New Here - need advice to get rid of pool service!

Sorry to hear about your father-in-law.
You came to the right place, first thing you need is a good test kit, I have the Taylor 2006 but the TF-100 is a better deal, this link compares them both
Test Kits Compared - Trouble Free Pool
Having a good test kit is the secret, pool stores make money selling you chemicals, most of which you don't need
For now see if you can find liquid chlorine at Home depot or Walmart and add a little until you can get your kit. Once we see what you have folks here are always more then willing to help.

Add this to your reading list...

One of the basic principles of this site is maintaining your FC in line with your CYA. There is a chart in my signature that shows the relationship. Once you know your CYA (thats why you need a kit recommended above) you can see where you should be keeping your FC.

With that said, I can already tell you that your FC is low. If your pool guy just left and it is that low, I'm guessing he is adding chlorine pucks to your inline chlorinator or skimmer. Those add CYA, which builds up over time and makes your FC requirement go higher and higher until you get algae. Its a vicious cycle.

Read up, keep posting, get a good test kit and we can have you on your own in no time, with an algae free pool and a lot more $ staying in your pocket.

Some store sell liquid Chlorine like Home depot or Walmart..I would look for that and if you can't find it get a gallon of regular Bleach and get your FC levels up to 7 or 8 until you get a test kit..Your one the right track, tell Poll guy Thanks but no thanks bye bye

The Poolmaster kit is okay for what it does.. which is pH, TA and OTO Chlorine* only. The other two tests are variants of the first three.

But to get the whole story you do need to test for CYA (Stabilizer) for the chlorine and the "Calcium Hardness" as well for the pH buffer balance and "scale" balance... the CSI is what TFP calls it.. similar to LSI but it takes more into account. You need to balance the free chlorine level against CYA and also everything else mentioned (TA, CH, pH) for a stable CSI.

The group will recommend that you use a Taylor kit, either a K-2006 purchased from a reliable source or the TF-100 kit that has chemicals from Taylor proportioned to match better the TFP ways. Without that data, we can't give you the advice that you need. If your pool guy is using bleach or even chlorine gas and not tabs, that's considered a "good thing" but I see he's letting to FC level get to low according to the TFP and even "industry standard" guidelines, and that is why you are getting Algae.

In general the recommendation now would be to bring the chlorine level up to SLAM levels ("shock" but based by the CYA in your water) to kill off the Algae but you might want to get an accurate CYA reading first here.

*OTO chlorine-- the group recommends FAS-DPD chlorine testing because it's more accurate and works about 5 PPM where most of us keep our FC levels at. There are ways of diluting the water to read more on OTO, I'll do that occasionally to save the better chemicals for when I need them. But in general if you want an accurate Cl level, then the FAS-DPD test is much better.

As for the Poolmaster kit. For pH, and OTO Cl it reads identically to the Taylor basic kit. I personally like the Poolmaster TA test better and it gives the same results.. but that's me. If you are color blind (I am not) the difference is even better since it's not a "red-green" test like the Taylor. It's purple to clear. But those three things are all that that kit is good for for TFP. I use it often for basic daily tests and break out the good kit for the once a week tests or if there is a problem.

The requirement for the Taylor readings here is for consistency. It's much easier to give advice with one type of kit than many others. Strips, for example aren't really accurate enough for anything.

Read through the Pool School articles, get a proper test kit and we can fix this.

ralphsyv said:

The pool service normally does not share any records with us on what they do.
So last week when I complained, the manager came the next day and tested.
According to her:
Chlorine - 5
Ph - 7.6
Alk - 120
Calcium - 220
CYA - 25
TDS - 2000

I can't test CYA with my current kit, so I'll be updating it as I do better testing.

Click to expand...

If those numbers are correct, you should be okay, though we typically recommend that you'd run a little higher CYA than that. I definitely would get my own kit and at least keep track of what they are doing. You shouldn't be getting algae if those are the levels. Also I am making the assumption that Chlorine is Free Chlorine and not Total.. that could be a bad assumption. This is another reason for the better FAS-DPD testing we do with TFP.

Depending on water temperature, you have a slightly negative CSI .. but within guidelines. So something is probably wrong with their testing, honestly. I'd start by buying a good kit and doing a test yourself. But then.. it's not difficult to do the rest yourself, either... if you get my drift....

My personal thought is that they dropped the trailing zero on the CYA... if you had those numbers and a 250 CYA.. yup you'd start getting algae.... I'd try to see if you can get the test for that....

You will get it stabilized. get your Chlorine up to 5 or 6 at least until you get a test kit..
Second I have NO DOUBT you can do this with out them and end up with better water and save a lot of money.
The water looks greenish, are you seeing visible signs of algae on the walls or bottom? Might just be a Fl thing

if he hasn't already stop him Chlorine is all you need

Okay.. so I didn't want to get into too much detail.. but for the chlorine test I will.

OTO is Orthotolidine --- it's the cheapest and most common test, but it doesn't test FC--free chlorine levels above about 6 PPM accurately-- or really at all with out the water sample being diluted. It doesn't measure CC's - combined chlorine, which are basically versions that have attacked organic matter. You need to use an oxidizer to get those back to active free chlorine to do their job again. It turns our for pool use that chlorine ions can also act as the oxidizer as well as for more free chlorine. You'll see these as the most common test because of the belief that anything above 3 or so is "bad" to swim in. Unfortunately when you add stabilizer this changes the equation a lot.. and that is where TFP disagrees with the industry. You can search the boards for more information on that.

Then moving up the scale there is DPD-- N,N-diethyl-p-phenylenediamine -- that is more accurate and I think (someone will certainly correct me if I am wrong) can handle higher levels of undiluted chlorine than OTO. This IIRC comes as a liquid but isn't really suitable for combine chlorine readings, either.

There there is the "Gold standard" in Chlorine testing, and what you want to get in addition to the "fast" "daily" OTO tests. FAS-DPD is a powder form that allows the higher lebel of chlorine testing, plus there is a second reagent that allow you to accurately measure the level of combined chlorine in your pool. Anything over 1 PPM indicates a potential problem, and because of this it's really helpful to have this tool in the tool kit.


As for LSI and CSI... these are "saturation" indices. These are equations to determine when minerals will precipitate out of solution and cause scaling. LSI is the industry standard, developed a hundred years ago, but it was designed to calculate scaling on boilers! The CSI used here is modified to be better suited for pools and pool water temperature.

If you measure everything that a TF-100 kit (or a K-2006 kit) does, and enter it into one of the Pool Math apps or here on the website, it will give you a value. A negative value is "acidic" or even "corrosive" if it's beyond a certain level (-0.2 is the the standard you are doing good limit) and it "will scale" or "alkaline" at about +0.2 on this scale.

So what you are trying to do if you manage the water on your own with TFP is keep the free chlorine level at or slightly above the level recommended on the CYA/TC chart on this site-- and independently-- keeping the CSI to as close to zero as possible (or slightly negative with a SWCG if you have one).

If you do this and test consistently, then you should never have serious problems with scaling nor with algae. That is the point of the TFP method. Hopefully this helps. Read the pool school articles.

In general adding metals such as copper and silver is discouraged by this group, because they can cover up the real problem, or cause other issues that are much harder to correct.

Good luck!

It's possible that the algae you see is burning off your free chlorine faster than they are adding it. If the CYA is indeed 25, then 40 is more in line for the guidelines. With a low CYA it's possible the sun is burning off the free chlorine faster than they are adding it as well, or a combination of both. Here are the basics for that. It probably wouldn't hurt in the meantime to add some liquid chlorine (bleach) to try to keep your levels up.