7th season for my pool. Same old story, the pool kid who came over and chemicalized my pool put all the stuff in and told me that the 'conditioner' was to condition the water so the chlorine worked better. End of education.
The OTO and pH tester was all I needed, right? My pool lived on pucks and dichlor for 5½ years. The last three years, started getting blooms in late July early August and was very difficult to get rid of on dichlor shock levels, it took several days to a couple of weeks.
Then, one day I found the HTH 6-way test kit at Walmart on sale for about $6. Found out I had CYA about 140. Last year browsed the net and stumbled across Ben's site, which ultimately lead me here. "Totally awesome dudes!" Wow, what an education.
I have no more dichlor, a bucket of pucks which I only use for vacation and to maintain CYA when it drops off a bit. This spring I ordered the TF-100 and will never go back. I still have the HTH as a backup. Actually I think the color change is better for the TA test in the HTH kit than in the TF.
Y'all have sold me on BBB, water's been crystal clear ever since. In my neck of the woods, 12½% bleach is the cheapest way to go, about $16 for 5 gallons. I am still working on the 3rd B, Giant only stocks so many boxes of Borax at a time. Got about 16 pounds in so far. I wish they could devise a titration method for pH and Borates. It would be much more accurate than a color chart and test strips respectively.
Thanks for the education, folks. Replaced the original 1 hp pump with ¾ hp pump when it went bad and this year re-plumbed the old tygon style tubing with hard pvc pipe, it now flows better than original. Thanks for the education, folks. Every time I browse here, I pick up something new or learn a bit more about the chemistry from Chemgeek and the rest of ya.
The OTO and pH tester was all I needed, right? My pool lived on pucks and dichlor for 5½ years. The last three years, started getting blooms in late July early August and was very difficult to get rid of on dichlor shock levels, it took several days to a couple of weeks.
Then, one day I found the HTH 6-way test kit at Walmart on sale for about $6. Found out I had CYA about 140. Last year browsed the net and stumbled across Ben's site, which ultimately lead me here. "Totally awesome dudes!" Wow, what an education.
I have no more dichlor, a bucket of pucks which I only use for vacation and to maintain CYA when it drops off a bit. This spring I ordered the TF-100 and will never go back. I still have the HTH as a backup. Actually I think the color change is better for the TA test in the HTH kit than in the TF.
Y'all have sold me on BBB, water's been crystal clear ever since. In my neck of the woods, 12½% bleach is the cheapest way to go, about $16 for 5 gallons. I am still working on the 3rd B, Giant only stocks so many boxes of Borax at a time. Got about 16 pounds in so far. I wish they could devise a titration method for pH and Borates. It would be much more accurate than a color chart and test strips respectively.
Thanks for the education, folks. Replaced the original 1 hp pump with ¾ hp pump when it went bad and this year re-plumbed the old tygon style tubing with hard pvc pipe, it now flows better than original. Thanks for the education, folks. Every time I browse here, I pick up something new or learn a bit more about the chemistry from Chemgeek and the rest of ya.