New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass pool

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Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

Follow up question:

My main concern now is the CYA level. Should I simply focus on lowering the CYA by partially draining and refilling, and not bother adding bleach or other chemicals until the CYA is in the appropriate range?
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

Bama Rambler said:
I'd let it fill close to top of skimmer.

I'd add a large jug of bleach tonight.
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I'll let it fill close to top of skimmer....


but I plan on doing one more drain and refill today. Don't throw the 1.5 gallon of 6% bleach in until the last drain and refill is complete, correct? Should I add any PH up if needed? Or just let it be, since I'm going to be draining and refilling tomorrow too?
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

Not to thread-hijack, but let's pretend I would like to remove my iron-sequestered water with fresh, trucked in water one day. My liner is vinyl and I've got 22,000 gallons. Is the tarp method a "safe" way for me to drain/refill too? Eg. maybe 8 - 10k gal at a time?

At any rate, to Guinness -- You didn't mention whether or not your water is clear, or if you have any signs of algae. For a 15,000 gallon pool, 1 gallon of bleach is going to be roughly 3.3 ppm, right? (Is that what the pool calc says? My math isn't so hot). I might be tempted to add two, even though you're cycling out the water. 7 ppm is technically the MINIMUM sanitizer if your CYA is 100 (which is as high as our chart in pool school goes) so if you want to be a minimum chl level, I suspect you'd need two and a bit. Now, in actual fact, you ARE going to be wasting most of that via draining...but I'm just thinking if you don't want any algae forming (and if it hasn't already started to form) you might do that preventatively. If you're going to need to shock anyway....then I suppose there's no real need to stay at min.
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

Swampwoman said:
Not to thread-hijack, but let's pretend I would like to remove my iron-sequestered water with fresh, trucked in water one day. My liner is vinyl and I've got 22,000 gallons. Is the tarp method a "safe" way for me to drain/refill too? Eg. maybe 8 - 10k gal at a time?

At any rate, to Guinness -- You didn't mention whether or not your water is clear, or if you have any signs of algae. For a 15,000 gallon pool, 1 gallon of bleach is going to be roughly 3.3 ppm, right? (Is that what the pool calc says? My math isn't so hot). I might be tempted to add two, even though you're cycling out the water. 7 ppm is technically the MINIMUM sanitizer if your CYA is 100 (which is as high as our chart in pool school goes) so if you want to be a minimum chl level, I suspect you'd need two and a bit. Now, in actual fact, you ARE going to be wasting most of that via draining...but I'm just thinking if you don't want any algae forming (and if it hasn't already started to form) you might do that preventatively. If you're going to need to shock anyway....then I suppose there's no real need to stay at min.
Click to expand...


The pool water is clear and blue...

I've going to be going to Costco and picking up a package of three 1.5 gallon containers of Clorox Regular 6% bleach. Should I be adding one of these 1.5 gallon containers, or might it be better to do two or three? Or, since my water is clear and blue, and I run the filter all the time, should I just do 1 container of 1.5 gallons a day, and then shock once my CYA levels are acceptable?


Once my CYA levels are acceptable....how much 6% bleach am I going to need to put in to shock?
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

That depends on exactly what you get your CYA to - here's the link to the CYA/Chlorine chart: pool-school/chlorine_cya_chart_shock

The pool calculator says for 15,000 gallons, to raise FC 7 ppm, you need 218 oz. of 6% bleach (so about 1.7 gallons). So, until you have your kit and you KNOW what your CYA level is, AND if your water is clear/no algae, AND you want to keep it that way while you're swapping it out and getting ready to balance, I believe you'd want to play it safe and dose to the minimum 7 p.p.m. that is the min. for 100 ppm CYA.

That's just IMHO. Having recovered a foreclosure swamp this year, my present feeling is that a little bit of bleach is a lot cheaper than the time it takes to fight algae ;) YMMV.
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

OOPS, my bad - just saw that you said 12,000 not 15,000 gallon.

So then you'd want 174 ounces of 6% bleach, meaning what Bama said is dead on -- just ad one large jug a night ;) (But now you know WHY he said that ;)
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

Alright, so the FT - 100 test kit arrived today.

The pool is refilling from my most recent partial drain. Once it refills, I'm going to let the water mix for an hour or so, and then I'm going to test the CYA levels, and then I'll post them here.

Ideally, it would be best to get my CYA levels to around 40 ppm, correct?
 

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Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

BadOleRoss said:
There will be times when you will need to shut off the drain to allow the hose to catch up so your pool level does not get to far out of wack.
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Yeah, thanks!

I've been partially draining to about 1 inch above the "danger line" marked on the second step into the pool.


Pool is now filled to normal level, so I'm going to let the water circulate a bit, and then I'll test the CYA level.
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

So I started off by doing the CYA test, and was a little surprised that I had made so much progress after four or five partial drains....

CYA - 30

I just put a trichlor tab in the automated feeder, figuring one couldn't hurt that bad, might actually want the CYA a little higher?

I ran the rest of the tests, and am pretty confident with the results, for being a first time user:

FC - 3

CC - 1

pH - 7.5

TA - 110


didn't do the calcium hardness test....
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

GuinnessPhish said:
So I started off by doing the CYA test, and was a little surprised that I had made so much progress after four or five partial drains....

CYA - 30

I just put a trichlor tab in the automated feeder, figuring one couldn't hurt that bad, might actually want the CYA a little higher?

I ran the rest of the tests, and am pretty confident with the results, for being a first time user:

FC - 3

CC - 1

pH - 7.5

TA - 110


didn't do the calcium hardness test....
Click to expand...

Based on the CC reading of 1, I should shock my pool tonight?

so I plugged these numbers into the pool calculator....to get a shock level of 13, I should use 2 gallons, 2 cups of 6% bleach...


then tomorrow, I should be good to go?
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

Just ran the full test, and used the speed stir...thanks for recommending that!



FC - 5.5

CC - .5

pH - 7.2

TA - 100

CH - 180

CYA - 32




These results mean I'm good to go, right?

I'll add some soda ash at the end of the day, but that should be all I need to do for tonight? Pool will only be lightly used by three adults today.
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

Just an update:

Over the past month, I've been checking FC levels daily, and lately have only been checking once a day, at the end of the day, right before I add the next dose of 6% bleach.

I've been keeping FC in the range of 4.5 - 7, assuming a CYA of 40.

I'm adding a little over a quart - 2 quarts of 6% bleach a day.

Water is crystal clear.

Thanks for all the info on this site!
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

I didn't want to start a new topic, since I've already got this thread started...

I'll be out of town for 8 days in september, and don't have anyone who could reliably pool sit for me while I'm gone.


With a CYA of 40, would putting some tri chlor pucks in the automatic chlorinator be good enough for 8 days time? I run the pump 24/7, based on the former owner's recommendation, and the fact that the pool is surrounded by trees and flowering bushes and the like....

How many pucks should I use for the 8 days, if running pump 24/7 and having a CYA of 40?
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

If your pool loses 2 ppm FC per day then it'll take about ½ tablet (4oz) per day to maintain the FC when your gone. For 8 days that'll be 4 tablets and that'll raise your CYA by 11 so you'll still be in manageable range. Even if you used 6 tablets you'd still be around 60 ppm CYA when you returned.

If you lose more than 2 ppm per day it'll take more tablets and may put you a little high on the CYA side but you can always drain a little water when you return.

The real question is, can you figure out the adjustment on the feeder fine enough not to overshoot or undershoot the usage?
 
Re: New pool owner...bought house with in ground fiberglass

GuinnessPhish said:
I'm thinking, perhaps if I put 6 tabs in the automatic chlorinator, then set the adjuster to 2.5?
Click to expand...
Experiment with it before you go. Load it up and see what happens to your FC levels this week.

Don't forget to be careful about the rise in CYA that tri-chlor tabs will give you.

Good luck!
 

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