Hot, hot, hot! How to get your pool ready for your end of summer swimming!

[Dirk]

West Coast: hot out? Expecting more of the same for the rest of this Labor Day weekend? Today is going to be a beast. Recovering from your end of summer party yesterday? Or getting ready for it today or tomorrow? Check your FC at least twice each day, before and after the parties. With increased heat and bather-load, it's the perfect storm for a little green! Goosing your FC before a hot swim day, and topping off with chlorine right after, will help to ensure your pool is well sanitized for your guests and algae free for the next day's event! SWG owners, too. Your SWG might not be able to keep up this weekend. Best to have some liquid chlorine on hand to give it a little help. Your SWG's boost mode will not likely be fast enough. And if you're having a monster ball, you might check FC mid-day, too.

Here's to many more days of summer weather this year! And perfect water to enjoy them.

 

[kimkats]

Dirk! Good timing and reminders for pool owners! THANKS!

Kim

 

[Dirk]

Uhg, I hate following my own advice!! It's already hot out. I just checked at 11am, already down to FC4. Just goosed it to 7. I'm ready for the BBQ! And I asked Siri to remind me at 9 tonight to check FC again. Depending on how many kids show up, I'll check around 3:00, too.

 

[Dirk]

Labor Day Weekend Bash was a success. Got up to 113°. Nice to have a pool, that's for sure. Going out now to reconnect vac and test my FC. It's 98°. Burrrrrr................

OK, I won that round. FC:5, which is my normal target. But I lost 2 today with SWG running. And it was low this morning before I checked and goosed it. Could have been 4-2=2 if I had ignored it, which I've learned is just below my algae threshold. I be mean to da green! I'll check it again in the AM.

 

[Stoopalini]

Nice dirk!

Our gathering is tomorrow. I’m sitting at 5FC right now with CYA of 40. I’m letting the Rainbow chlorinator run at 3.5 with Trichlor overnight. In the AM, I’ll dose it to 7 FC (if needed) with 10%. I’m expecting 7 kids and 8 adults .... Here’s hoping I have 0 CC at the end of the day, but with kiddos aging between 5 - 13, there’s no telling!

I also dosed MA tonight, since my pH is at 7.8 right now. I figured I’d drop it to 7.4, since I know the guests will want the waterfall running all day ... so that, as well as 10 day old pebble plaster curing, will most likely leave me somewhere around 7.6 at the end of the day.

 

[Dirk]

FC 5
CC 0.5 (faintest tinge of pink, more like CC 0.25)
pH 7.8
I guess that was my first OCLT. Passed! End-of-SLAM Criteria passed (had I been doing a SLAM).

I'm tempted to leave it at 5 (my normal target). Few or no swimmers today, so this will be a test of sorts to see how the pool does in

No, strike that, I checked the weather mid-sentence there. Supposed to be 115° today. I think I'll take it back up to FC7 and then see how the FC does with few or no swimmers today in that kind of heat. Starting at 7 will be the safer "experiment" and satisfy my MO: use target as my minimum and never let it go below that. If it loses another 2 today, that would have put me at 3, which is my actual minimum, and I never want to get anywhere near there.

Happy Labor Day all!

 

[Stoopalini]

@Dirk , you sound like me! My range is 3-7FC (with 40 CYA), but I target 5 and try not to let it go below that. Of course, I'm only 11 days into this though LOL! My pool logs (shared on my profile) show how close I am able (or not able!) to do it ... I'm learning. The rainbow clorinator with trichlor pucks doesn't help with the predictability. Since it seems to deposit differing amounts of chlorine depending on how dissolved the pucks are. It'll be nice when my CYA finally gets to 60, and the plaster is cured enough for adding the salt and enabling the IC40.

I am determined to never have to SLAM, and to never have to drain my pool water. Which is why I'm going SWCG, and also why I have my auto-fill plumbed into my soft water line. After all my reading, it seems the biggest causes for needing to drain water is high CYA or high calcium. I'm determined to control both

 

[Dirk]

Ah, grasshopper... I have virtually identical goals. So far, SLAM free! (Knock on head.)

My pool never performed well while I had the feeder. The pool guy was supposed to be managing that (that was my pre-TFP years), but it never got worked out. I'd be over-chlorinated right after he left and at FC0 upon his return. Not sure if that was the operator or the gizmo. Both flawed, based on my experience. Swapping that for SWG was the beginning of the end of my pool problems. (Though it wasn't until I got rid of the pool guy that they finally cleared up.)

The feeders seem pretty barbaric. What I can't wrap my head around: how can they be consistent? I don't actually know how they work, but it seems to me if water is washing over the pucks to dissolve them in a "time-release" way, how does it work that part of the time the water is dissolving the max amount of pucks (so, the max amount of sq inch of puck surface to water ratio) down to dissolving the crumbs (a considerably less amount of sq inch of puck surface to water ratio), and everywhere in between. Is that what they're doing? Adding an ever-decreasing amount of FC each day, until you refill the feeder and restart the downward cycle? That would explain why my FC was usually 0 at the end of the "pool guy week." I digress.

Salt is the other "accumulator" you'll need to monitor. You'll be using little or no liquid chlorine (so that won't be much of the culprit), but it's the darn humans you can't get rid of, and whatever is in your fill water, that can continue to add salt. In my pool that seems to be a wash: the accumulation is negated by the winter rains. Since I've started the SWG three years ago, I've actually had to add a bag of salt. Hopefully you'll have a similar experience.

 

[CvCali]

Also in Central California. Because the fires have made it seem like cloudy days, i haven't really messed with my FC. For some reason the burn rate didn't increase with the heat wave. It has definitely been hot, but less direct sunlight has my water temp a few degrees lower than it was last month.

 

[Stoopalini]

Ah, grasshopper... I have virtually identical goals. So far, SLAM free! (Knock on head.)

My pool never performed well while I had the feeder.......

The feeders seem pretty barbaric. What I can't wrap my head around: how can they be consistent? I don't actually know how they work, but it seems to me if water is washing over the pucks to dissolve them in a "time-release" way, how does it work that part of the time the water is dissolving the max amount of pucks (so, the max amount of sq inch of puck surface to water ratio) down to dissolving the crumbs (a considerably less amount of sq inch of puck surface to water ratio), and everywhere in between. Is that what they're doing? Adding an ever-decreasing amount of FC each day, until you refill the feeder and restart the downward cycle? That would explain why my FC was usually 0 at the end of the "pool guy week." I digress.

Ya, it takes more testing and adjusting to have the feeder hit a target and not fluctuate all over the place. Check out my poolmath log, and you'll see what I mean. I add a note each time I adjust the feeder's rate.

It works by controlling an in-flow valve. So the feeder is always full of water, but the in-flow valve let's you control how fast the water is flowing in, which in turn controls how fast it flows out. So the water in the feeder is super chlorinated, and is released based on how much is flowing in.

Salt is the other "accumulator" you'll need to monitor. You'll be using little or no liquid chlorine (so that won't be much of the culprit), but it's the darn humans you can't get rid of, and whatever is in your fill water, that can continue to add salt. In my pool that seems to be a wash: the accumulation is negated by the winter rains. Since I've started the SWG three years ago, I've actually had to add a bag of salt. Hopefully you'll have a similar experience.

I imagine so. My fill water will have a very, very small amount of sodium; just from whatever is picked up by the water softener.

 

[Dirk]

It works by controlling an in-flow valve. So the feeder is always full of water, but the in-flow valve let's you control how fast the water is flowing in, which in turn controls how fast it flows out. So the water in the feeder is super chlorinated, and is released based on how much is flowing in.

The mechanics of that aside (which I suspect are iffy), is the ratio of water to chlorine in the feeder constant, regardless of number of tabs, or their current state of dissolve? Or is it a super strong stew at first, and much weaker when the tabs are almost gone?

 

[Dirk]

Well, my pool and I survived LDWeekend:
FC 6
CC 0
pH 7.8
Temp 85°
CSI -0.08

All exactly perfect!

Though, I fess, I cannot remember if I tested and goosed yesterday as I said I would! My proactive advice paid off (checking before and after the party). I just kinda dropped the ball on the day after. My SWG and IntellipH save me again.

Seriously, I don't see how folks manage without an SWG in swim season. I just couldn't trust myself to remember to dose every day. I might be able to figure out some sort of system, but I would first have to convince everyone that green is the new blue!!

 

[Stoopalini]

The mechanics of that aside (which I suspect are iffy), is the ratio of water to chlorine in the feeder constant, regardless of number of tabs, or their current state of dissolve? Or is it a super strong stew at first, and much weaker when the tabs are almost gone?

I think it has to do with the maximum amount of chlorine which can be dissolved into the volume of water, and how fast the water is flowing through the tube. I believe this is one reason why the feeder is so inconsistent. Pump speed, and dial setting on the chlorinator are both impacting the flow rate through the tube.

At a low flow rate, the saturation level is probably kept fairly consistent. But when you open the feeder up to max flow, then whatever is in the feeder dumps out, and the water is most likely flowing through too fast to become saturated.

Here is some info I found on chlorine's solubility in water.



I'm not sure how much water the body of the rainbow 320 holds, but it can't be much more than 4 cups maybe? So 1/4 of a gallon? Especially when pucks are displacing water volume int he tube. If that's close, then according to the data above, when the chlorinator is closed off, and just sitting full of water and pucks ... the water would become saturated when 0.24lbs of chlorine dissolve (give or take, depending on water temp and pressure in the tube).

But then when the water starts flowing, it seems the flow rate and time the water is in contact with the pucks, would dictate how saturated it could become. I haven't noticed much of a difference in my testing with partially dissolved pucks vs. brand new ones, but I'm sure the surface area plays a role too.

This is all just guess work on my part though, and what I've observed with using it for the past 1.5 weeks...

In any case, it just seems like a poor way to control the chlorine levels LOL ... but a convenient way to add CYA and keep a constant flow of some amount of chlorine going at the same time. I'm still dosing with liquid when necessary ... That said, I can't wait until we can finally switch over to the SWCG and be done with it

 

[Dirk]

Interesting. Even if you're only close, I think that supports one of my conclusions about pool care, though it took me way too long to learn. There's just no way a pool can stay sanitized and protected by a feeder that is serviced by a pool guy once a week. And unfortunately, I bet I just described a huge number, if not the majority, of residential pools. Why, Stoop, why won't they listen to us!?!