Why not keep CYA in the low 100's? :)

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quagenti

quagenti

0
Aug 2, 2018
6
Saugus, MA
Pool Size
21000
Surface
Vinyl
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
Hi Guys! First post here and highly suggested.

A technical question without getting to crazy?

My Free and Total chlorine was around 14ppm back 3 weeks ago, today they are around 10 ppm
My CYA is 128 ppm. All other chems are in range.
Was getting algae even after shocking.
No surpirse? my 3" pucks that was adding stabilizer so I stopped my in line hayward chlorinator.

I dropped in a PoolRX to help with the algae while I pounder the CYA issue.. Holy smokes, no more algae for real.

My 22k gallon pool is crystal clear.
I haven't added any chlorine / shock in almost 3 weeks. My chlorine levels have dropped ever so slightly over this time.

Stupid question but here goes. What is the harm in this setup?
I did see in a forum here that if chlorine is within 40% of your cya then perhaps your ok.

I have the CYA reducer "BIO-ACTIVE" ready to go, but now I'm wondering why not continue with this setup?
If the CYA is slowly releasing my chlorine and my pool is crystal clear, what is the harm in this setup?

- 18x32 20k inground
- Hayward cholonator(previously used 3” 99% trichloro pucks)
- Hayward de filter 65a (changed de 2x since opened in June)
- 1 return, 1 inlet
- vinyl liner
- northeast (Boston area)
 
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Welcome to the forum!
How are you testing your pool water chemistry?
The PoolRx is adding copper. It is an algaecide. But will turn blonde hair green and stain the pool surfaces.
I suggest you read through Pool Care Basics - Trouble Free Pool and even look at a few of our videos TFP-TV - Trouble Free Pool
 
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I'm sorry, but something is fishy about this story. PoolRX very slowly adds copper to the water. It would not increase the copper level to a point where it would affect algae growth (much less kill algae) overnight, or even over several days.
 
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I believe your testing method is way off if everything you say is true. The only ingredient I see missing from the mix is green dye but there's no way all what you mentioned is so. Marty ^^^^ said it all.
 
quagenti said:
Hi Guys! First post here and highly suggested.

A technical question without getting to crazy?

My Free and Total chlorine was around 14ppm back 3 weeks ago, today they are around 10 ppm
My CYA is 128 ppm. All other chems are in range.
Was getting algae even after shocking.
No surpirse? my 3" pucks that was adding stabilizer so I stopped my in line hayward chlorinator.

I dropped in a PoolRX to help with the algae while I pounder the CYA issue.. Holy smokes, no more algae for real.

My 22k gallon pool is crystal clear.
I haven't added any chlorine / shock in almost 3 weeks. My chlorine levels have dropped ever so slightly over this time.

Stupid question but here goes. What is the harm in this setup?
I did see in a forum here that if chlorine is within 40% of your cya then perhaps your ok.

I have the CYA reducer "BIO-ACTIVE" ready to go, but now I'm wondering why not continue with this setup?
If the CYA is slowly releasing my chlorine and my pool is crystal clear, what is the harm in this setup?

- 18x32 20k inground
- Hayward cholonator(previously used 3” 99% trichloro pucks)
- Hayward de filter 65a (changed de 2x since opened in June)
- 1 return, 1 inlet
- vinyl liner
- northeast (Boston area)
Click to expand...
To answer the question you asked, why not run CYA well over 100 and keep FC at a sanitizing % of CYA, the answer is you are charting (see what I did there) your own path. If you are prepared to do that (and it can definitely be done) I say via con Dios. I will say, if you need to ask the question, you are not prepared to do that. And wait, there’s more — you mentioned algae. With CYA well over 100, killing the algae would be difficult. Again, yes, it can be done. I don’t think anyone would want to do what it takes to do that though.

My personal suggestion is color within the lines for now (stick with the recipe for proven success) and if you then become comfortable going your own way, more power to you. @mknauss (I don’t know him well enough to call him Marty but maybe someday) gave you excellent references for further reading. I go my own way and it works for me but I also have strived to fully understand the recipe to make informed departures from it.

p.s. forget the CYA reducer. It’s snake oil. Take the time, read the resources here and everything will make sense. You will need to replace a lot of water to get rid of so much CYA.
 
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Water may be inexpensive with no limits in your area. And great job turning off and removing the 3” tablets. You will need to drain half you water to reasonably sanitize your pool with chlorine. However, is your CYA only 100 or is higher. You should do a diluted CYA test so that you will be closer to knowing the actual CYA value.
 
Great. If you want to be sure you are accurately testing FC and CC, a FAS-DPD test kit is best to use. The FC of 14ppm is out of the range of the DPD test you have.
No need to use a pool store test -- you have a good test kit. Use it.

Like others said, adding the PoolRx thing and magically all algae disappears is not realistic. And long term use of a copper ionizer is not a good idea.
 
SoDel said:
To answer the question you asked, why not run CYA well over 100 and keep FC at a sanitizing % of CYA, the answer is you are charting (see what I did there) your own path. If you are prepared to do that (and it can definitely be done) I say via con Dios. I will say, if you need to ask the question, you are not prepared to do that. And wait, there’s more — you mentioned algae. With CYA well over 100, killing the algae would be difficult. Again, yes, it can be done. I don’t think anyone would want to do what it takes to do that though.

My personal suggestion is color within the lines for now (stick with the recipe for proven success) and if you then become comfortable going your own way, more power to you. @mknauss (I don’t know him well enough to call him Marty but maybe someday) gave you excellent references for further reading. I go my own way and it works for me but I also have strived to fully understand the recipe to make informed departures from it.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the response. It's not "well over" 100, it's 128 :) glass half empty? I ask the question because I'm ready to drop the CYA and have purchased the product to do so. But didn't know if others have had similar results with poolrx like I have. Honestly there is no info for keeping the cya and chlorine up. I will probably go back to the normal approach. I don't understand it enough to dive into that game for the full season.
Most say "Dump the water" and "reduce the cya". I should add the reason my cya went high is because this year I didn't vacuum to waste. I usually do this every year and I'm thinking adding 18" of new water every season resets the cya. This is the first time I had high cya. Thats my guess.
 

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an1vrsy said:
Water may be inexpensive with no limits in your area. And great job turning off and removing the 3” tablets. You will need to drain half you water to reasonably sanitize your pool with chlorine. However, is your CYA only 100 or is higher. You should do a diluted CYA test so that you will be closer to knowing the actual CYA value.
Click to expand...
CYA is 128 and verified with Taylor K2005 and pool store.
 
quagenti said:
Thanks for the response. It's not "well over" 100, it's 128 :) glass half empty? I ask the question because I'm ready to drop the CYA and have purchased the product to do so. But didn't know if others have had similar results with poolrx like I have. Honestly there is no info for keeping the cya and chlorine up. I will probably go back to the normal approach. I don't understand it enough to dive into that game for the full season.
Most say "Dump the water" and "reduce the cya". I should add the reason my cya went high is because this year I didn't vacuum to waste. I usually do this every year and I'm thinking adding 18" of new water every season resets the cya. This is the first time I had high cya. Thats my guess.
Click to expand...
No worries. Your CYA is like super high but the reason so many are asking you to quantify it more thoroughly is knowing (about) what it really is will allow them to help you determine how much water you need to replace to get it somewhere more reasonable. CYA reducer magic potions do not work. Please listen to the voices of experience here and they will help you get your pool ruled. I think you are on the right track.
 
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Donldson said:
I'm sorry, but something is fishy about this story. PoolRX very slowly adds copper to the water. It would not increase the copper level to a point where it would affect algae growth (much less kill algae) overnight, or even over several days.
Click to expand...
This is my story and these are my results. I'm absolutely blown away how clear the water is and shocked there is no algae.. The funny part is, the steps are where the algae grows every year and with the poolrx, 0 growth and in fact the steps are the cleanest white they have ever been. It sounds like I'm being paid to advertise but this is what it is. The question I have is just because the pool is clear and no algae present, perhaps I need to do a bacteria test to truly verify if my current chlorine is sanitizing the pool.

What if my CYA and high chlorine is in fact working slowly to sanitize and the poolrx is helping with the algae?
 
quagenti said:
This is my story and these are my results. I'm absolutely blown away how clear the water is and shocked there is no algae.. The funny part is, the steps are where the algae grows every year and with the poolrx, 0 growth and in fact the steps are the cleanest white they have ever been. It sounds like I'm being paid to advertise but this is what it is. The question I have is just because the pool is clear and no algae present, perhaps I need to do a bacteria test to truly verify if my current chlorine is sanitizing the pool.

What if my CYA and high chlorine is in fact working slowly to sanitize and the poolrx is helping with the algae?
Click to expand...
Here’s the thing, your CYA is well above 100 (assuming it really is around 125, that’s 25% above 100 — well above 100). As a lot of folks are trying to tell you, when your CYA gets that high, the testing isn’t accurate and it could be much higher. If your FC is around 10, and your CYA really is around 125, your FC is 8% of CYA. Reasonable minds can differ, but IMHO, that’s about as low as you want to go. But you said you had algae — so whatever your CYA really is, the FC isn’t doing the business. See where all this is going? Things aren’t quite right and everyone is trying to help you.

If you want to maintain such high CYA levels, you venture into uncharted (I did it again) territory.
 
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If 100+ CYA was manageable and/or CYA reducers worked in any capacity, the member counter at the bottom of the page would say about 221k and not 321k.

They all tried too, believe me, they tried. Take my word for the crash and burn part to avoid it yourself. :)
 
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Donldson is spot on the money. Many of your assumptions are just not true and your ideas based on those erroneous assumptions are dead wrong.

TFP is a teaching forum and if you would like to learn the things we teach, we will help..........but you will HAVE to start with the very basics. It is obvious to me you do not understand the chemistry behind pool water management. Please read "Pool Care Basics" up in Pool School..........it may help you onto the right path. You are certainly not anywhere near that path at present.
 
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Absolutely no offense taken and the comments are very much appreciated.
Let me try to clean things up a little bit. First off, thanks again for all the help. I use Taylor K2005 for maintaining my pool and also spot check at the pool store couple times a year. Taylor and pool store came in at roughly 120 ppm for cya. I've never had high cya before because I think I was dumping to waste when opening the pool and refilling it and hence the cya was good, now that I stopped doing that the pucks go ahead of me!

The solution is very clear, in order to lower CYA I have to dump the water. I get that, and honestly that is the number 1 response to lowering the cya that 99.87% of any pool owner will tell you. I have a very easy plan to implement that.

--> There are users who had great luck with the bioactive product and others that didn't, I'm very aware that it isn't a fool proof solution.
--> There are some users on this TFP forum of people running with high cya and high chlorine and I was wondering if anyone out there has done this and had advise.
--> They state that the chlorine despite being high (around 10ppm) will still "slowly" release and sanitize the pool and pose no harm while swimming.
--> Some major experts suggest the copper sulphate poolrx with this setup.

I was digging and exploring if that was more common with you the experts. And I haven't been to the happy hour yet but that is in the forecast!

Thanks for the help! Again, I know the standard solution to my high CYA! Was just digging into unChartEd waters and guess what I learned? LOL Go back to the basics!
 
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