Did I waste my money with the chlorine last night? No reaching the breaking point. It did clear up my pool so it is not cloudy anymore.
free chlorine and total chlorine problems
- Thread starter mnvanci
- Start date
Did I cause more of a problem by not reaching the breaking point and waste money last night?
no- it wasn't wasted, it was used in clearing the pool. The only time its wasted, is when you have an algae bloom that you don't completely kill, then the algae comes back...
when you're clearing CC, it's just an ongoing process til gone- and consumes alot of your FC doing so1
when you're clearing CC, it's just an ongoing process til gone- and consumes alot of your FC doing so1
It's not that simple. You have to hold it at shock until you can pass the OCLT (overnight chlorine loss test). There's really no finite breaking point. The chlorine you've used up to this point hasn't been a waste, but you need to keep at it till you pass the OCLT.
Just to be clear, the entire break point story is a myth. The chlorine doesn't need to all be added at once, and the quantity required isn't calculated as portrayed in the myth.
Ok - well I took my water to pacific pools and they did a chlorine demand test and told me I need now to add either 20lbs of calcium hypochlorite or 20 gallons of liquid chlorine. Which is stronger or are they the same?
You'll have to decide for yourself if you want to listen to us or the pool store and commit 
Listening to all of usually will not work as well have different methods 
Effects of adding certain chemicals to your pool can be determined using poolcalculator.com
You can also read up on different chlorine sources in pool school (button on upper right of this page)
Specifically the below articles, you may find helpful
pool-school/types_chlorine_pool
pool-school/shocking_your_pool
Listening to all of usually will not work as well have different methods Effects of adding certain chemicals to your pool can be determined using poolcalculator.com
You can also read up on different chlorine sources in pool school (button on upper right of this page)
Specifically the below articles, you may find helpful
pool-school/types_chlorine_pool
pool-school/shocking_your_pool
As you can find out from The Pool Calculator, for your 14,000 gallon pool, 20 pounds (320 ounces weight) of 65% Cal-Hypo would raise the FC by 110 ppm while 20 gallons (2560 fluid ounces) of 12.5% chlorinating liquid would raise the FC by 179 ppm.mnvanci said:
So not only are these not equivalent in chlorine amount, but they are very, very high. Your own bucket test showed that it shouldn't take more than 86 ppm FC cumulatively added before you start to hold chlorine. Unless your Calcium Hardness (CH) level was low and you intentionally wanted to raise it, then there isn't a good reason to use the Cal-Hypo. For every 10 ppm FC added by Cal-Hypo, it will increase CH by at least 7 ppm.
So as others are saying, stop listening to more than one set of advice as it will just confuse the situation and possibly cause harm if the advice is conflicting. Get some chlorinating liquid, but I wouldn't get any more than 10 gallons at this point, and add it one gallon at a time to the pool over a return flow with the pump running. After adding one gallon, wait a half-hour and then test the chlorine level in another part of the pool (assuming your circulation is reasonable in your pool). If the FC is still near zero, add another gallon, and repeat until you measure FC. Then wait an hour or so and see if the FC is holding and if not, add more chlorine. If you saw what happened to me in the post I linked to earlier, the chlorine will at first be consumed quickly, but will then slow down after it starts to hold.
Ok - I held chlorine levels over 10 for 24 hours YEAH!!!! Thanks for all your help.