This year I've been using bleach exclusively. For the past week or so I've had CYA level of 50, TA of 110, PH of 8.0, CH of 200.
The biggest trouble I have now is maintaining Chlorine levels. I'm putting in 1 gallon 6% bleach in at night around 7 and the next morning free chlorine level is at 0 when it should be up around 4 ppm. If I put 2 gallons of 6% bleach in at 7 it may get to 4 ppm for about 24 hours but then drop to zero again. This is costing a lot - when I was using trichlor tablets I typically only needed to use 3 about every 3 days to get an acceptable chlorine level.
I recently had a lot of green and yellow algae but have now nearly got rid of it all using Yellow Out and Polyquot and for the past week or two the pool's been clear. For some reason my CYA level had dropped to 0 (from about 30 in April when I added some). I added enough to get it up to 50 ppm about a week ago. I had thought getting rid of the Algae and fixing the CYA would fix the chlorine demand but apparently not much.
I live in Texas and temperatures been running between 95 and 107 degrees (yesterday's temperature) for the past week or so.
Questions:
1) How much is the high PH contributing to this situation? I've added some acid today and hope to get the PH down to more normal levels of 7.4-7.6. Any other reasons for the chlorine demand? I added 32 oz of Polyquot a week ago - does that interfere with chlorine?
2) This is getting expensive. At 2 gallons a day the bleach will easily run me about $30 a week. Using trichlor tablets I would spend $100 for a bucket which would last me all summer.
I would go back to using trichlor tablets but it led to high levels of CYA that I didn't like and caused problems. At prices for bleach these days is it really less expensive v. using triclor tablets? Transporting the gallons and gallons of bleach and having to go shopping for it every week is getting old also. If I'm not getting a decent cost difference and if it's actually more expensive it's probably not that worth it to me.
3) I'm beginning to think bleach is a solution for colder climates and not for high heat and sun areas as Texas. Any thoughts?
Any help would be appreciated. When I hear that others spend very little on bleach v. trichlor I just don't get why I'm not seeing the same results.
Thanks.
The biggest trouble I have now is maintaining Chlorine levels. I'm putting in 1 gallon 6% bleach in at night around 7 and the next morning free chlorine level is at 0 when it should be up around 4 ppm. If I put 2 gallons of 6% bleach in at 7 it may get to 4 ppm for about 24 hours but then drop to zero again. This is costing a lot - when I was using trichlor tablets I typically only needed to use 3 about every 3 days to get an acceptable chlorine level.
I recently had a lot of green and yellow algae but have now nearly got rid of it all using Yellow Out and Polyquot and for the past week or two the pool's been clear. For some reason my CYA level had dropped to 0 (from about 30 in April when I added some). I added enough to get it up to 50 ppm about a week ago. I had thought getting rid of the Algae and fixing the CYA would fix the chlorine demand but apparently not much.
I live in Texas and temperatures been running between 95 and 107 degrees (yesterday's temperature) for the past week or so.
Questions:
1) How much is the high PH contributing to this situation? I've added some acid today and hope to get the PH down to more normal levels of 7.4-7.6. Any other reasons for the chlorine demand? I added 32 oz of Polyquot a week ago - does that interfere with chlorine?
2) This is getting expensive. At 2 gallons a day the bleach will easily run me about $30 a week. Using trichlor tablets I would spend $100 for a bucket which would last me all summer.
I would go back to using trichlor tablets but it led to high levels of CYA that I didn't like and caused problems. At prices for bleach these days is it really less expensive v. using triclor tablets? Transporting the gallons and gallons of bleach and having to go shopping for it every week is getting old also. If I'm not getting a decent cost difference and if it's actually more expensive it's probably not that worth it to me.
3) I'm beginning to think bleach is a solution for colder climates and not for high heat and sun areas as Texas. Any thoughts?
Any help would be appreciated. When I hear that others spend very little on bleach v. trichlor I just don't get why I'm not seeing the same results.
Thanks.