Our ammonia is off the chart. We replaced a third of the water and shocked. Got on the chart and will continue shocking the pool. Is this the only alternative? We think that the ammonia came from the farmer's fields being sprayed. Any other ideas????
Our ammonia is off the chart
- Thread starter andulka
- Start date
You either burn it off with chlorine or you replace water to get it out of the pool. Replacing water is usually more problematic, though that depends on many details of your situation (for example vinyl liner pools can't be fully drained without risk to the liner, and so on).
Welcome to TFP! 
I doubt very much that you got the ammonia from fields being sprayed. You can get phosphate and nitrate increases that way, but that's in the hundreds of ppb range for phosphates. To get to many ppm for ammonia that would be problematic, it's very unlikely to have that blown into the pool in sufficient quantity. It's much more likely that the ammonia came from bacterial conversion of Cyanuric Acid (CYA) in your pool if you "let it go" over the winter or any other time when the Free Chlorine (FC) got to zero.
I doubt very much that you got the ammonia from fields being sprayed. You can get phosphate and nitrate increases that way, but that's in the hundreds of ppb range for phosphates. To get to many ppm for ammonia that would be problematic, it's very unlikely to have that blown into the pool in sufficient quantity. It's much more likely that the ammonia came from bacterial conversion of Cyanuric Acid (CYA) in your pool if you "let it go" over the winter or any other time when the Free Chlorine (FC) got to zero.