CYA level?

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what do you keep your CYA level at? non SWG

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smooth2222

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LifeTime Supporter
Oct 25, 2010
289
michigan
I'm currently at 65-70 CYA level after doing a 1/3 drain and refill.

is 65-70 CYA managable? would gradually get reduced by splash and backwashing. or do i need to do another 1/3 drain and refill?


recommended level for CYA is 30-50

so what is the optimal CYA level? what does everyone keeps there's at exactly? should make a poll or something.


I now use liquid chlorine/bleach
 
What's the pool calculator say you have to drain to get to 40ppm? Do you realistically think you'll splash/backwash that much water out this season? Or could it be October before you spill/remove that much?

Optimal CYA level is 30-50. Most of us function around 30-40ppm quite nicely. I could get away with 20ppm here cuz the sun doesn't always shine. It depends on your location and weather mostly. 50 is fairly high, and usually only recommended for very hot sunny locations (like Texas). Regular hot and sunny does just fine at 30-40ppm.

70 is a lot and you'll have to keep your chlorine level higher than optimal (read - least expensive) plus you'll lose more every day than you will at a lower level.

It's up to you. It's your pool and your money/time. If you are ok with having to keep chlorine high because of the CYA then go for it. Just don't use trichlor or dichlor this summer. That means, no floaters while on vacation. You'll have to train a neighbor kid with BBB and testing if you do need to be away.
 
You can certainly get by with CYA at 70, especially if you don't currently have algae. As long as you don't use dichlor or trichlor the CYA level will drift down over through the season and will be down to more normal levels by next season.

The optimal level depends on how much direct sunlight the pool gets. With no shade at all in a desert region 60 is fairly good. In heavy shade something more like 30 is better.
 
I've only been doing this for a year now, but I found that my CYA level went down substantially over the winter due to rain, which raised the water level in the pool enough that I had to pump it out a few times in order to keep the pool level below the spa wall spill-over, and to keep my vac-mate running correctly (the vac-mate has a narrow operating range for the water level.) At the beginning of this season, my CYA level appeared to have dropped around 25 ppm.

On a related note, I still find that the CYA test is by FAR the hardest test to do given the lack of a clear end-point. Even though I used a sample with a known quantity of CYA in it for practice, I still found that my results could vary quite a bit. The end point of the test is just a little too vague to give me any real confidence in the result. It really wouldn't surprise me if some people's CYA test were off by 20 ppm or even more.

Larry
 
When you have a lot of experience using the CYA test it is still +-10. Novices are often +-20, and most people are +-15.

One good rule of thumb for CYA level is that when everything is going well and the water temperature is in the low to mid-80s and the weather clear, if you are consistently using more than 2 ppm of chlorine per day then you could stand to raise your CYA level a little.
 

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smooth2222 said:
why are some people keeping there CYA at 70? 6 votes for it.
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A higher CYA can give you a larger buffer zone. For someone who might miss a day, and then add a larger dose of chlorine, it can be helpful to have a higher FC and a higher CYA. At 40 ppm, your zone is about 3 to 6 ppm of FC. And, at 70 ppm CYA, the zone is about 5 to 10 ppm FC.
 
I have a SWG and last year ran CYA at about 60. This year I'm getting a reading of about 70 using the TF100 test kit. Chlorine is at 5. Now I'm wondering if these numbers are okay?

Regarding the TF100 CYA test, does anyone know what the percentage of pool water to R-013 is? I know you can measure it using the label on the test bottle, but I would like to know what the percentages are, for example, how many ML of pool water and how many ML of R-013. Thanks!
 
jblizzle said:
Should be 50/50 pool and R-013.
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Thanks very much, I appreciate it. I'm not always good at lining it up with the label on the test bottle. I also wanted to use my SpeedStir (great investment) to mix it up, or maybe it's better to just mix it in the bottle?
 
mickey4paws said:
jblizzle said:
Should be 50/50 pool and R-013.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much, I appreciate it. I'm not always good at lining it up with the label on the test bottle. I also wanted to use my SpeedStir (great investment) to mix it up, or maybe it's better to just mix it in the bottle?
Click to expand...

Knowing this and if you know your CYA is > 50ppm, you can save a lot of R-013 for each test since you do not need to mix as much.
 
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