Hey everyone,
I feel like I've already received so much from this community (from reading in the pool school) and this is only my first post. At first I wasn't sure if we amateur (temporary) pool owners were represented in the community, but it seems as though I've seen some posts from some others.
My pool experience. I've owned several of the blue easy set up pools in the past with moderate success. Last fall my wife's grandmother called us up and asked us to remove the 9'x18'x52" Intex Ultra Frame pool she had bought for her grandkids who lived next door. Apparently they weren't interested in maintaining the pool. Physically the pool seemed in nice condition and even came with a salt water set up. Needless to say the pool was like a swamp. My wife and I did our best to clean it when we dismantled it.
When spring arrived, I began to prepare a place for the pool in our yard. I removed several inches of sod, formed up a foundation, and screeded in a trailer load of sand. When it came to installing the pool everything went very well. I noticed that there was a small amount of dried on gunk, but I assumed after being frozen all winter it just soak off and get filtered out. First mistake. As I'm sure you can guess 24 hours after filling the pool it was full of algae. Not knowing what to do, I went to my local big box store, and bought a bag of shock (1lb of 52% calcium hypochlorite) and some HTH Algae Guard. After I added that to the pool, I realized I should probably do some research, and that's when I came across this wonderful site. This morning I went back to the store bought the most expensive pool tester they had, not great, but it did have the CYA.
From my reading I understood that there was no use in testing for the CYA while the pool is being shocked. And since this is a fresh fill, I added approx. 1lb which I calculated should raise it to about 20. My tester only goes to 5 on the chlorine test, and it was off the chart. I retested it, and only put 1 drop of OTO in (it calls for 5). I assumed if I did that and then multiplied by 5 it would be right. When I did that I came up with a result of 10. Using the calculator I figured that adding 4.5 Cups of 8.25% bleach would raise the level to 15.
Unfortunately my family will be leaving on vacation on Friday morning. Is there any way to get this cleared up by then. I hate to think how mature the algae culture would be by the time we get back on Tuesday.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Jason Denniston
[attachment=1:r61h20n6]IMAG1162.jpg[/attachment:r61h20n6]
[attachment=0:r61h20n6]IMAG1163.jpg[/attachment:r61h20n6]
I feel like I've already received so much from this community (from reading in the pool school) and this is only my first post. At first I wasn't sure if we amateur (temporary) pool owners were represented in the community, but it seems as though I've seen some posts from some others.
My pool experience. I've owned several of the blue easy set up pools in the past with moderate success. Last fall my wife's grandmother called us up and asked us to remove the 9'x18'x52" Intex Ultra Frame pool she had bought for her grandkids who lived next door. Apparently they weren't interested in maintaining the pool. Physically the pool seemed in nice condition and even came with a salt water set up. Needless to say the pool was like a swamp. My wife and I did our best to clean it when we dismantled it.
When spring arrived, I began to prepare a place for the pool in our yard. I removed several inches of sod, formed up a foundation, and screeded in a trailer load of sand. When it came to installing the pool everything went very well. I noticed that there was a small amount of dried on gunk, but I assumed after being frozen all winter it just soak off and get filtered out. First mistake. As I'm sure you can guess 24 hours after filling the pool it was full of algae. Not knowing what to do, I went to my local big box store, and bought a bag of shock (1lb of 52% calcium hypochlorite) and some HTH Algae Guard. After I added that to the pool, I realized I should probably do some research, and that's when I came across this wonderful site. This morning I went back to the store bought the most expensive pool tester they had, not great, but it did have the CYA.
From my reading I understood that there was no use in testing for the CYA while the pool is being shocked. And since this is a fresh fill, I added approx. 1lb which I calculated should raise it to about 20. My tester only goes to 5 on the chlorine test, and it was off the chart. I retested it, and only put 1 drop of OTO in (it calls for 5). I assumed if I did that and then multiplied by 5 it would be right. When I did that I came up with a result of 10. Using the calculator I figured that adding 4.5 Cups of 8.25% bleach would raise the level to 15.
Unfortunately my family will be leaving on vacation on Friday morning. Is there any way to get this cleared up by then. I hate to think how mature the algae culture would be by the time we get back on Tuesday.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Jason Denniston
[attachment=1:r61h20n6]IMAG1162.jpg[/attachment:r61h20n6]
[attachment=0:r61h20n6]IMAG1163.jpg[/attachment:r61h20n6]