Water slightly cloudy, plan to shock; but how high to go?

[renohuskerdu]

Hi all,

Thanks to you fine people, we are BBB users now - started this year. I buy little plastic bubbles of 9.6% sodium hypoclorite at the supermarket for 40 cents, and we use only one a day in season. When I went to buy more test strips, the pool store people said they thought we had moved away. That is a Good Thing, n'est pas?

I love my wife but she is very french, so most all things must be pretty and artistic, if you catch my drift. Recently Griselle noticed that the water is not quite clear. She's right of course, it is mostly clear but not crystal. It's just not clear enough to be able to point to proudly as evidence of doing an excellent BBB job. We have neighbors spending thousands yearly on pool stores, to whom I would love to show our BBB pool that costs us only $50 per year.

Our sand filter is of generous size but has no pressure meter, so I'm reluctant to add DE. That is something I will fix but not right away (competing projects include needed roofing). Our brominator is still plumbed in but has been empty of pucks all year.

Our ability to vaccuum could best be described as 'crippled' in that our kids' attempts to do so invariably lead to the pump losing its prime, setting off an escalation which brings me off a ladder or out from under a car. So floculant use is problematic, which is a shame as that might clear up that water too. If I could add DE, I ponder that the filter would work nicely with modest floculant quantities...maybe next summer.

Numbers:
Clorine from 0-4 ppm depending on when I add the bleach. 2 is my goal.
Ph ranges from 6.5 to 7.5, hardly ever needs modification.
TA around 100 and rarely need adjustment.
Some of you may remember me as the poor cluck who could not find a good test kit in France. I am still that poor unfortunate and make do with an AquaChek (insert boo and hiss sounds here).

No shocking has been done for a month because I was away in sunny California. Now I'd like to do a proper job of shocking the pool. I read pool-school/shocking_your_pool which is great theory, but I missed the info on exactly how high I should go in ppm when shocking.

So once again I turn to this body of like-minded poolheads for pertinent answers:
. How many ppm of free CL should I reach in order to properly shock my pool?
. How long should that ppm level be maintained?

FYI, I also just read these threads:
pool-school/bbb_for_pools
i-still-have-a-cloudy-pool-t47209.html
pool-school/add_de_to_a_sand_filter

Thanks from Alsace, France, where my wife is pretty and does not smoke.

Reno

 

[Bama Rambler]

Re: Water slightly cloudy, plan to shock; but how high to go

In order to know what your shock level is, you have to know what your CYA level is.

If you have no CYA then your shock level is 10 ppm and you need to keep it there until you pass the OCLT and the water is clear. However, without a FAS-DPD test you can't run the OCLT so you'll have to go by the clarity of the water. That's far from ideal but given your circumstances, it'll have to do.

 

[Richard320]

Re: Water slightly cloudy, plan to shock; but how high to go

As long as you're in the States, buy a test kit!

 

[renohuskerdu]

Re: Water slightly cloudy, plan to shock; but how high to go

As long as you're in the States, buy a test kit!

Aaaaargh! Why didn't I think of that? Grrrr. But then, would the airline have allowed it in checked luggage? When I tried to buy, the seller told me that USPS will no longer mail the kits internationally. TSA might have had kittens over it as well (a colourful brit expression).

In order to know what your shock level is, you have to know what your CYA level is.
[...].

It should be zero, as I have never used CL pucks. Before finding this forum, I did use shock clorine from the pool store, which might(?) include CYA. Just to be safe, I could buy a kit to test for it. Do you recommend that I go that route?

Thanks!

 

[Richard320]

Re: Water slightly cloudy, plan to shock; but how high to go

As long as you're in the States, buy a test kit!

Aaaaargh! Why didn't I think of that? Grrrr. But then, would the airline have allowed it in checked luggage? When I tried to buy, the seller told me that USPS will no longer mail the kits internationally. TSA might have had kittens over it as well (a colourful brit expression).

In order to know what your shock level is, you have to know what your CYA level is.
[...].

It should be zero, as I have never used CL pucks. Before finding this forum, I did use shock clorine from the pool store, which might(?) include CYA. Just to be safe, I could buy a kit to test for it. Do you recommend that I go that route?

Thanks!

You won't know if you don't try!

People fly all kinds of stuff. I hauled 6 bottles of wine and two large rolls of freezer paper (Used for some sort of craft project and apparently hard to find cheap in UK) to England last May. I hauled a case of beer back.

 

[UnderWaterVanya]

Re: Water slightly cloudy, plan to shock; but how high to go

Checked luggage allows for liquids and probably would not be an issue - none of these liquids is explosive flamable etc.

Carry on - NO.

 

[renohuskerdu]

Re: Water slightly cloudy, plan to shock; but how high to go

Just a quick note to confirm two things that I believe to be true about measuring FC based on this old thread converting-from-bromine-to-chlorine-pucks-any-advice-t37885.html:

1. Because my pool was first a bromine pool, with bromine pucks used for two years, I must continue to ~double the FC measurements even though I'm BBB now. If I see, say, 3.9 on the meter, that's really about 8.0 in fact.

2. Once I change the water and startup BBB, then I will measure FC normally and happily forever and ever. :-D