Need help on getting chemicals balanced

[Ryanseptic]

Okay, so I have been reading like crazy for three days and I have learned a lot but not enough. The pool I have is in my sig. It is our second year with it. So far we have been good, but all of a sudden everything went haywire. I previously had some strange levels, but I drained half of the water and refilled. I just finished refilling it and just ran a test with Walmart HTH 6 way kit. My readings now are as follows:

TC 0
pH 6.8 probably lower
TA 110
CYA 0

I just added about 96 oz. of liquid chlorine (10%). So what now? I know I need to get CYA and pH up. I am about to add granual stabilizer using sock hanging in pool. I have borax for pH, but how much do I add or do I wait for chlorine to run its course?

Btw, I drained pool because it was extremely cloudy and my wife added tons of liquid shock and chlorine was reading zero. Then my CYA was off the charts, so we drained and refilled. Its still cloudy now, but not as bad.

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

Bring the PH up sooner rather than later. Other than that, your plan sounds good.

How does the water look now?

 

[Ryanseptic]

still cloudy but not as bad. I used the calculator to get the amount of borax to use to bring up the pH. It say to use 276oz by weight. Is that the best way? If so, how do I add it? Just mix itup with water and dump in or what?

 

[JasonLion]

I would start with two boxes of borax, give it an hour to mix in, test again, and repeat until the PH gets up above 7.0. You could do three at a time if you want.

The best thing to do is to pre-dissolve borax in a bucket and then pour that in front of a return with the pump running.

 

[Ryanseptic]

Thank you. I just added one box. I'm going to add another now. Hopefully this will get it in the right ballpark. Thanks again.

 

[Ryanseptic]

An update... Still waiting for new test kit to arrive. Ordered the TF-100. In the mean time I am using the HTH from walmart still. I also have test strips but those are just being used for confirmation.

We have been checking pool every 2 hours.

TC 2-4. It varies every 2 hours. So we are burning through it during daytime
pH 7.2 pretty much steady at that level
TA 120
Cya ran out of testing reagent

Pool is a bit cloudy but clearing up. I have been adding stabilizer to the pool for the past 12 hours now. Im gonna have to wait about a week to recheck that. But we are having to add about 50oz of 12% liquid chlorine every 2 hours. Is this because stabilizer hasn't fully taken yet? Or do I need to do something more? We seem to be going in the right direction but i want to be sure. Oh yeah, we are also in a major heat wave now. Chicagoland area.

 

[Butterfly]

It does sound like you are going in the right direction.

You could have some organics using the chlorine along with the sun, and since you have just added CYA, the sun is going to use up a lot of FC.

Keep a log of how much CYA you add. You want to get no higher than about 30 CYA until you get your kit and determine whether or not you need to shock.

Keep doing what you are doing until your kit arrives and post up the test results.

 

[Ryanseptic]

Will do. I added about 3lbs of stabilizer. I was at zero before adding. I will update when the kit gets here.

 

[Ryanseptic]

I just got my new test kit and I ran all the tests. Here is what I got:

FC - 2.5
CC - 1.0
pH - 7.4
CH - 140
TA - 130
CYA - Less that 20

As I stated earlier, we did a partial drain and fill of the pool on Wed. I added stabilizer throughout the day on Wed-Thurs. Am I right in assuming my CYA test has no weight because it hasn't been 5 days? I want to add stabilizer if I need it but I do not want to over do it. We have been burnig through liquid chlorine at a steady rate. About 50oz every 2-4 hours. I want to shock the pool, but should I wait a few more days due to my CYA readings not quite being valid yet?

 

[JasonLion]

Until the CYA level comes up, raise the FC level in the evenings to get the most effect out of the chlorine before sunlight starts burning it off the next morning.

Yes, give the CYA you added recently time to fully dissolve and show up on the test before adding more CYA.