Hey community,
Need some advice from someone more experienced than myself. Long time lurker on TFP, spent many hours understanding pool chemistry and balance when I updated and converted my pool to a SWG 2.5 years ago. The recommended methods and balance levels here have worked amazingly well for me... until about three weeks ago.
Started noticing cloudy water for the first time ever. To be fair with usage up tenfold due to COVID (getting used every day) I assumed it was sunscreen from our 3 kids. Bought a flocculant and got that going... got better but not great. Started paying much closer attention to them chemicala (it was very predictable for years so I didnt have to babysit them much at all) and FC was very low. Started really diving in.. stabilized the CYA at 70ppm... didnt help. Ran a SLAM (ish) as there was around .75 CC with only around 1.5 FC. Got FC to about 10, turned SWG back to normal levels.. 3 days later, FC was about 1.5 again. I've been continuing over the last 2 weeks to go through cycles of super chlorinating up to about 6 ppm... then increasing percentage on the SWG. typically the SWG would maintain at 4-6 (with lower bathing load than current) at about 20-25%. I now have it at 50% (35,000 gallon unit on a 8k gal pool..) and it was at 2.5 ppm just now.
Something is clearly wrong but I just don't know what. I did run a muriatic acid soak on the cell a week ago (although I didn't see any visible scaling), and I do know our Calcium is high (about 500ish.. need to do a drain and rebalance when the kids aren't using it every day) but everything else is balanced as recommended here. The SWG seems to still chlorinate well on super chlorinate... but its just not maintaining right.
SWG is a Hayward Blue Essence (fairly sure this is a rebadge on a Aqua Rite) and I believe a t15 cell... a t15 on an aquarite is for 40,000gal and ours is rated 35,000gal... so fairly sure that's the cell. I confirmed the SWG is set for a t15 cell (I accidentally changed that to a t3 without knowing I did when I was messing with it a few days back). If any other info would help identify the culprit it'd be appreciated.
Need some advice from someone more experienced than myself. Long time lurker on TFP, spent many hours understanding pool chemistry and balance when I updated and converted my pool to a SWG 2.5 years ago. The recommended methods and balance levels here have worked amazingly well for me... until about three weeks ago.
Started noticing cloudy water for the first time ever. To be fair with usage up tenfold due to COVID (getting used every day) I assumed it was sunscreen from our 3 kids. Bought a flocculant and got that going... got better but not great. Started paying much closer attention to them chemicala (it was very predictable for years so I didnt have to babysit them much at all) and FC was very low. Started really diving in.. stabilized the CYA at 70ppm... didnt help. Ran a SLAM (ish) as there was around .75 CC with only around 1.5 FC. Got FC to about 10, turned SWG back to normal levels.. 3 days later, FC was about 1.5 again. I've been continuing over the last 2 weeks to go through cycles of super chlorinating up to about 6 ppm... then increasing percentage on the SWG. typically the SWG would maintain at 4-6 (with lower bathing load than current) at about 20-25%. I now have it at 50% (35,000 gallon unit on a 8k gal pool..) and it was at 2.5 ppm just now.
Something is clearly wrong but I just don't know what. I did run a muriatic acid soak on the cell a week ago (although I didn't see any visible scaling), and I do know our Calcium is high (about 500ish.. need to do a drain and rebalance when the kids aren't using it every day) but everything else is balanced as recommended here. The SWG seems to still chlorinate well on super chlorinate... but its just not maintaining right.
SWG is a Hayward Blue Essence (fairly sure this is a rebadge on a Aqua Rite) and I believe a t15 cell... a t15 on an aquarite is for 40,000gal and ours is rated 35,000gal... so fairly sure that's the cell. I confirmed the SWG is set for a t15 cell (I accidentally changed that to a t3 without knowing I did when I was messing with it a few days back). If any other info would help identify the culprit it'd be appreciated.