Steps after a drain and refill?

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D

donniedarko

0
Jun 15, 2012
7
Iowa
Hi - had a vicious case of algae and insanely high CYA (the CYA was around 300). Thanks to the advice in some great posts here, I have been doing a series of 20% drain and refills to knock it out. That part is almost done. After today's refill, I could see the bottom of the pool through the water. CYA was down to 100 and I'm finishing another 20% refill right now.

I would appreciate any advice or steps on how to "reboot" the pool once that is completed. I've had the pump off during the drains and refills and have not added any chemicals. At what point should I turn the pump back on? And once I'm ready to start rebalancing the chemicals, would this be a good order?

1 - stabilizer
2 - ph plus or minus as needed to get in the right range
3 - chlorine to get in the right range (I'm thinking just regular chlorine rather than shock to avoid CYA going crazy again, but please let me know if your experience varies)
4 - clarifier
5 - algaecide to help avoid this happening again

Thanks in advance. Cheers.
 
It sounds like you are only about to get the CYA to about 80ppm. Getting closer to 50ppm would certainly benefit you, if you end up having to go through the shock process.

What does your water look like?
Have you done a full set of tests you can post?

Posted from my Droid with Tapatalk ... sorry if my response is short ;)
 
Thank you again. Yes, I would like to get the CYA lower because from what I've read it's nearly impossible to lower it other than by draining and refilling, so I figure I might as well bite the bullet and nail it now. I will likely do at least one more 20% drain and refill, and more if needed until I'm in the lower range for CYA.

The water currently looks better, but there's still some green crud in it. I've been scrubbing the floor and walls once or twice a day as I've been draining, and there's no staining on the liner thank God. I'm wondering if some of the green crud in the water is from the scrubbing (loosening the stuff up, which I would think is good to get it drained out faster). At least I could see the bottom of the pool this afternoon, yesterday I couldn't see much at all it was so thick with green.

Tests - yes, before I started all this the tests looked like this:

FC: 8.0
pH: 8.5
TA: 220ppm
CH: 520 (the tap water is horribly hard where I live)
CYA: the aforementioned 300+

Test results after the afternoon refill, I've since drained another 20% and just refilled:

FC: 0.0
pH: 7.6
TA: 140ppm
CH: 330
CYA: 100

I'm thinking it's best not to add any chemicals while I'm draining and refilling, and to leave the pump off, but please let me know if either of those thoughts are incorrect. And thank you again, this forum and your rapid feedback is awesome.
 
It certainly would not hurt to be putting some bleach in the pool, but with the pump not on you have to be sure to mix it really well by brushing. That will just help to hold the algae at bay until you can really attack it in the shock process when the CYA is in range.

Do you have a floor drain you could be using to maintain circulation while changing water?

And just to confirm, what are you using to get your test results?

Posted from my Droid with Tapatalk ... sorry if my response is short ;)
 
Thanks for the idea about bleach. Will do. And thanks too for the reminder that stabilizer = CYA, last thing I want to add after this ordeal. I do have a floor drain and it seems to be helping with the circulation.

I was testing with an HTH 6-in-1 test drop kit, but I ran out of the CYA tester and had to resort to test strips last night (I know the strips are pretty worthless, but I'd been to Walmart once already yesterday and didn't want to go back). But I'm heading out to Wally World today to get some bleach and will get another HTH 6-1 in drop kit (I will also be buying one of the better test kits online soon, but I needed something to figure out what I was dealing with now).

For what it's worth, the test strip this morning showed CYA down to about 50.

From the pool calculator, it looks like I should add about 48 ounces of 6% bleach to start with. Does that sound right?
 
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