- May 23, 2015
- 25,695
- Pool Size
- 16000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
So yes, it can happen to even the most seasoned of us....
This morning I was out by my pool testing my water using my K-1004 "Troubleshooter" test kit after making some adjustments the day before. It's nice because I can easily do pH, TA and FC/CC tests with it. The chlorine test is a color comparison based on DPD (pink) and comes with the R-0001 and R-0002 reagents. The R-0001 reagent is a buffer and pH stabilizer with some chelating agents to remove metal interference and the R-0002 is the DPD indicator solution. R-0001/R-0002 together can be though of as a liquid version of the R-0870 powder. With the right comparator and some good lighting you can easily distinguish FC levels.
A few days ago I had measured FC and it was quite low from what I expected it to be coming out of spring and into warmer weather. Usually this time of year I can easily expect 5ppm or more, a very distinct reddish/pink color. It was closer to 2-3ppm and so I added some liquid chlorine (about 4ppm worth) and turned my SWG up to 50% and my runtime to 6 hours (It was previously at 35% and 4 hours). I did know my CYA was a little low so I just assumed that the recent spat of warm weather and high UV was eating up my FC faster than I was producing it. My CYA usually drops a bit over winter and when I measured it I was getting values of 60-70ppm, I typically run at 80-90ppm. SO I loaded up a sock with granular CYA to add another 10ppm and let go for two days.
Fast forward to this morning and I measure my FC....less than 2ppm and the color looked weird. Not the usual light foggy-pink but more of a brownish-pink color. Scratched my head a bit (and my other end too) and then decided to test again. Definitely the weird light brown-pink. As is usually the case, I went though all of the impossible theories first .... bad SWG, leaking pool, dead bear in the deep end, space aliens removed my pool water, etc, etc. Then I tilted over the R-0002 bottle a little bit to look at the fluid in the tip. Sure enough, the R-0002 reagent was a brown color and not at all the usual clear color. I twisted the bottle and, sure enough, the Exp Date read "10/2017".....hmmmm, so maybe it wasn't space aliens after all (although they do exist as per recent DOD press releases...but that's another topic). But, being a man of "science" I decided to follow Occam's Razor. I also remembered that when I did the first test before adding chlorine and bumping up my SWG and CYA, I had gotten three drops of R-0002 out of the previous bottle before adding two drops from this compromised bottle. So the original test that led me to make some of the changes had 3 drops of good reagent and two drop of bad reagent which was enough to give it the right pink color but at a much lower level.
After realizing that space aliens did not take my pool water (but they probably messed with the order of my spare reagents in my cabinet...), I used my DPD powder test chemicals (R-0870/R-0871) and found that my FC was actually at 7ppm (35 drops on a 25mL sample). That's typically higher than I like to run (by a factor of 2), but I felt much better. I went to my mom & pop pool store that sells Taylor reagents and got some fresh bottles of R-0001/R-0002. I then retested and, sure enough, the color of the test sample was a blazing hot red/pink which is way over the 5ppm color block and, if my color-memory serves me right on the big-boy comparator, easily is the 7.5ppm match.
So, long story short, keep an eye on your expiration dates, they matter......
Happy pool'ing
This morning I was out by my pool testing my water using my K-1004 "Troubleshooter" test kit after making some adjustments the day before. It's nice because I can easily do pH, TA and FC/CC tests with it. The chlorine test is a color comparison based on DPD (pink) and comes with the R-0001 and R-0002 reagents. The R-0001 reagent is a buffer and pH stabilizer with some chelating agents to remove metal interference and the R-0002 is the DPD indicator solution. R-0001/R-0002 together can be though of as a liquid version of the R-0870 powder. With the right comparator and some good lighting you can easily distinguish FC levels.
A few days ago I had measured FC and it was quite low from what I expected it to be coming out of spring and into warmer weather. Usually this time of year I can easily expect 5ppm or more, a very distinct reddish/pink color. It was closer to 2-3ppm and so I added some liquid chlorine (about 4ppm worth) and turned my SWG up to 50% and my runtime to 6 hours (It was previously at 35% and 4 hours). I did know my CYA was a little low so I just assumed that the recent spat of warm weather and high UV was eating up my FC faster than I was producing it. My CYA usually drops a bit over winter and when I measured it I was getting values of 60-70ppm, I typically run at 80-90ppm. SO I loaded up a sock with granular CYA to add another 10ppm and let go for two days.
Fast forward to this morning and I measure my FC....less than 2ppm and the color looked weird. Not the usual light foggy-pink but more of a brownish-pink color. Scratched my head a bit (and my other end too) and then decided to test again. Definitely the weird light brown-pink. As is usually the case, I went though all of the impossible theories first .... bad SWG, leaking pool, dead bear in the deep end, space aliens removed my pool water, etc, etc. Then I tilted over the R-0002 bottle a little bit to look at the fluid in the tip. Sure enough, the R-0002 reagent was a brown color and not at all the usual clear color. I twisted the bottle and, sure enough, the Exp Date read "10/2017".....hmmmm, so maybe it wasn't space aliens after all (although they do exist as per recent DOD press releases...but that's another topic). But, being a man of "science" I decided to follow Occam's Razor. I also remembered that when I did the first test before adding chlorine and bumping up my SWG and CYA, I had gotten three drops of R-0002 out of the previous bottle before adding two drops from this compromised bottle. So the original test that led me to make some of the changes had 3 drops of good reagent and two drop of bad reagent which was enough to give it the right pink color but at a much lower level.
After realizing that space aliens did not take my pool water (but they probably messed with the order of my spare reagents in my cabinet...), I used my DPD powder test chemicals (R-0870/R-0871) and found that my FC was actually at 7ppm (35 drops on a 25mL sample). That's typically higher than I like to run (by a factor of 2), but I felt much better. I went to my mom & pop pool store that sells Taylor reagents and got some fresh bottles of R-0001/R-0002. I then retested and, sure enough, the color of the test sample was a blazing hot red/pink which is way over the 5ppm color block and, if my color-memory serves me right on the big-boy comparator, easily is the 7.5ppm match.
So, long story short, keep an eye on your expiration dates, they matter......
Happy pool'ing
