In need of a refresher

[poolmomME]

Hi.

Just opened our pool in ME and could use a little help interpreting my water test results.

Pool was opened on THURS 5-26.
Tested water yesterday 5-28... got these results:

Chloine 1.0
ph 7.2

FC 1.0
CC 5.0 = TC 6.0
Ca 150
TA 70
CYA was still clear at 20

Pool Math recommended the addition of bleach and borax for the FC and ph.

I retested the water this AM to see what changes/reactions may have occurred before adding the recommended baking soda, ca chloride and stabilizer.
The results this AM were:

Chlorine 1.0
ph 7.5

FC 3.0
CC 6.0 = TC 9.0
Ca 175
TA 80
CYA was still clear at 20

Do I attack the CYA first with the recommended 208 oz of stabilizer?

Also- I left the side-by-side Chlorine-ph test kit sitting while I conducted the rest of the tests. When I went to rinse it out, the Chlorine had risen to 3.0 and was a much darker yellow. Is this MORE accurate than the original reading done after adding the drops and shaking?

Any help would be appreciated.

- - - Updated - - -

ALSO.... it is not clear to me when all of the recommended chemicals should be added. Do you wait an hour between each one? Do they all go in at once? Do you address the chemicals in the order on the chart ( FC, ph, TA, Ca CYA)? Perhaps I'm missing the finer details at this moment - but thought it worth mentioning.

 

[Richard320]

Slow down!

If you had CYA last year and you have none this year but you do have a bunch of CC, your CYA broke down into Ammonia. It's going to take a whole lot of bleach to neutralize it. Raising CYA will only provide more food for whatever is in there creating the ammonia, so hold off on it for now. You'll just be making a bad situation worse. As an aside, the darkening color of the chlorine test indicates the CC is there.

What you do instead is raise FC to 10. Brush around to get it well mixed. Test FC & CC again in 10 minutes and raise FC to 10 again. Just keep doing that. What will likely happen is that FC will be low or gone and CC will be higher than before. Then slowly the CC will start lowering. Eventually on one of the tests, you will still have more than 5 FC and CC will be lower than the last time. That means you've just about finished off the ammonia.

At that point, you can adjust the pH down to 7.2 using acid and raise the CYA to 30. You don't need to wait between these. One after the other. And then you perform the SLAM Process with FC at 12.

For whatever reason, a lot of people are having the ammonia problem this year.

Once the SLAM is done and the pool is clear (even after brushing) and the CC is less than .5 and it holds overnight, you can let the FC drop below 10 and retest everything and fine tune it then. But right now, you've got a massive problem with all the Combined Chloramine and it needs to be dealt with first.

 

[poolmomME]

Thank you!