"Don't bleach out the liner...

[firestick]

...like the last one". That's what the wife told me. The last liner only lasted a little over 5 years. Unlike my previous pool which required very minimal maintenance and spoiled me. This pool has a very narrow balance point it seems.

I'm not sure exactly which bone headed thing I did, but I did something that bleached the liner, and at the end of its life was brittle along the entire bottom. However, the sides/walls where supple like the day it was installed. First question, what could I have done? Would this be a result of too much bleach/chlorine? Ph being too low? (I've never had problems with pH being too high)

For the past 2 or 3 years I've used 8.25% bleach to maintain chlorine levels. I had a problem with mustard algae a year or so ago, and I followed SLAM. Actually, I think I used SLAM opening last year also.

 

[gregsfc]

Very important... Did you always test and retest and retest in order to be confident of your CYA level before starting a SLAM? I think I've also read on here that a an actual pool CYA level under 30 , will not test accurately. If this is true, I'd be skeptical of any CYA result at or below 30. I always add stabilizer until I get a reading of at least 35 just to make me feel more confident about the test result, and I keep testing until I get the same result at least a couple times in a row, because knowing the true CYA is so critical to managing the TFP way.

 

[gregsfc]

The other key is that you must always test FC the way it's spelled out in SLAM instructions, and it must be an unexpired FAS-DPD kit.

As for liquid chlorine, including 8.25% bleach, I'd say but don't know, because it's liquid and much less concentrated than trichlor, dichlor, or Cal-hypo, that it would both mix and dilute much better and far less likely to drop to the floor in high concentrations, although, I think dichlor dissolves very quickly if I remember correctly.

 

[Leebo]

The majority of the time brittle liners point back to a low pH level. What pH did you maintain the pool at the majority of the time??