Hello!
I've been looking around on the forums for a couple of weeks but still haven't been able to solve my problem so I figured it's time to post.
To get this out of the way, my numbers are currently:
FC: 3.0
TC: 3.0
pH: 7.2
TA: 60
CH: 350
CYA: 50
(as a note, FC is only 3.0 because I dropped some cal-hypo in this morning, but I'll get to that in a bit)
I moved into my current house about 4 years ago, my first ever with a pool! I had to do some repairs to the surface for leaks, but soon had it running nicely.
For the first 3 years I had no issues - admittedly, I was using the "pool store" method of shocking weekly and throwing some pucks in the floater once a week which I realize now is not the best method but it worked well for me and I had sparkling clear water for that first 3 years with little to no issues (algae once or twice when I went on vacation and didn't have someone keep an eye on the pool).
However in the last year or so I ran into the dreaded CYA problem - I got upwards of about 110 CYA since I was using trichlor tablets and starting getting algae buildup just about every week. My chlorine tablets weren't dissolving and since my CYA was so high any liquid chlorine I put in didn't do much. Of course the pool store didn't have much to say other than to keep off the tablets for a few weeks(as if that would solve the problem without draining some of the water!). Well after lots of trial and error over a few months of frustration, I decided to start researching myself and found out lo and behold that CYA doesn't just magically evaporate, and that I needed to drain some water to bring it down.
So I drained about half my pool out, got myself down to 50 CYA and thought I was golden. I SLAM-ed my pool with the instructions here and my water was clear consistently for a week, but then just after that I started getting little yellow spots again argh! I let it go to make sure it wasn't some other factor and after another few days I had myself some more algae!
The thing I still haven't been able to fix is that the chlorine tablets just will not dissolve, so my FC drops down to 0 a few days after shocking unless I put in liquid or cal-hypo.
I'm using the exact same floater I was for the last 3 years, and I even tried buying a different brand of chlorine tablets thinking maybe it was a bad batch, but no luck! After a week, two tablets in the floater are only about 1/3 dissolved.
I realize that tablets are not your guys' chlorinating method of choice here(and I'm looking into a liquidator so that I don't run into the CYA problem again) but does anyone have any ideas why these tablets aren't dissolving properly?
I've been looking around on the forums for a couple of weeks but still haven't been able to solve my problem so I figured it's time to post.
To get this out of the way, my numbers are currently:
FC: 3.0
TC: 3.0
pH: 7.2
TA: 60
CH: 350
CYA: 50
(as a note, FC is only 3.0 because I dropped some cal-hypo in this morning, but I'll get to that in a bit)
I moved into my current house about 4 years ago, my first ever with a pool! I had to do some repairs to the surface for leaks, but soon had it running nicely.
For the first 3 years I had no issues - admittedly, I was using the "pool store" method of shocking weekly and throwing some pucks in the floater once a week which I realize now is not the best method but it worked well for me and I had sparkling clear water for that first 3 years with little to no issues (algae once or twice when I went on vacation and didn't have someone keep an eye on the pool).
However in the last year or so I ran into the dreaded CYA problem - I got upwards of about 110 CYA since I was using trichlor tablets and starting getting algae buildup just about every week. My chlorine tablets weren't dissolving and since my CYA was so high any liquid chlorine I put in didn't do much. Of course the pool store didn't have much to say other than to keep off the tablets for a few weeks(as if that would solve the problem without draining some of the water!). Well after lots of trial and error over a few months of frustration, I decided to start researching myself and found out lo and behold that CYA doesn't just magically evaporate, and that I needed to drain some water to bring it down.
So I drained about half my pool out, got myself down to 50 CYA and thought I was golden. I SLAM-ed my pool with the instructions here and my water was clear consistently for a week, but then just after that I started getting little yellow spots again argh! I let it go to make sure it wasn't some other factor and after another few days I had myself some more algae!
The thing I still haven't been able to fix is that the chlorine tablets just will not dissolve, so my FC drops down to 0 a few days after shocking unless I put in liquid or cal-hypo.
I'm using the exact same floater I was for the last 3 years, and I even tried buying a different brand of chlorine tablets thinking maybe it was a bad batch, but no luck! After a week, two tablets in the floater are only about 1/3 dissolved.
I realize that tablets are not your guys' chlorinating method of choice here(and I'm looking into a liquidator so that I don't run into the CYA problem again) but does anyone have any ideas why these tablets aren't dissolving properly?