Chlorine tablets not dissolving in floater

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E

erricrice

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May 11, 2016
17
Clearwater FL
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?
 
Hmm, I don't have a thermometer handy but I can see about getting one tomorrow.

Nothing unusual there though, I'm down in sunny florida(currently about 80-85F every day, will get up to about 95 in the next few weeks) and the pool gets direct sunlight almost 100% of the day.
 
Welcome to TFP!

Nice work learning about and maintaining your pool! I have never heard of this! We have quite a few people here use pucks from time to time for various reasons. Hopefully some puck users will be able to help out.
 
You should get rid of these pucks right away. Your CYA is right where it needs to be and your FC is dangerously low. Chlorine is being consumed every day in every pool. It needs replenished everyday by some means be it SWG or manually. Until you get your liquidator set up, you need to dose with liquid chlorine.
 
Now that we've gotten past all the reasons you should switch, lets see if we can fix the problem with the feeder. :)

What tablet feeder do you have?

What is the dial set on?

I have more questions once I know which feeder you have.
 
Haha yes after only a couple of minutes on this forum I was convinced tablets were not the way to go. But I do still want to get it figured out! There's obviously something weird going on and I don't want to run into some other problem in the future with liquid that might be related.

I'm actually not running a feeder at all, it's just a floater (this one: Porpoise Large Flip Floating Chlorine Dispenser | Pinch A Penny Store). That's been part of the problem - I can't find any topics on dissolving issues with floaters, only with feeders! No one else seems to be having this problem.

The floater is in the pool 24h a day, and I run my pump during most of the sunlight hours (about 7 hours), so it's definitely getting moved around and dispensing somewhat evenly while chlorine is in demand.

It's the same floater I've had the whole time, so it's not like I changed the floater and ran into issues after that. It's gotta be something stupid simple, but I can't seem to figure it out!
 
Floaters are pretty fool proof devices, but they're not very efficient at dispensing chlorine around the pool.

Do you have the openings as wide as they'll get?

Which tablets are you using in it?
Did you switch brands of tablets recently?

Are the tablets actually not dissolving, or are they dissolving but just not keeping FC in the pool?
 
Yeah, the openings are as wide as they go(and there are two holes in the bottom of the floater as well).

I've been using Suncoast Complete tablets the whole time (Chlorine Tablets, Complete Multi Purpose 3 Inch | Pinch A Penny Store).

I thought maybe the last bucket of those I had bought was bad(or the formula changed or something?), so two weeks ago I tried buying a totally different brand (Nava: Amazon.com : 50 lbs Bucket 3 Garden).

But I have the same issue with those.

The tablets are not dissolving at all(and thus not keeping FC up). After a week, two tablets are about 1/3 smaller in size, and after about two weeks they are only about half their original size.
 

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Sounds like it's just not getting any circulation through it. have you tried anchoring it near a return to see if they erode faster?

Is the flow out the return(s) the same as it's always been?
What is your filter pressure compared to last year?
 
Hmm yeah I could see that but I haven't changed anything in that area - it wasn't stuck near a return the last few years but I will try anchoring it there and see if that helps!

The flow is actually way better than when I first moved in - the pool was not kept up by the prior owners and the DE screens were totally destroyed(sorry, haven't gotten all my equipment into my signature yet) which led to some weird pressure issues and DE buildup the bottom of the filter tank. But I had that fixed a while before this started happening, so I can't imagine it is related.

I slightly adjust the direction of the jets every once in a while(maybe once/twice a year) if I notice there is a "dead" spot where pollen/leaves never make it to the skimmer and just go in a circle - maybe something changed there? I can't imagine that would be enough to make such a drastic change in dissolve rate though, since the floater still gets pushed around.

As long as this isn't a chemical issue, I'm not really worried at this point since I'll be getting a liquidator soon. I just didn't want some weird chemical problem that persists and blindsides me again in another year or so :)

Thanks for the help everyone! If anyone has any other ideas though, please let me know!
 
It could be that they're compressing the tablets more than they used to, making them harder to dissolve.


You really do need a good test kit of you don't already have one. That way you can rule out any balance issue before you install the LQ.
 
You already know that pucks/tablets are not the way to go, with that said.....Just a suggestion, put 1 tablet in the skimmer basket...see if it dissolve faster. When I was using pucks/tablets (no longer, liquid bleach only) and FC was low, I would always put 1 or 2 in the skimmer basket to speed the process.
 
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Ok, liquidator is on the way! Apparently shipping from the other side of the country can take some time, so in the meantime I've set up a bit of an experiment.

Since the only thing I can think here is that there is a difference in how the water flows across the floater, I've tethered it against the outside of the skimmer so that there constantly water being sucked through it. I seem to recall when I first moved in that it would get "stuck" there a lot due to the way the jets were positioned. Maybe it was getting stuck there more often than I realized, and that's how the tablets were dissolving.

Anyways, we'll see over the next week how it looks.

Water is a nice warm 89F at the end of the day if anyone is still interested!
 
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Ok a quick followup on this one. After anchoring the floater right next to the skimmer(so water is always flowing over it), the tablets dissolve a little bit better, but still only about 1/2 gone after a full week(in the sun, no less - water temp was hovering around 88 every day!)

Picture below of what they look like - two brand new tablets next to it for scale.

And of course this every day my FC was dropping to 0 until I poured some liquid chlorine in.

The good news is my liquidator came today! Got it all set up with no issues, put in 2.5 gallons, set the flow to 2 and we'll see where we're at tomorrow!


uMAf3eb.jpg
 
Ok I think I finally figured out what was going on with this one. I did have an issue with some black algae due to a very old, cracked marcite surface(I'll be making a new post to describe how I handled all that).

Once we got further into the summer, the tablets started to dissolve more at the usual rate so I think it was just water temperature that was keeping them in solid form.

And I believe during previous winters I just didn't notice that they weren't dissolving because I wasn't paying nearly as much attention to chlorine usage and because I didn't have any issues with algae I assumed the chlorine was working fine(when in fact it was just because it was during the winter, so chlorine requirements were very low). And then now of course I was having an issue with black algae so my chlorine requirements were very high even during the winter.

Just another good excuse to get that old cracked surface replaced!
 
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