burning eyes

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wbowlin1

wbowlin1

0
Apr 30, 2015
20
Jackson Tn
I checked my pool levels yesterday and they are the same as they are today. The children are complaining of burning eyes.
TC 3.5
FC 2
CC 1.5
PH 7.5
ALK 120
CYA the view tube is completely full, and I can still see the black dot clearly (done twice both days)
Ch 50
 
With no CYA to buffer it an FC of 3.5 is going to be pretty harsh and my guess as the likely culprit.

I see you had a CYA level of 50 in May, have you had to replace water since then?
 
That CC number is worrisome..... It's 30% of your TC.

If this was my pool I would add enough CYA per pool math to bring it to ~30ppm, and do an OCLT.

FWIW- I keep my FC above 6ppm with a CYA of 40ppm and nobody complains of burning eyes. We have even gone in an hour after my evening dose where it is closer to 10-11ppm and still no complaints. My CC's are always <0.5ppm also.

Dom
 
New here...so bear with me.

The non-existant CYA is a problem and needs to be fixed or the pool won't maintain chlorine in the sun. But the CC at 1.5...isn't that indicative of something growing in the pool? IE...is a SLAM needed to clear up the stats after bringing up the CYA?

Sean
 
If you are using the pool and testing at the right time, you will always see CC. When the FC reacts with anything in the water, CC will be formed, then eventually broken down the rest of the way and disappear again. That is maybe oversimplified, but it is how I understand it. Someone please correct me if I am wrong. So CC is not necessarily a sign of a problem, but rather a sign of the chlorine doing its work.

Now having said that, 1.5CC seems pretty high. So it may be a sign of a need to SLAM. But I would second Dom's suggestion of doing an OCLT to decide if a SLAM is needed.

The low CYA does seem a likely culprit. However, even with CYA down at 20, shock level FC is 10. So unless your CYA is WAY down there, it may be something else. And if your CYA was 50 in May, it would seem like something unusual had to happen to drive it that low. Even if you drained or backflushed or vacuumed to waste or overflowed your pool enough to remove and replace a THIRD of your water (5000 gallons) TWICE it would still only get you from 50 to about 20. That is unless something happened like an algae bloom that consumed the CYA.

The other thing I would be thinking about is pee. If anyone is peeing in the pool, it will eat your FC like crazy and produce significant CC pretty quickly. And the chloramines that are formed hang around a while and cause burning eyes and the stereotypical "chlorine pool smell." If that is what is going on, feed it enough chlorine to keep the FC up, and give the pool plenty of sunlight which helps break down the chloramines.

But I would still follow the recommendation of Dom and others. Get your CYA up to a reasonable level. If that was the whole problem, that should fix it. If it does not, do an OCLT to see if you have something in the water that needs a SLAM. And if the CYA is good, the OCLT is good, and you are still having the burning issue, then I am thinking pee is the issue.
 

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bkfamily1 said:
The other thing I would be thinking about is pee. If anyone is peeing in the pool, it will eat your FC like crazy and produce significant CC pretty quickly. And the chloramines that are formed hang around a while and cause burning eyes and the stereotypical "chlorine pool smell." If that is what is going on, feed it enough chlorine to keep the FC up, and give the pool plenty of sunlight which helps break down the chloramines.
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This is actually the only time you would expect to see CC in a well-maintained pool. I've tested the water with 6-7 adults and older kids in the pool. 0 CC several times. Urine is a different animal. It rapidly reacts with chlorine (FC) and forms CC compounds that don't break down as quickly as others.

Get your CYA up and perform the OCLT as recommended.
 
PAGirl said:
I was always under the understanding if your CC was over 1. there is the need for a SLAM. That is one of the criteria to end a SLAM, CC under 1.
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PAGirl, I thought the same thing. But a few discussions on here led me to the understanding that the presence of CC in and of itself is not necessarily a sign of a need to SLAM. The real sign of a need to SLAM is the presence of something growing (organics) in the water. Two things consume FC - sunlight and organics. The OCLT eliminates the sunlight, so you only see the FC consumed by organics. So the OCLT is the best signal that there are indeed organics active in the water and the need to SLAM.
 
Donldson said:
.........I see you had a CYA level of 50 in May, have you had to replace water since then?
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wbowlin1 said:
Yes. We have had a lot of rain lately (1-2 inches) over the past 3 weeks
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Are you absolutely certain your CYA of 50ppm was correct? 1-2" of rain in a pool your size shouldn't effect the CYA (or anything else) at all, well at least a measurable effect. I've done that a dozen times or so (rain, splashout, backwash, etc) this season and just now I'm bumping my CYA 10ppm to get back to 40-ish ppm for the first time this year. Adding water then draining does not have the same result as draining then adding water.

Did you do an OCLT?

Dom
 
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