Keeping adding chlorine according to Pool Math but can't reach SLAM level

[SarahMili]

Hi all. Opened pool and started SLAM on Tuesday. Pool company added too much chlorine, so we were above my SLAM level (20) until last night (Friday). It had dropped to 17.5 by last night, so I started adding 73% Cal-Hypo according to the amount that Pool Math said. It was up to 18 this morning; added more shock. Went up only to 18.5; added more shock again.

Ran the robot yesterday and again today. Pool looks pretty darn crystal clear & clean, but we're down to 15 FC tonight. Could it be that my husband is dissolving the shock before putting it in the pool? Or is there some other reason that the calculated amount according to Pool Math is too low to get my FC up to SLAM level? fwiw, CC was 0 this morning, but is 1.5 tonight.

 

[PointeTaken]

Sarah,

If you haven’t yet (or if it’s been a while) I recommend reading up on the SLAM process here.

Second, it’s really best to use plain liquid chlorine bleach. Save your money and don’t buy the Cal-Hypo. It’s comparatively expensive, can be a pain to use, and worst of all, the more you use it, the more you increase your calcium hardness levels.

 

[SarahMili]

I've been studying all the literature big time this week! I'm a newbie to this process. No access to the liquid bleach right now. I did ask my husband to look at Home Depot today, but the shopping experience was a nightmare due to Covid restrictions, so for now we're stuck using the 73% hypo-cal that we bought on sale in January before really diving into TFP. I am aware of the downfalls from what I've learned this week though.

Any tips on why the pool math calculation for the hypo-cal is off? We're about to add the 18 oz that it suggests, but I don't want to keep spinning our wheels if anyone has insight. Thanks!

 

[PointeTaken]

Any tips on why the pool math calculation for the hypo-cal is off? We're about to add the 18 oz that it suggests, but I don't want to keep spinning our wheels if anyone has insight. Thanks!

How confident are you in the pool volume you’ve entered into the app?

 

[SarahMili]

That crossed my mind too... My husband says he's very confident

 

[SarahMili]

Well, we added the recommended 18 ounces last night, and this morning the FC jumped to 24, and then up to 26 this afternoon... so maybe my pool is just taking an extra long time to circulate the chlorine we added yesterday…?? ??‍??‍

 

[mknauss]

Throw the robot in and run it. That will mix it up!

 

[poolpop]

Just curious but are you running your pump continuously and brushing your pool after the chemical additions? Robot will do the same as brushing.

 

[poolpop]

Also with a variable speed pump you might want to kick it up some while you go through this process at least 70-80% speed. I don't have a VS pump so others that do might chime in on that.

 

[setsailsoon]

If you haven't already checked try Walmart and look in the pool or lawn and garden section for Pool Essentials liquid chlorine. We have reports from most areas of the country it's available there. Seems if it doesn't say bleach on it clearly the hoarders stay away.

 

[SarahMili]

Throw the robot in and run it. That will mix it up!

Ran it Friday & yesterday, but now I’m nervous to put it in again with chlorine levels above slam level ?

 

[SarahMili]

Just curious but are you running your pump continuously and brushing your pool after the chemical additions? Robot will do the same as brushing.

Yes, I’ve been brushing every day, & the only time I turned the pump off all week was when I ran the robot yesterday for 2-3 hours. I wanted to see if that would make the robot more efficient. Sidenote that the robot is brand new and this was our first time using it, but both times it missed an entire section of the pool which was where most of the dirt was ?

 

[PointeTaken]

FYI, I’ve run our Tiger Shark several times with FC north of 25 ppm without any worries. It’s really not a high enough concentration for that short of exposure time to have any negative effect on the polymers and metals in the robot (think about all the plastics and metals in your pool’s plumbing circuit).

 

[SarahMili]

I went ahead and ran it. Now I’m officially annoyed with it as it spent 2 hours in the same area of the deep end & never touched 2/3 of the pool (where most of the dirt is). ? But I guess that will be for another thread...

 

[mknauss]

If your pool water is really cloudy the robot may not cover the entire pool.

 

[SarahMili]

If your pool water is really cloudy the robot may not cover the entire pool.

The water is crystal clear. There was just debris on the bottom in the areas it didn’t visit.

 

[mknauss]

Unless the filters were excessively plugged early in the run, then the robot has issues. Mine cleans the entire pool, every time. But I never have much stuff for it to pick up.

 

[PointeTaken]

The water is crystal clear. There was just debris on the bottom in the areas it didn’t visit.

Sometimes if I've been bad about adhering to my cleaning schedule and there's a bunch of debris on the bottom (usually in the late fall or early spring), my robot will only get about 2/3 of the bottom clean and just will not pick up anything else. Unless we're talking very fine debris and sediment, I will often take my leaf rake and skim the bottom before dropping the robot into a particularly dirty pool. With a little bit of practice you can skim up even the smallest of leaves in addition to small debris. Then let the robot do the detail work. Or, if your robot has a "quick clean" feature like mine does, you can just run that a few times, cleaning out the filter in between runs.