Recent content by Natrix

I hate the CYA test as it's the only real subjective one and I always struggle with deciding which measurement it is closest to. I do it weekly though just to stay on top of it. Good luck with the SLAM.

Once I had a really good understanding of how to balance the chemistry on our pool I decided to drain it. I wanted to start with a fresh canvas and not worry about anything in the pool I couldn't get out. I think it ended up costing about $100 in water and maybe another $100 in chemistry to get...

I'm also in Tucson so if you need any advice specific to our desert climate I can try to help. We also bought an older house that already had a pool and have been working to get it refurbished and am now at the point where I am just balancing the chemistry daily. Much easier than I thought it...

We just use a flexible putty knife to get the vast majority of it off. The tiny bit of residual left on the tile we are hoping just dissolves on its own. We plan on vacuuming every night that we scraped so it doesn't sit and dissolve. There's no water build up anywhere, I think it's from them...

We have a ton of calcium buildup around the pool we just took over and want to get it removed. We're not afraid of the elbow grease involved in just scraping it off manually but I am concerned about potential changes to the chemistry of the water. Will we see any negative effects of scraping...

Just to wrap up the thread I am sitting at the below readings now. Thanks for the help all! FC 5.0 pH 7.4 TA 100 CH 350 CYA 45

Retested with the revised methodology and it came out to 75. Went out and bought a tub of calcium chloride to adjust. The water is not softened at the house, but my wife did comment when we moved into this house that the water felt much softer.

I tested today with the TF-100 test kit and got the following results. 0.0 FC 7.8 PH 100 TA 70 CH 0 CYA I saw mknauss posted once that you should start with chlorine, then the CYA sock, then add acid as needed to get PH into the 7s. Should I follow those steps to do the initial treatment of...

It will probably be full within a couple hours. The local Leslie's sells reagents for the TF-100 test kit so I will get the couple that weren't giving me conclusive results or were empty to take some measurements today until my new test kit arrives.

Here's a picture of everything I thought was relevant. It's an older pool as you can probably tell. There is no side port for running a vacuum, you have to do it through the skimmer. There is a second port in there that is plugged, not sure what that is for. The valve on the pump, not sure what...