Southern AZ challenge!

[angelagh]

Greetings:
I am excited to have found this site! I had started the routine of weekly trips to the store trying to get my pool stabilized...what a nightmare!! So over the last 2-3 weeks, I've been trying to do this following your directions...and waited until I got the test kit so I could assess properly. I'm not sure why I have been having such a terrible time trying to get FC but today I finally reached a FC=1 -- the first 1-2 weeks I added over a gallon of chlorine with no indication I was doing anything . So Monday, I added 3 bags of chlorine shock and more liquid chlorine...tested today and had much better numbers:
FC=1
CC = .5
calcium = 750
TA 280
PH 7.2
CYA = 100

so I added another 48 ounces of chlorine...

(note, I did backwash early April and cleaned my filters with filter cleaner (soaked overnight))

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP from just a bit to the north!!!

First, when you tested the CYA did the dot disappear right away or could you always see it? Some new members get this backward and just want to check.

If your CYA is really that high, you need to replace at least 50% of your water to get that reasonable.
Because the CYA is so high and you have not been maintaining the FC level high enough (see the [FC/CYA][/FC/CYA] chart), you likely have stuff in the water consuming the chlorine as fast as you are adding it to the water. So you likely need to follow the SLAM Process process after you get the CYA under control.

Are you using PoolMath to calculate how much chlorine you need to be adding to reach a target?

- - - Updated - - -

Oops. I just saw that I misread and that you actually put in 3 bags of "shock" ... what exactly was that? It is very likely that it could have added more CYA making your issue worse. In fact using any powder chlorine in AZ is a bad idea because it is either adding CYA or CH neither of which you want too high ... and the CH is going to climb fast anyway just due to evaporation.