First, I'd like to thank you ALL for helping me take control of my pool. I am a first-time pool owner, and have struggled at the hands of pool stores for several years now. BUT NO MORE, thanks to TFP!
I'd love to hear your opinion on my current "situation":
1. My pool was closed by a "bad" pool guy, and it was a swamp when it was opened in May.
2. Ran back and forth to the pool store, and spent $250 in a week to address the algae.
3. Bought into the copper algaecide solution they were selling.... and more "shock".
4. Got rid of the algae... or so I thought...but then I had bad staining in the pool... water looked brownish green, although crystal clear and sparkling.
5. Bought into the "get rid of the stain" stuff the pool store was selling, and the "now get rid of the metal stuff", and the "also keep this little packet in your skimmer" stuff, and spent $150 more.
6. I did the treatments they recommended to the letter, stain "sort of lifted", it was very spotty even though I used every bit of the $50 jar. Did the metal sequestrant treatment as directed....
7. You might have guessed.... ALGAE AGAIN. This was when I decided the pool guys aren't smarter than I am... and I found TFP.
I took care of my algae problem thanks to TFP, and so far TFP has not steered me wrong. My OCLT tests were beautiful, so I am pretty confident my algae is under control. And for a few weeks, my pool was very nice. But, still had stains. So, I mustered the nerve to start all over again and do the ascorbic acid treatment because I am clearly a glutton for punishment. So... I did several weeks of reading up about ascorbic acid treatments, bought one of those fancy testing kits, and found out where I went wrong... I should have used a polyquat 60 algaecide to keep the algae at bay before lowering my chlorine level to 0.
So. It is the End of Day 3. BTW, I poured FIVE POUNDS OF AA into my pool, because after 3 doses at 1 lb each, and two hours of waiting, the stains were still very present. After the requisite waiting period, and my "happy dance" at seeing my azure blue pool, the first few water tests I did the following morning showed 0 FC (not surprising), but by the 4th test, I had an FC of 5.5, and a CC of 1. The chlorine numbers have been up and down since that test, but for the last 5 tests, FC has been holding between 2.0 and 3.0, with a CC of .5 - 1. The pool is SPARKLING blue, not a stain in sight and my latest complete test results are below. :
ph: 6.8
FC: 6
CC: .5
TA: 85
CYA: @60 - 65
I MUST be doing something wrong. It couldn't possibly have been this "easy". I fully expect that tomorrow morning I will wake up and the pool will be purple. What am I missing? I have, of course, tested something like 12 times in the past 48 hours, and made 12 "slow" additions of chlorine. I'm not sure if I've gone slowly enough, but I didn't see any staining reappear, so I kept increasing by 16 oz at a time... drizzled slowly into the deep end. I am aiming for a FC number of 8 since my CYA is fairly well elevated. After doing the test above, I added 72 more ozs of bleach... and will retest in the AM to see what's up.
Is it bad to have increased my FC so quickly? It was hard for me to judge what "slowly" means and I'm beginning to panic! Sorry for the obnoxiously long post!!
Thanks for any guidance!
slk
I'd love to hear your opinion on my current "situation":
1. My pool was closed by a "bad" pool guy, and it was a swamp when it was opened in May.
2. Ran back and forth to the pool store, and spent $250 in a week to address the algae.
3. Bought into the copper algaecide solution they were selling.... and more "shock".
4. Got rid of the algae... or so I thought...but then I had bad staining in the pool... water looked brownish green, although crystal clear and sparkling.
5. Bought into the "get rid of the stain" stuff the pool store was selling, and the "now get rid of the metal stuff", and the "also keep this little packet in your skimmer" stuff, and spent $150 more.
6. I did the treatments they recommended to the letter, stain "sort of lifted", it was very spotty even though I used every bit of the $50 jar. Did the metal sequestrant treatment as directed....
7. You might have guessed.... ALGAE AGAIN. This was when I decided the pool guys aren't smarter than I am... and I found TFP.
I took care of my algae problem thanks to TFP, and so far TFP has not steered me wrong. My OCLT tests were beautiful, so I am pretty confident my algae is under control. And for a few weeks, my pool was very nice. But, still had stains. So, I mustered the nerve to start all over again and do the ascorbic acid treatment because I am clearly a glutton for punishment. So... I did several weeks of reading up about ascorbic acid treatments, bought one of those fancy testing kits, and found out where I went wrong... I should have used a polyquat 60 algaecide to keep the algae at bay before lowering my chlorine level to 0.
So. It is the End of Day 3. BTW, I poured FIVE POUNDS OF AA into my pool, because after 3 doses at 1 lb each, and two hours of waiting, the stains were still very present. After the requisite waiting period, and my "happy dance" at seeing my azure blue pool, the first few water tests I did the following morning showed 0 FC (not surprising), but by the 4th test, I had an FC of 5.5, and a CC of 1. The chlorine numbers have been up and down since that test, but for the last 5 tests, FC has been holding between 2.0 and 3.0, with a CC of .5 - 1. The pool is SPARKLING blue, not a stain in sight and my latest complete test results are below. :
ph: 6.8
FC: 6
CC: .5
TA: 85
CYA: @60 - 65
I MUST be doing something wrong. It couldn't possibly have been this "easy". I fully expect that tomorrow morning I will wake up and the pool will be purple. What am I missing? I have, of course, tested something like 12 times in the past 48 hours, and made 12 "slow" additions of chlorine. I'm not sure if I've gone slowly enough, but I didn't see any staining reappear, so I kept increasing by 16 oz at a time... drizzled slowly into the deep end. I am aiming for a FC number of 8 since my CYA is fairly well elevated. After doing the test above, I added 72 more ozs of bleach... and will retest in the AM to see what's up.
Is it bad to have increased my FC so quickly? It was hard for me to judge what "slowly" means and I'm beginning to panic! Sorry for the obnoxiously long post!!
Thanks for any guidance!
slk
