loss rates and just measured FC 10 and CC .5 about 1 hour after her last add. Finally holding some! Water is definitely bluer. Ammonia test came back at .5ppm so making progress.
 
I put it in off the diving board, then I moved over to the side of the pool which is where I took the picture. Shortly thereafter is when I got hit by the fumes. Needless to say that's as close to experiencing a gas attack as I ever want to have.
 
I went back and read the first post. That level of fizzing is some serious chemistry happening, like what would occur if you mixed straight bleach and ammonia cleaner together. It makes me wonder if someone didn't intentional put ammonia in the water in some half-baked attempt to fix an algae problem. I have seen postings around the internet instructing people to do that for really bad mustard algae problems but it's mostly a bad idea that shouldn't be attempted.

Any idea if this "pool guy" would fool around with stuff like that?
 

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