- May 4, 2010
- 4
Hi,
My husband and I purchased a house last Aug and along with it came a bomb shelter of a concrete and plaster pool - that is at least 30 years old. It seems to be in good shape for now (structurally) but we are trying to educate ourselves on the chemistry side. It is to our best math guestimate around 30,000 gal - it is probably around 9 feet at the deep end and 3.5 ft in the shallow end. We were successful in closing it our selves last year, as the pump and everything are working now, but didn't have to do much chemistry maintenance on it since it was only open for a few weeks. Anyways, now we are trying to get the water in shape for the season. My husband added several pounds (I think 12!) of the granulated chlorine over the past few days to try and get the chlorine levels up. However - that did nothing! Now we are using the test strips to measure it, but still there is no Free Chlorine present. I decided to take the chemistry into my own hands, not wanting my husband to add more granulated chlorine - and I'm glad I did after finding this site and doing some basic reading! I went out and bought 4 186 oz bottles of chlorox and added them. Several hours later the strips are reading about 3 ppm FC. At least its something! I called husband to tell him to pick up more bottles on his way home from work.
Several questions....
1) according to the CYA/chlorine table we need to get our FC up to 30 ppm to shock it (!) Our CYA reading was at 80 before the 12 lbs of granular chlorine was added - so I'm guessing its higher now. So do I try and get the shock level that high - or is it better to drain out some water in an effort to lower the CYA levels and then shock at a lower FC level?
2) I read that if your pool wall is feeling slimy that means that algae are starting to grow.... our wall is very slimy! Probably because we've had the cover off for several days now with basically no FC (?) Can / should I add algacide now in an attempt to stop the algae from blooming - or will getting the FC level up take care of that for me?
Thanks so much for the help! Glad I found such knowledgeable people to help! PS - I am ordering the TF-100 kit tonight.
My husband and I purchased a house last Aug and along with it came a bomb shelter of a concrete and plaster pool - that is at least 30 years old. It seems to be in good shape for now (structurally) but we are trying to educate ourselves on the chemistry side. It is to our best math guestimate around 30,000 gal - it is probably around 9 feet at the deep end and 3.5 ft in the shallow end. We were successful in closing it our selves last year, as the pump and everything are working now, but didn't have to do much chemistry maintenance on it since it was only open for a few weeks. Anyways, now we are trying to get the water in shape for the season. My husband added several pounds (I think 12!) of the granulated chlorine over the past few days to try and get the chlorine levels up. However - that did nothing! Now we are using the test strips to measure it, but still there is no Free Chlorine present. I decided to take the chemistry into my own hands, not wanting my husband to add more granulated chlorine - and I'm glad I did after finding this site and doing some basic reading! I went out and bought 4 186 oz bottles of chlorox and added them. Several hours later the strips are reading about 3 ppm FC. At least its something! I called husband to tell him to pick up more bottles on his way home from work.
Several questions....
1) according to the CYA/chlorine table we need to get our FC up to 30 ppm to shock it (!) Our CYA reading was at 80 before the 12 lbs of granular chlorine was added - so I'm guessing its higher now. So do I try and get the shock level that high - or is it better to drain out some water in an effort to lower the CYA levels and then shock at a lower FC level?
2) I read that if your pool wall is feeling slimy that means that algae are starting to grow.... our wall is very slimy! Probably because we've had the cover off for several days now with basically no FC (?) Can / should I add algacide now in an attempt to stop the algae from blooming - or will getting the FC level up take care of that for me?
Thanks so much for the help! Glad I found such knowledgeable people to help! PS - I am ordering the TF-100 kit tonight.