Eek! What is going on?

LynnThompson

Member
Jul 11, 2019
18
East Tennessee
Hello Experts!

I don’t know what the heck happened to my CYA and why? I’m not even through week one of pool ownership and I’m messing it all up. I don’t understand the relationships, the cause and effect that what I’m adding may be having on other measurements.

Should I drain some water? Should I increase my TA? I don’t know what to focus on first.

I probably should’ve asked before treating today, but I was hoping I could do it on my own. But, I just now thought, why not access the experience of you all? I’ve included screen shots from the pool math app for the last couple days to show my status and how I got here. Thank you!
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Can you fill out your signature so we can see how big your pool is?

How much CYA did you add total? Keep in mind the CYA test doesn't always show dissolved granulated CYA until 24-48 hours after it's fully dissolved.
 
What test kit are you using? Put it in your signature.

What is the pH and TA of your fill water?

I think you overdid the CYA. How much stabilizer have you added? Looking at your PM logs it looks like you added 81 oz of stabilizer. That should give you CYA 60 in a 10,000 gallon pool. If your pool volume is really around 8000 then it would give you CYA 80.

What CYA were you targeting?

How do you chlorinate your pool?
 
According to your logs you have a 21' round pool.
You've added a total of 94.6 oz of CYA. That would raise your CYA by 78 ppm.
If you have indeed added that much CYA then you should drain some water and refill with fresh water.

You can live with that much CYA, but you need to raise your FC to between 9 and 11 ppm.
 
Thanks everyone! I thought I’d provided all my pertinent info in the “about me” section. I went back and fixed that so it should be visible as a signature now. Also, on the poolmath app I have shared all my pool info, which is accessible through this thread too I see, fantastic! (I didn’t have to share the screenshots, sorry)

For the life of me I cannot remember why in the world I would’ve added that much stabilizer. I must have accidentally plugged in a target number that was different than the default number in the app? My default number is 40. I was at 33 before. I must’ve erroneously entered an incorrect number in that field. That’s all I can figure. When I was packing that sock, I was thinking, this is a lot of stabilizer. Next time...

Good to know about the 24-48 hour window on an accurate stabilizer test result. Which probably means my number will climb even more. Yikes!

Looks like I’ll have to drain water. I guess I’ll have to siphon it out. Well, on the bright side, I’ve just had what I considered to be the scariest thing happen so hopefully I can chill out a little after this.

Another question - once I have the water exchanged, should I adjust my TA before I adjust pH?

Thank you!
 
Another question - once I have the water exchanged, should I adjust my TA before I adjust pH?


What is the pH and TA of your fill water?

Test the pH and TA after you drain and refill the pool.
 
Only if it’s really low, below 50. Then bring it up to around 50. If it’s high you will be letting it come down with the acid additions to control pH climb.
 
Thanks everyone! I thought I’d provided all my pertinent info in the “about me” section. I went back and fixed that so it should be visible now. Also, on the poolmath app I have shared all my pool info, which is accessible through this thread too I see, fantastic! (I didn’t even have to share the screenshots, sorry)

For the life of me I cannot remember why in the world I would’ve added that much stabilizer. I have no idea if I accidentally plugged in a target number that was different than the default number in the app.
What is the pH and TA of your fill water?

Test the pH and TA after you drain and refill the pool.
What is the pH and TA of your fill water?

Test the pH and TA after you drain and refill the pool.
 

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The latest: I drained my pool as much as I felt comfortable before refilling today. We had lots of rain yesterday. Turned the pump back on, waited about an hour and did a full battery of tests. My CYA is now 50. If you look at the rest of my results, besides needing an adjustment for chlorine, it all looks good, right? Should I do a partial drain and refill again or move forward from here?
 
The latest: I drained my pool as much as I felt comfortable before refilling today. We had lots of rain yesterday. Turned the pump back on, waited about an hour and did a full battery of tests. My CYA is now 50. If you look at the rest of my results, besides needing an adjustment for chlorine, it all looks good, right? Should I do a partial drain and refill again or move forward from here?
In case you can’t access my logs:
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FC is low. You want to get it up to 6-8 and not let it drop below 4. Chlorine / CYA Chart - Trouble Free Pool

Everything else looks good. :) Also, you can do 10ml water sample tests for FC/CC and just one scoop of powder. Then each drop is 0.5ppm. Will save you on reagents!
 
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Still, if it were cloudy you would probably not be able to see the details on the liner. Maintain your FC - I recommend testing daily for a while and after each test use Pool Math to figure out how much liquid chlorine you need to add to get to 8ppm FC. After a week or so you'll get a feel for what your pool uses and can cut the testing back to every 2-3 days. But you'll need to add the FC daily. Don't let algae in! :)
 
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It doesn't hurt to check more often, but once a day is probably fine, unless you find your pool uses a LOT of FC. And then it might have issues that we can help you with. :)
 

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