Recent content by owkaye

Then the chlorine gas escapes into the air, and the CYA remains in the bucket -- either in the yellow liquid or in the large white chunks -- correct? There could be several year's worth of CYA left in that bucket, and I don't see any reason to waste it . If chlorine off-gassing is the biggest...

Me either. I'm just hoping to figure out a way to measure a consistent amount each time I need some more for my pool. Then I will be able to calculate my CYA increases rather than run the CYA test. So unless someone has a better idea, maybe I will try removing the chunks, crushing them up, and...

Thanks Richard320. Do you think the CYA and acidity is still in the white material? Or is it more likely that the CYA is all in the yellow liquid now? The reason I ask is because if the CYA is still in the white material I can probably remove those white chunks from the yellow liquid, dry it...

A crack in the lid of my half-full dichlor bucket allowed rainwater to seep in all winter. Now the bucket is full of yellow liquid and large chunks of white semi-floating material. It looks like the dichlor granules have gotten stuck together and some (or all?) of the chlorine content has...

I think the TFP system works well because most of us refuse to pay a professional pool service person to come in every day, test the pool chemistry, make the correct adjustments, and do all the other work that's required to keep the pool in optimal condition. So we come here and are told to 'get...

You may think so, but refilling the pool will push us over the standard water allotment and cost us $20-30 alone. Then there's the time to drain and refill, and the time and chemical cost to start over from scratch and re-balance with more dichlor, acid and bleach. No, an $8 bottle of...

Does alum flocculant eventually release the coagulated particles like clarifier does? If not, what would be wrong with vacuuming into the top of my sand filter? Then I wouldn't lose any of my water. The description of Leslie's Alum Enhancer Flocculant says it's good to use as a sand filter...

Good point! It's not slow at all. The water is draining out of my filter as fast as my pump can pump it in! I understand this. I also understand that very few people use gravity-fed sand filters. Therefore my situation is unusual, and it seems to me that clarifier may be ideally suited to this...

This year I put my new homemade sand filter into service. It's a 55-gallon plastic drum/barrel with the top cut off, and it sits up on a platform so the barrel bottom and pool top are at the same level. A PVC manifold in the bottom of the barrel is connected to a 2-inch outflow port through...

My son and I have both been in the pool several times this year, and neither of us are uncomfortable with the current pH level. Our eyes are just fine. Thanks for confirming that the current TA is acceptable. I like the fact that the pH has not moved in more than a week. If I'm lucky maybe...

After my initial fill I gradually lowered my TA to 50. I was going for 60 but overshot a little bit. Then I adjusted my pH to 7.6, and after checking pH again a few hours later -- to confirm that it was still 7.6 -- I immediately added 46 ounces of boric acid to reach a calculated 50 ppm of...

Heh. I was thinking that municipalities would try to raise TA so their water wouldn't be so acidic that it eats through old iron distribution pipes. But it seems some of them have just the opposite problem. I'll definitely check the TA of my deep well water if I ever get the pump...

Right ... because every time we add more water it's going to increase the TA and pH thus requiring more acid. Fortunately we had a very easy-to-use cover last year, and most of the time it was on the pool. We're not so lucky this year because we do not have a cover yet, and the pool gets a lot...

That doesn't sound good. Will do ... and thanks!

This probably explains why I found myself adding acid so frequently last year. I'll give your suggestion a try. This sounds better than adding acid every 2-3 days like I did last year. Do you think your pH might stay at 7.7 for a month or more without adding more acid? Or is 10 days the point...