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    New member!

    Welcome! Have you read pool school? Pool School - Trouble Free Pool | Trouble Free Pool You may or many not have realized it yet, but what is taught here about pool and spa care, greatly contradicts pretty much the rest of the industry who use little or no chemistry, or in some instances...
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    TA pH issues

    When I used pool store testing years ago, their reports always showed that I had iron and also always had cc's in my pool; but they never recommended that those results were a problem or products to fix them. Looking back, after years of testing myself with a TF-100 kit with not one test ever...
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    PH stuck

    Muriatic acid is basically a commodity; brand shouldn't matter. It should, however be labeled as "muriatic acid". Usually available in hardware stores in paint departments among solvents or cleaners. The full strength stuff, if you go that route, may be near the brick, block or mortar sold as...
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    Closing

    I'm still running and chlorinating mine in middle Tennessee with a stand-alone leaf cover on it (something I thought I'd try out this year), which has allowed me to feel more comfortable about not covering it early. Something I usually do just so I don't have to deal with all the leaves. It's...
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    About to be a first time pool owner, feeling a little overwhelmed.

    +1 with Dirk. I prefer the ebook as well, because it's in an online book format; and this may be a generational thing, but for me it's much easier to follow a book format for learning concepts than to click around to different topics using tabs or table of contents. For some reason, I missed a...
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    Why does my local hot tub store say no bleach in acrylic hot tubs?

    Cheap ladder. Just did this a couple times. 50 ppm was an estimate. 1 hour soak and slosh around; drain and stick back in the pool. Mixed LC with water in a garden sprayer and filled them up using the tip and pumped it in small holes. It was the only way. Was a false alarm anyway. The algae...
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    Why does my local hot tub store say no bleach in acrylic hot tubs?

    I went to my pool store to get them to order new ladder treads for my ladder or at least give me the name of the manufacturer so I could order them. I had bought the ladder from them. I suspected they had algae inside them, because I had seen some live algae come out when cleaning and draining...
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    Best Places to Buy Liquid Chlorine

    My market does not have a supplier of LC at the beginning of the season or after mid August. Only Ollies Warehouse carries it, and it's seasonal. We have pool stores but none carry liquid product. I usually respond with the lack of LC by using regular bleach since I'm not using much chlorine...
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    Newbie

    Welcome! I find that LC/bleach chlorine dosers to be a minority of users on this forum nowadays and becoming a smaller percentage all the time, which is a shame, because it truly is still a trouble free way and inexpensive way of caring for pools; but the knowledge about how to easily manage...
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    Will using bleach for clorination raise the ph of my pool?

    Oh one alibi please. One SWCG user on a previous thread actually floated one puck per week of trichlor to simultaneously control pH drift and maintain cya, as he also had quick cya degradation problem for whatever reason. This solved both issue for him; or at least reduced them greatly.
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    Will using bleach for clorination raise the ph of my pool?

    Disclaimer; I'm not an expert. I was corrected by an expert about an assumption that I had made that SWCGs always results in a lot of upward pressure on pH. I developed that assumption via following a dozen threads or so where a pH drift delimma had been being duscussed; ways to reduce acid...
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    Will using bleach for clorination raise the ph of my pool?

    Or keep TA lower than you would using pucks if you're not bound by strict csi limitations.
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    Will using bleach for clorination raise the ph of my pool?

    There are a couple of threads on here that you can find via a search with thorough explanations of the chemical process that occurs regarding sodium hypochlorite and its affect on pH if you like reading chemistry. The more simple answer is that bleach is pH neutral, but it goes up then back down...
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    Bleach In Short Supply

    Late season, I usually must switch from the stronger and cheaper liquid chlorine ten percent @ $2.99/ gallon to regular store bleach that used to cost about $3.29, six percent 121 oz (7 ounces shy of a gallon) for the last couple of months of the season. This happens where I live, because a...
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    Ready to slam? Need to close

    As was stated, you have no reason to test total chlorine. We're not sure where you are getting that figure to report, but we assume it's from the OTO "yellow" drop tester that is part of the blue-box test. That OTO measurement is mostly just a quick check to ensure there is chlorine in a pool...
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    Will low CYA cause green algae?

    Based on your question, it doesn't seem as though you're understanding the relationship between CYA and FC thoroughly, which is probably the most important tenet of TFPC. Please read or re-read the "pool school" e-book. Click on this link; Pool School - Trouble Free Pool ; scroll to the bottom...
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    Test strip recommendations

    I've used the Clorox brand, red-yellow, OTO/pH kit quite a bit, because that's what I can pickup quickly when I run out of reagent or my reagent expires, and the only issue, as has been mentioned is that, if you need to keep FC above the 3-4 level to stay above the required FC/CYA ratio, and you...
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    Measuring FC during mustard shock

    Sorry for the duplication Dirk; you got your reply in just before mine.
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    First time DIY AGP and excited

    Thanks for coming here and signing up. We're excited that you're excited! You will love it here. Some will recommend reading the article ABCs of pool water chemistry to get started and I agree, but I personally prefer going beyond just the ABCs and to read the short and free e-book that...
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    Measuring FC during mustard shock

    I found this answer in a similar post inquiry in 2018... I was following a post a few weeks ago with a similar instruction, but can't find it now, so I can't confirm if the recommendation above is exactly as the "experts" recommend to conduct the one-for-one drop/ppm method to half the...
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    Oh No! Pool drain!

    I'm not sure how far you've come towards figuring out that Trouble Free Pool Care, aka this website is a different, simpler, cheaper and more chemically-correct method of pool care than the "traditional" method taught at Leslie's, other pool stores, and other online sties / Youtube channels...
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    Experts: TA levels--SWGs

    That's much better.
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    Experts: TA levels--SWGs

    Below is a link with Leslie's advice for using bleach. It does have some truths mixed in with BS (and I'm not referring to baking soda this time): Leslie's Liquid Chlorine.
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    Experts: TA levels--SWGs

    So if adding a daily dose of bleach in a swimming pool causes only a minuscule increase in the pH level, is it correct to assume then that high pH test results that come after dosing with bleach (we'll say 2 hours after) is due to the inaccuracy of a pH test result, because of high FC levels...
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    Experts: TA levels--SWGs

    Thanks everyone. So the sense that I've gotten reading forum posts about always having to continually add MA to keep pH in range with SWCG systems being more so than with manually dosed systems is not correct. It is more likely then that either: users have not found their sweet spots through...
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    Experts: TA levels--SWGs

    I'm a manual doser of LC, aka bleach, but I'm interested in how the experts recommend helping SWG operators keep pH as steady as possible, because I keep reading in the forums about a pH drift problem for those who use SWGs; and how, at least the sense I'm getting, this is something they have to...
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    New to the Forum and Maintaining Our Pool.

    You had indicated that your FC at 3 was okay in your original post without also posting a confident cya level. I'd have to go back and read pool school but I'm pretty sure it's got some language in there about not using trichlor or it may use the words "stabilized chlorine"; trichlor is...
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    Will the Industry Ever Change CYA/FC Parameters?

    The followimg is my understanding; not neccessarily fact: The CDC publishes a document called the Model for the Aquatic Health Code (MAHC). It gets updated each three years. The CMAHC is the non profit group that does all the work between each published update. They conduct discussions; do...
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    Phosphates

    Just to add to the peanut gallery, we're always hoping members will have gained knowledge through time to understand that there were concerns with your levels and the instructuons that the pool store gave you that were concerning before even considering phosphate levels that we would hope all...
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    Been lurking here a while

    Seven years ago, it was actually a pool store associate that helped me find TFP. Not on purpose; it was in the middle of my second season with a pool. He told me that my CYA was at 68, and that I should stop using stabilized chlorine trichlor tablets and start using cal-hypo tablets, and keep up...