I was overzealous in my chlorine use when we first opened as I knew I wouldn't have time the first few days to take care of the pool as I should (but had only one window of opportunity in which to open within the next 5 weeks). As it is, my CL level is high...13 range. I will post the other levels tomorrow..but they are not bad...TA on high side. I want to cover the pool with new solar blanket. If I cover it now, will the Cl eat a hole through it, or at what level should I let it drop to just to be on the safe side? Want to take advantage of the warm days coming up. Thanks.
Chlorine and solar blanket
- Thread starter spf30
- Start date
First thing is that you're not going to eat a hole in it. We really need to know the CYA level to give you an accurate answer but even with a CYA level of 20 you'll be fine to put the cover on.
I guess I didn't mean literally eat a hole through it- I just knew that the chlorine does speed up the process of breaking them down, so didn't want to start off on the wrong foot, or didn't know if it's not a good idea for some other reason to cover the pool with such high CL levels. The CYA is around 75..still hard for me to get a good handle on when the black dot actually disappears. I plan to leave the blanket is on 24/7 till the water temp is 'swimable', with the exception of cleaning, etc. Any problems with this, as it seems like the Cl level has remained around that level for a week..with only slight drop.
If you shock at the recommended level where the FC is around 40% of the CYA level, then this is roughly equivalent to having 0.6 ppm FC with no CYA. Compare this with the minimum level of chlorine for manually dosed pools which is an FC of around 7.5% of the CYA level which is equivalent to having around 0.06 ppm FC with no CYA. So roughly speaking, the shock level of chlorine would react about 10 times faster than the minimum chlorine level. So every day of exposure to your cover at shock levels is roughly equivalent to 10 days of exposure at the minimum chlorine level. Unless you were going to be shocking for a long time, you probably won't notice a difference in cover life. Even shocking for a week means perhaps 2 months of shortened life.
The above assumes ideal circulation and in practice when the pump is off the circulation is poor so the chlorine near the cover gets partially used up (and diffusion is rather slow) and the degradation rate slows down until the pump comes back on to recirculate the water.
The above assumes ideal circulation and in practice when the pump is off the circulation is poor so the chlorine near the cover gets partially used up (and diffusion is rather slow) and the degradation rate slows down until the pump comes back on to recirculate the water.
So, in practice it's not a problem and you probably won't be able to tell the difference over the life of the cover, because the lifetime of your cover isn't that predictable in the first place.
Now, if you kept the FC up that high all the time, yes you'd notice the difference and your covers would degrade pretty rapidly.
I will add that with the cover on, you should expect the FC to drop less quickly than it would with the cover off.
--paulr
Now, if you kept the FC up that high all the time, yes you'd notice the difference and your covers would degrade pretty rapidly.
I will add that with the cover on, you should expect the FC to drop less quickly than it would with the cover off.
--paulr
Keep an eye on your PH level if you leave the cover on - it tends to drift down when the cover is on along time.