High Ammonia Levels

[delo123]

I cannot find any answers on how to treat high ammonia levels using the BBB method. What can I do?

 

[zea3]

Hi,
here is one ammonia thread I found. Basically you get rid of ammonia by keeping the pool at shock level until the Free Chlorine holds overnight. Read through Pool School (upper right corner) and follow directions for getting rid of algae. If you can post some current water test results the local experts can give you a little more advice.

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

Zea is correct, lots and lots of chlorine. You'll need to know your CYA level to determine your shock level. Raise the FC up to shock level and hold it there thru frequent (hourly if possible) chlorine additions until the FC holds overnight. This can and has taken weeks for some pools, depending on how bad the ammonia is and how frequently one can add chlorine.

You need an FAS-DPD chlorine test to know when you are done shocking. Use only liquid chlorine for this process.

(you can do a google search, bottom left corner, for other threads where Ammonia was the culprit)

 

[chem geek]

As noted in this thread, if you truly do have ammonia in your pool, and by definition this means that you are registering zero Free Chlorine (though could be registering some Combined Chlorine), then you have to add chlorine very frequently until you start registering FC. The main way one would get ammonia in the pool is if the pool had the Free Chlorine (FC) level drop to zero at some point and then bacteria grew and converted Cyanuric Acid (CYA) into ammonia.