Recent content by PolareNJ

I had cleaned the vial as directed last year, and quite honestly, the problem might have occurred this year when we were testing so often. We're using the new vial and the old vial is soaking in bleach now, and we will use this as a back-up if needed. The vials themselves are not expensive and...

Here is our update. While away for five days, we used the Tri-chlor pucks in the old chlorinator and the CYA is now up to 40. We have switched back to liquid chlorine. Our issue was that testing continually showed that the CC was between 1 and 2 (2-4 drops using the TF-100 test kit). This was...

Thanks, Texas Splash. Our problem was maintaining the CYA, but we may have resolved that. Update: Our readings this morning (6 a.m.): FC = 17 (down from 18 at 11 p.m. last night) CC = 2 (4 drops using the TFP-100 test kit), same as last night's test CYA = looks like 28, so this is better than...

Thanks for your responses. Duraleigh: The test strips show no ammonia at present (down from 0.5 - 1.0 ppm when we opened pool) and FC has been over 11 ppm with no bottoming out. Just can't get CC down to 0.5 ppm. Flygirl516: We are generally holding FC levels of 11-15 ppm and have been since...

I started using the TFP methodology last year and am comfortable using the TF-100 test kit. We are 'lucky' enough to have the special bacteria that consumes CYA over the winter, which was a blessing/nightmare last year when the process resulted in extremely high ammonia readings. We got thru...

Thanks! What is an acceptable salt level in a chlorine pool? also, we used many gallons of muriatic acid in the beginning of the season (7 or 9). Would this play a role in the salt issue?

Problem: High salt levels in pool. As this thread testifies, we went through many challenges with our pool this year, but with the support of TFP, we have gotten the metrics under control. One odd thing that I mentioned before, we thought the pool tasted salty. When I went to pick up more...

It took a while to get our water balanced for which I can only credit the amazing support of TFP experts and members and some sleepless nights on our part. We have enjoyed sparkling water with all the chemistry in balance since the end of June. I now have two questions: 1) The pH is slowly...

As a follow-up, we passed all three tests for completing the SLAM a week ago (same day as Kim's post). We kept the SLAM level for an extra 2 days to make sure the test results were consistent. We brought the FC level down a little each day. We are establishing the maintenance levels of...

Thanks, Kim, for the encouragement. Feels so close...but is still elusive. We'll keep plodding on.

We've been at this for over a week, and the OCLT still shows a loss of 1.5 ppm (we did have a loss of only 1 ppm Wednesday night/Thursday morning). The CC =0.5 ppm (TF-100 test turns clear with one drop of reactant). We have had some rain the past two days. We have kept the FC at 16 even...

JoeRJGR, Yes, we added chlorine during the day. Once the ammonia was burned off ( somewhere about 45 gallons into the process) we noticed the FC was going up. That was Thursday night and we did add chrorine all day on Friday and Saturday. By Sunday, we added only once during the day to hold...

We did add the 25 lbs of baking soda and the TA is up to 70. Haven't adjusted the pH yet as we are still SLAMMING. We are still not passing one criteria of ending the slam: the OCLT test (water has always been clear, and CC = 0.5 - one drop of R0871). We are losing 1.5 ppm of FC overnight...

JoeRJGR, We really didn't know what we were dealing with at the beginning of the season; only that 170 ppm of stabilizer had disappeared. Using the monopersulfate made matters worse as it took 3+weeks for it to disappear and during that time, we didn't know the true reading for the CC and of...

Should we be concerned about all the sodium in the pool from the massive amounts of sodium hypo and then baking soda we've added? The pool tastes salty.