Problem with SLAM

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If this is air-borne contaminants that I am battling then I need to invent a way to catch this stuff and remove it as it enters the water. I need a super skimmer that gets the stuff out as fast as it enters the pool.

Does anyone know of an auxiliary skimmer system that can be used during the early spring months? The Aquabot does a good job of the liner surface, what do we have for cleaning the surface of the water?

Mike.
 
I got busy and I'm aware that I let the chlorine drop to 15.5ppm this morning, slightly belpw16ppm shock level.

Here are the results:

Friday June 19
8am
FC 19.5
CC 0.0

12:30pm
CYA 40
FC 15.5
CC 0.0
PH 7.6
TA 80
CH 150
 

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Mike, I may be having kinda the same problem as you. My pool is crystal clear and when the FC level is at a normal 5 to 7 CYA around 60 I have no complaints. No burning eyes, no bloodshot eyes, no dry skin or greasy feel pool water. I use about a gal of 12% a day, a little more or less sometimes. My sand is brand new late last year, my chemicals are new and very few people in the pool. No oil suntan lotion. But I am constantly cleaning out pollen or bugs or leaves or even a lot of worms if it rains heavy. I clean the pool everyday and I can't help but think it's the garden I have all around the pool causing the, what I consider to be high, use of chlorine. Maybe something else is wrong like pool gal size or something else.
 
Tuckerclan said:
Mike, I may be having kinda the same problem as you. My pool is crystal clear and when the FC level is at a normal 5 to 7 CYA around 60 I have no complaints. No burning eyes, no bloodshot eyes, no dry skin or greasy feel pool water. I use about a gal of 12% a day, a little more or less sometimes. My sand is brand new late last year, my chemicals are new and very few people in the pool. No oil suntan lotion. But I am constantly cleaning out pollen or bugs or leaves or even a lot of worms if it rains heavy. I clean the pool everyday and I can't help but think it's the garden I have all around the pool causing the, what I consider to be high, use of chlorine. Maybe something else is wrong like pool gal size or something else.
Click to expand...

Yes that does sound like my situation but I'm using over a gallon per day. Have you done an OCLT recently? Do you have a lot of bird activity? My wife is thinking that bird poop could be contributing to the problem.

Mike.
 
Just a question. When adding your chlorine to get to the SLAM level and performing the OCLT, are you testing again after the addition or just the following morning? Reading your posts, it seems like you test and add to get to the target and that's it until the next day. Maybe you're not really at your target?
 
Frodo said:
Just a question. When adding your chlorine to get to the SLAM level and performing the OCLT, are you testing again after the addition or just the following morning? Reading your posts, it seems like you test and add to get to the target and that's it until the next day. Maybe you're not really at your target?
Click to expand...

I've been doing this for weeks and I've verified the test results. I've tested and retested. I get very close to 6ppm FC from each gallon of 12.5% HCL.
 
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It’s clear you’ve got high FC demand, and I’m at a loss why. Looking at your water it looks amazing. Your CYA is a bit low, but very much so acceptable. I don’t see major signs of algae, other than the chlorine loss. Problem is, chlorine loss like you’re seeing is a major concern.
 

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Leebo said:
It’s clear you’ve got high FC demand, and I’m at a loss why. Looking at your water it looks amazing. Your CYA is a bit low, but very much so acceptable. I don’t see major signs of algae, other than the chlorine loss. Problem is, chlorine loss like you’re seeing is a major concern.
Click to expand...

The major concern is that I'm throwing a lot of money away on test chemicals and chlorine not to mention wasting a lot of time. I thought that maybe my CYA test was wrong so I slammed to a level 0f 30ppm FC for a day and it made o change at all.

I had zero CYA when I opened so I likely had ammonia in the water but the amount of HCL that I've thrown at this should have corrected that. All I can think is that there is new contaminant getting in the water daily. I am ready to let the FC drop to about 10ppm and use the pool but my wife is being stuborn and wants to see a good OCLT. She has a wound on her leg that needs to heal before swimming anyway and she's the only one that uses the pool. If it was up to me I'd fill the hole with dirt and plant tomatoes. I'm really fed up with it.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I'm missing something and have no idea what to do next.
 
Being that the only two things that consume the free chlorine are the sun and bacteria then it should run true that raising the FC to a very high level should clean up whatever is in the water? I would think that it would overwhelm the contaminants and I would end up with a clean OCLT.

I raised the FC to 30+ overnight and it had no effect on the water at all that I could tell. I've been above shock level for a month. Logic tells me that there is something else at play here.

Mike.
 
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I've decided to just move on and keep my FC level around 7-9. Nothing else is happening in my slam either. Just a waste of chemicals for tests and chlorine. My pool looks the same as it did before the tests, clear and sparkling. I have to think the flower garden around my pool must contribute to the higher use of chlorine.
 
We still can't get a clean OCLT here either.My wife is the only one that uses the pool and she has an injury so I've continued to maintain shock level. It is a full month now and still using 3.5ppm overnight. earlier I said that I began the SLAM in early May but I looked at my notes and it was the last week of May so I've truly been doing this for four weeks.

Mike.
 
I feel a little foolish for all of the chlorine that I've thrown in the pool this year. I feel lucky to be getting it for $3/gal but I've spent a couple of hundred dollars and I'm right where I started.

At one point I felt that maybe I was reading the CYA incorrectly to be 40 so I maintained 50-CYA shock level of 20ppm for days and still no improvement. I even pushed it to 30ppm for a full day with no improvement. This kind of killed my theory of high CYA. It also should have caught up with new contaminants entering the water.

Now I feel that there is something else going on that the SLAM method can not clean up. It's become hard to belive that it is simply sun and bacteria and nothing else that is consuming the HCL. Or maybe something is chemically locking up the bacteria in the water? Can someone explain to me why I have had 0 combined chlorine through the entire process except for the tests when first opened? If I have an abundance of bacteria that is being consumed by HCL then how can there be no combined chlorine shown in the test result?

Mike.
 
I feel your pain. If you look at my logs, you will see I have been adding a bunch of chlorine. Now after my SLAM, which really never changed anything, I have started to keep my FC at 9. My CYA is somewhere between 50 and 60. I wish there was a better test for that as half the time I'm trying to convince myself that I can see the dot. So for the last 2 days I have added 64oz. or 2 quarts as per the app. When I just checked my log on here, it shows I added 21oz. What is going on? I checked the app and it said 64 oz., log addition, suggested amount, check. Now when I check on here it says 21 oz. was added instead of 64 oz. I really wish I could understand what's going on. I'm now waiting 2 hours and am going to double check my FC level to make sure the 64oz. I added earlier will bring my total to 9 for the day. Something seems screwed up here.
 

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