Hey everyone, thanks in advance for taking the time to help me. I just bought my first house and it has a 24' circular above ground pool with a Hayward sand filter. I've been reading the pool school blogs and the forums a bit to learn, but I think my pool is too far gone to be fixable with beginner-level knowledge. I would appreciate any guidance here!
I took a water sample to Ace Hardware to do their free test - the first time their printer wasn't working, so I tried to make adjustments based on reading here and the numbers their test gave me, but that water was also from the surface of the pool so may have been wrong. Here's that test result:
After this test, I purchased 15lbs of baking soda, one liter of MetalFree, and a couple pounds of soda ash based on the suggestions in the PoolMath app. I also purchased a Taylor K-2006 test kit. I put in 2/3rds of the container of MetalFree, waited 24 hours, put in all the baking soda, waited 24 hours, then tested to determine how much soda ash I would need to raise the pH. All the tests came back out of wack so I took another sample to Ace today and these are the results:
So now suddenly the CYA is way higher than before (the Taylor test kit confirms this, it's definitely well above 100ppm) and there's more copper than there was before I put in the MetalFree.
So I guess I have to drain the pool as the second test suggests to fix the CYA levels, but then I'm lost after that. All the numbers are so far out of recommended ranges that my home test kit is useless for incremental adjustments until I can get everything into reasonable amounts.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated! I'm considering just calling a local company in to get it fixed so I have a better starting point to learn from, but I also am interested in learning how this works as I imagine I'll need to do big adjustments each year when I fill the pool at the beginning of the season (assuming I do - let me know if not - it generally freezes regularly during winters).
I took a water sample to Ace Hardware to do their free test - the first time their printer wasn't working, so I tried to make adjustments based on reading here and the numbers their test gave me, but that water was also from the surface of the pool so may have been wrong. Here's that test result:
After this test, I purchased 15lbs of baking soda, one liter of MetalFree, and a couple pounds of soda ash based on the suggestions in the PoolMath app. I also purchased a Taylor K-2006 test kit. I put in 2/3rds of the container of MetalFree, waited 24 hours, put in all the baking soda, waited 24 hours, then tested to determine how much soda ash I would need to raise the pH. All the tests came back out of wack so I took another sample to Ace today and these are the results:
So now suddenly the CYA is way higher than before (the Taylor test kit confirms this, it's definitely well above 100ppm) and there's more copper than there was before I put in the MetalFree.
So I guess I have to drain the pool as the second test suggests to fix the CYA levels, but then I'm lost after that. All the numbers are so far out of recommended ranges that my home test kit is useless for incremental adjustments until I can get everything into reasonable amounts.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated! I'm considering just calling a local company in to get it fixed so I have a better starting point to learn from, but I also am interested in learning how this works as I imagine I'll need to do big adjustments each year when I fill the pool at the beginning of the season (assuming I do - let me know if not - it generally freezes regularly during winters).