Cal-Hypo & CYA

[casedit]

Am I right that the power powder plus from leslies (cal-hypo) contains no CYA?

I am starting up my pool after new liner and plan to go BBB route after huge algae bout last year. I have some of the above product left over and want to get my CYA up to the 30-50 level. Should I just avoid this stuff completely and use bleach + CYA? I hate to spend money on dichlor when i spent a small fortune at leslies last year for chlorine.

I used to go through a ton of trichlor pucks to keep my chlorine up (prob why i had algae) and used the PPP stuff to shock.

thanks

 

[JohnT]

Welcome to TFP.

Cal-hypo contains no CYA. Be sure your calcium level isn't high before using it.

 

[casedit]

thank you for the reply. Make sure the calcium isn't high before using the cal-hypo or CYA?

 

[anonapersona]

Cal-hypo contains calcium, so you need to be sure that your calcium is in the range of 250 - 350 if you have a plaster pool. If you are low, go on and use it. If you are at the top of that range, maybe. If you are above that range, don't use it now, use bleach or some other sort of chlorine.

However, I do suggest that you keep some cal-hypo on hand. Cal-hypo is very stable and lasts a long time, where bleach and liquid chlorine will degrade with time and temperature. You may find it handy one day to be able to use the cal-hypo to get your pool up to shock levels of chlorine rapidly when you don't happen to have more than a little bleach on hand.

From time to time we see posts, "child with oozing wound in my pool", "found a dead critter in the pool, really nasty", that sort of thing where the advice is "go to shock levels of chlorine". For my pool, that would take 4 or 5 big jugs of bleach and I never have that much on hand and may not have time to run to a store right then. So, I would get to shock level right away with cal-hypo, accepting the rise in calcium that it would give the pool, THEN go out for bleach to keep it there.

 

[casedit]

thank you