Quick Question..

[ironmanix]

I know, I know - I can figure this out myself in Pool School (and I promise, I will read it later tonight), but I need a quick answer.

I've been using bleach for sanitizing. I'm not around my pool daily - maybe every three days or so - mostly weekends. When the season started I bought 20 or 30 bottles of bleach and was putting bleach in every weekend after swimming (2 or 3 bottles, typically). I'd test once or twice a week and chlorine levels seemed to hold up / slowly dissapate between "shock"-ings.

Long story short - we had a storm mid-summer where a bunch of new water was introduced into my pool and a bunch of "good" water was presumably mixed/replaced. I used up the CYA testing solution the first time after fixing that and added some stabilizer in a quick response. Didn't add much (two sockfull?) and there was some form of research/calculation behind what I added, but I don't remember enough right now to tell you where I was and where I was going with it.

Pool is clear. PH is perfect. Have not tested alkalinity lately, but I did after the "event" and it was within good range. Thing is, since that time my pool will not hold three gallons of chlorine for more than a day or two. I've been going through chlorine like crazy. Figured this has something to do with (a) stabilizer level being "off" and/or (b) inconsistent shocking schedule / need for schedule normalization, but haven't really had time to figure it out. We've been swimming all summer, things are fine.

Today I finally got my stabilizer testing solution from the pool store at lunch so I can check the cya level tonight.

What am I looking for here? What CYA level do I want and how should my bleaching schedule look once everything is working correctly? Thoughts?

 

[anonapersona]

You want CYA between 30 and 50.

You are probably on the right track with the CYA, but you also will want to do an overnight FC drop test to be sure that it is not a lurking algae bloom.

 

[257WbyMag]

Until you know whether you are holding your FC overnight or not, there isn't really any way of knowing what the culprit is. Based on what you are saying, I would suspect that you have a little algae going on. The overnight FC loss test will tell us for sure.

 

[ironmanix]

Ok.. just did the CYA test.

I'm not even at 30. In fact, I'm not even close to 30. I filled the entire tube up and saw the bottom clearly.

I'm shocked by that, actually.

So how much stabilizer do I add? I'm thinking of treating it like it's at 30 and I'm trying to get to 40. Add that much stabilizer, re-measure and add again until I can get a good reading on it. Sounds like a plan?

Stabilizer - that's where you hang the sock by the jet, right?

 

[ironmanix]

I added 3-4 lbs of cya. Put it in a sock, hung it from the brush pole about a foot from the jet, and it was presumably dissolved overnight as the sock was empty in the morning.

Took a reading. Little if any change - water was basically clear.

Does this sound common or reasonable? I've always been paranoid about getting CYA too high so I'm probably just being overcautious. I expected to at least see SOME cloudiness in that test.

 

[duraleigh]

From the date of application, it can take from a few days to a week for CYA to register on the test.