What to do when

[hokulii]

I drained until I saw some wrinkling starting at the corners, I think I changed out almost a third of the water. I wanted to get a higher percentage changed, but I really want the liner to stay put too.

I did the CYA test with my walmart test kit, I could see the black dot until the test tube over flowed=0 CYA. I used the pool calculator and came up with roughly 40 oz. CYA called for to raise it to 25. I would like to add enough to start holding FC and then start using my left over chlorine sticks to add a little more. I still have about 60 lbs. of the sticks left from before I learned about BBB. Is there a ballpark idea at what rate does using the sticks add CYA to the water?

If the water change wasn't enough, I'll do it again and again..my town utility will waive the sewer charge on the fill gallons, which is nice.

Thanks, D

 

[JasonLion]

If you know the size of the stick in oz you can use my Pool Calculator to see how much CYA they add to the pool. Look for the Effects of Adding Chemicals section near the very bottom.

 

[hokulii]

I didn't even think to look at the calcultor for that, but surely will!

 

[hokulii]

Dave, I'm trying to order the TF100 test kit, but the connection to paypal seems to be having a problem. I got through the ordering process, but when it trys to go to paypal it says page not found, click here to retry. Any thoughts?

My wife took another sample to the pool store, basically after draining quite a bit of water my numbers are still pretty much the same, at least I now have a CYA reading.

TDS 2400, the pool store seems really fixated on this, they told my wife she should just drain the pool and refill. You
guys here on the forum don't seem quite as concerned about the TDS.

CYA 40 This seems like a more reliable reading than I did yesterday with my HTH kit.
TC 5
FC 0
TA 290
Adj alk 278
ph 7.8
Tot hardness 339

no readings under any of the algae headings.

Since I now show CYA, I've added some more bleach, am I on the road to recovery here?

I looked at the pool calculator where JasonLion wrote "If you know the size of the stick in oz you can use my Pool Calculator to see how much CYA they add to the pool. Look for the Effects of Adding Chemicals section near the very bottom.", I see the area he's talking about, but am unsure as to what to select in the drop down box??

Thanks guys, D

 

[JasonLion]

TDS doesn't really mean anything. TDS stands for total dissolved solids. It makes a huge difference which particular solids are dissolved. With salt in the pool your TDS can be very high and yet there aren't any problems. Around here we prefer to test for the specific things that can cause problems, like high CYA levels, and ignore TDS.

Your TA is very high. You should bring that down some. There are through directions on lowering TA here.

Your pH is high but acceptable. But with high TA the PH will tend to go up. You should lower PH. Lowering TA calls for lowering PH anyway.

Until you lower the PH and TA you are at risk for calcium scaling. Calcium scaling is not usually a problem for vinyl pools, but it can sometimes clog heaters. Until you get your TA down to a more reasonable level you should keep PH at 7.6 or lower.

The sticks are going to be trichlor, so select that from the popup.

 

[The Mermaid Queen]

what are your sticks?

Trichlorisocyanuric acid = triclor

sodium dichlorisocyanuric acid = dichlor

calcium hypochlorite = cal-hypo (this adds no CYA, but will increase your CH)

If your TC is 5 and your FC is indeed 0, you need some bleach pronto, as you have 5ppm cc's!

 

[hokulii]

I've changed out about 6k gals. of water now, I can see almost to the floor at the shallow end!

I had another sample done at the pool store, back to 0 CYA. Can't hold any chlorine. I'm going to get some CYA asap and put it in according to the pool calculator, hopefully after that I'll be able to get an FC reading.

My TF100 test kit should show up on Tuesday! I'm looking forward to that.

D.

 

[hokulii]

When figuring amounts of chlorine to add for bringing up FC (on the pool calculator), what type of chlorine is the granulated lithium shock (Bioguard Burnout 35) ? I'm still trying to use up what I have left.

 

[JasonLion]

Sorry, the Pool Calculator doesn't have an entry of lithium-hypo. I believe that you need about 1.57 times as much lithium-hypo as you would use of dichlor. So you can do the calculation for dichlor and then multiply the quantity of dichlor by 1.57 to get the required quantity of lithium-hypo.