10% liquid chlorine usage????

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M

Mesamav

0
Jul 16, 2011
190
Mesa Arizona
Hey guys,
I'm having some relatives stop by for the weekend from California and I've been paying particular attention to the pool as that is the focal point of the entire house.
All my levels are pretty good. My CYA is a little high at about 65 to 70 so I'm keeping the chlorine at around 5 ppm.
TA, PH and all the other stuff looks pretty good except the CH is around 460 or so.
My water is clear but not sparkling. When I turn on the light at night there is a "glow". If the pump hasn't been running, you can see a faint white glow around the light. If the pump is running, I can see very, VERY small particles that make up what reflect from the light.
The pool is 10 feet deep and I can see the drain fairly clearly but again, the water isn't perfectly clear.
I have a sand filter so I'm assuming it just can't get those smaller particles but I'm no expert.
The pool is a 24K plaster pool. I'm in Mesa Arizona (Phoenix area) and it's been in the 100's lately. With all that said, to keep my chlorine level above 4, I've been using a gallon of 10% daily. Is that about right for a pool my size?
My pool gets direct sunlight for about 14 hours a day. Not much shade around here.
All my tests are looking good except I'm using a lot more chlorine over the course of the day than I think I should. Is this normal because of the heat and sun exposure around here?
Just askin'
 
Mesamav said:
My CYA is a little high at about 65 to 70 so I'm keeping the chlorine at around 5 ppm.
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At 65 ppm cya, your lowest FC level should be 5ppm and the upper end is 10 ppm. If you have been dipping below 5, that could be why your water is not sparkling. It sounds like you need to do the shock process. If you want proof, you can do an Overnight Chlorine loss Test (see: http://www.troublefreepool.com/pool-school/overnight_fc_test. Bring your FC up to shock level or a least to 10 ppm to do the test.

Mesamav said:
TA, PH and all the other stuff looks pretty good except the CH is around 460 or so.
Click to expand...
Go ahead and post a full set of results please.
 
I agree it sounds like you may have something trying to get started growing in there, since your on a timeline, I would boost to shock level of 27+ppm using bleach or liquid chlorine (based on shock level of 27.5 for CYA level of 70) as soon as possible, also if possible drain some water to lower the CYA level. On the filtration side you may want to add a little pool DE to the sand filter between backwashings, many people here claim in helps aid filtering with sand filters.. With luck you have caught it early and with less than 24 hours at shock level you may be ready for the weekend.

Ike

p.s. if you can start the shocking tonight while you don't have sun eating away at your chlorine levels so much the better. Pool calculator says you need about 5.5 gallons of 10% liquid chlorine or about 9.5 gallons of 6%, of course you must then maintain that level, do you have a good FAS-DPD drop based chlorine test? without one it is very hard (impossible) to tell if your maintaining shock level.
 
1 gallon of 10% liquid would raise the FC in your pool by 4.2 ppm. So you're losing a little over 4 ppm FC per day. That's high especially given your CYA level. I suspect, as the above posters have, that you have the beginnings of an algae bloom.

I would raise the FC to shock level today and run an OCLT tonight. That will tell you if you need to continue the shock process.
 
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You might also try adding a little DE to your filter to strain out those tiny floaters.
 
I kept the chlorine up and this morning my water looks the best it has this year. Still not perfectly sparkling clear but very close.
My tests this morning showed:
FC=5 I added about a half gallon of liquid chlorine. (10%)
TA=120
CYA=70 =/-
PH=7.8

I was concerned about a slightly foggy kind of look to the water at night with the light on but I'm guessing it is just calcium floating around. I also am seeing what I believe is a little pollen. It's either that or the fine dust that blows around here in the Arizona desert. It's been pretty breezy lately so dust and pollen are blowing in the wind.
I vacuum and sweep every day because of the dust and stuff blowing in the air.
Anyway, I'm keeping an eye on the situation and things look pretty good this morning. I was going to get some reagent from Leslies and he said something about phosphates being a problem lately. I don't trust the Leslies guy any farther than I can throw him so what do you think about that?
I've read here that phosphates don't matter as long as the chlorine is good so at this point, I'm not reading much into what he says.
 
What Dave said.
Phosphates don't matter as long as your FC stays where it needs to be.
I was told by Leslie's 2 years ago that I had really high phosphates and needed to add a lot of Phos-Free to get rid of it.
You know what I did? Nothing, because I found this site and listened to what others had to say.
Any problems? Nope, keep FC at the top level and all is well.

If you want to learn more about Phosphates, just do a search, there are plenty of topics that come up for the subject.
 
Think of phosphates as algae food, as long as you don't have algae who cares how much algae food you have. You might still want to try adding a little DE to your sand filter between backwashings to see if it helps clear the water.

Ike
 

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My water looks pretty good today. I added some clarifier yesterday and that really helped but every time I do that, it leaves a lot of stuff on the bottom of the pool. It looks like kind of a heavy dust. It is dusty around here and when it's breezy, it's even worse so I'm vacuuming dust all the time. The clarifier really gets it out of the water though. I also added some DE today just to help out but so far, it looks really good although I'm still using a bit of chlorine. I only lost about 2ppm during the day today. I added a half gallon of 10% late this afternoon after the sun went down and I'll add more in the morning.
 
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