Brand new pool owner needs help

[Donovaj]

Life long dream to own a pool has come true and we have been in our house for about 1 month. The previous owner turned me on to this forum and I love the information and the assistance that seems to come from everybody. I have been hesitant to post, but here goes nothing...

We have a 18k gallon IG pool and we have 2 lab's that love to swim in it. It get's a lot of use! We have been testing daily and find that we are always near or at 0 for our FC level. We are putting 1 gallon of bleach in the pool EVERYDAY! Mind you we are in Houston in the middle of summer, but that seems like a lot. Our PH seems to be doing ok, but we are adding muratic acid about every 2 - 3 days. Our water seems cloudy, so I am hoping somebody can help me understand what is going on. My test info I got from the pool store is:

FC = 0
CH = 140
CYA = 10
PH = 7.8
ALKALINITY = 70

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

jeff

 

[pooldv]

Welcome to TFP and congrats on the pool!

In houston your CYA should be at least 50 ppm to protect chlorine from the sun. Chlorine is maintained based on the CYA level and the Chlorine CYA Chart Keep it ahove minimum at all times to keep the pool sanitized and algae free. Dogs require more frequent chlorine additions than people do to keep it above minimum.

Unfortunately the pool store usually gets test results wrong and CYA is one of the worst, so the number they give you is not reliable and we do not trust it. We recommend getting K-2006 Taylor test kit or a TF100 from TFTestkits.net and do your own testing.

Read this and ask more questions
Pool School - ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry

 

[ozdiver]

Welcome to TFP
Not surprising that you are burning off that much FC.
That CYA level needs to be brought up to 40-50. It will help protect the FC you add from the sun.
Next time you test FC, check the CC.
Since you have been dropping to 0 FC, I would expect a CC value > 0.5
Any time your FC drops below recommended minimum for your CYA level, algae is growing freely
If that is the case, you need to follow the SLAM protocol.
The cloudiness will go away once that is done.

Follow the instructions in pool school to do both of these things.
For the CYA, you'll need a sock and a container of Stabilizer which you can pickup from Walmart.
For the SLAM yu will need a good supply of bleach.

You CH is also low for a plaster pool, that can be dealt with once the other two things are under control.

 

[Texas Splash]

I agree. I keep my CYA at 50-60 with full sun on my oasis.