Bought my house in October of last year and it came with a pool. I'm from Chicago area, so I knew nothing about maintaining a pool. Luckily I found this site rather quickly and didn't get pool stored (or however you phrase it).
Long story, short...once I got the green cesspool looking like a clear, celestial pool, I started taking tests. Found that my CYA was 250-300! From reading here, I knew to drain the water to lower it. That's been my obsession for the last 2 weeks...diluting and draining.
Just last night did my pool finally fill up from, what I hope is the last partial draining and here's my test results using a K-2006 kit:
FC: 6.4
CC: 0
Ph: 7.8 (best I could tell)
TA: 90
CH: 140-160
CYA: 40ish
How's these levels look? I know the CH is low and I'm in the process of adding some calcium chloride per the pool math's recommendations. See anything else I need to do?
Funny story...when I went to the pool store today to purchase the calcium chloride, I brought a water sample for them to test so I could compare to my results (BTW, they were way off on some things). They always ask how the pool is doing. I told them my stabilizer has been way too high so I just completed a 50% drain and finally got it to where I wanted it (kind of knowing I'd get a reaction
). He immediately got upset and scolded me for doing that and said I basically screwed up all the chemicals in the pool. He says the CYA is MUCH too low and now I'll have to add all kinds of stuff to fix what I did and that I'll have a green swamp again as soon as the temp goes back up. My pool can't survive without chlorine tablets says him. I pointed out that using chlorine tablets would continuously raise the CYA levels and that on their literature, it says that if stabilizer is too high, a partial drain should happen. I asked him what he considers too high to be. He said to ignore what it says, that they disagree with their corporate's advice on where to keep the stabilizer level. And then he said this...your stabilizer isn't too high until it gets to the 2000-3000 ppm range 
, but until then, we can let it go! I almost laughed out loud. If I was more confident in my knowledge and abilities, I would have debated him as the store was dead, but I let it go.
I'll get my chlorine from there and pool parts as I need them and a good laugh once in a while, but never will I take their advice! Thanks for all the great advice on here!!
Long story, short...once I got the green cesspool looking like a clear, celestial pool, I started taking tests. Found that my CYA was 250-300! From reading here, I knew to drain the water to lower it. That's been my obsession for the last 2 weeks...diluting and draining.
Just last night did my pool finally fill up from, what I hope is the last partial draining and here's my test results using a K-2006 kit:
FC: 6.4
CC: 0
Ph: 7.8 (best I could tell)
TA: 90
CH: 140-160
CYA: 40ish
How's these levels look? I know the CH is low and I'm in the process of adding some calcium chloride per the pool math's recommendations. See anything else I need to do?
Funny story...when I went to the pool store today to purchase the calcium chloride, I brought a water sample for them to test so I could compare to my results (BTW, they were way off on some things). They always ask how the pool is doing. I told them my stabilizer has been way too high so I just completed a 50% drain and finally got it to where I wanted it (kind of knowing I'd get a reaction
). He immediately got upset and scolded me for doing that and said I basically screwed up all the chemicals in the pool. He says the CYA is MUCH too low and now I'll have to add all kinds of stuff to fix what I did and that I'll have a green swamp again as soon as the temp goes back up. My pool can't survive without chlorine tablets says him. I pointed out that using chlorine tablets would continuously raise the CYA levels and that on their literature, it says that if stabilizer is too high, a partial drain should happen. I asked him what he considers too high to be. He said to ignore what it says, that they disagree with their corporate's advice on where to keep the stabilizer level. And then he said this...your stabilizer isn't too high until it gets to the 2000-3000 ppm range , but until then, we can let it go! I almost laughed out loud. If I was more confident in my knowledge and abilities, I would have debated him as the store was dead, but I let it go.I'll get my chlorine from there and pool parts as I need them and a good laugh once in a while, but never will I take their advice! Thanks for all the great advice on here!!
Good job screwing up your chemicals! Numbers look good. Did you ask him how he tests for 2000 CYA? LOL!!!
LOL I will have to use this!