New Member / New Pool Owner - CYA and CH really high!
- Thread starter petemoney
- Start date
Just wanted to post an update. This website is amazing. For the past week, my pool has been so easy to care for... not putting in hardly any chemicals and it is crystal clear and only using a small bit of chlorine each day. I've completely cut the umbilical cord with pucks and bags of shock and algaecide and soda ash, and I was dumping ~$150 / month into those. I'd estimate I'll spend about $30-35 this month on chemicals, including the two $8 gallons of muriatic acid from Lowe's that I'm using to lower TA right now (more on that next).
Since being free of mustard algae for the past week, I let the FC level come back to normal. Well, not quite... I've been adding liquid bleach to get it back to 12ppm each morning until I can figure out how much the pool goes through here in Phx on a hot summer day on average... most mornings when I test, it's dropped to 10 but there have been a couple mornings after really hot/sunny days with the kids in the pool a lot that it has dropped to 7. Anyway, I'm learning to gauge how much it will go through on different types of days and eventually I'll keep it a little lower, but for now I don't want it going too close to my minimum of 4. I have splashed bleach on a couple of pairs of shorts... forgot to factor those into my cost of pool maint...
(doh!)
Also in the past week, I've been taking steps to lower Total Alkalinity - when I started the process, it was at 180. But I wanted to get through the shock process first before addressing TA and my calcium hardness issue. I re-performed the CH test a couple of times and believe the water turns blue around 450 (not 820+ like I first posted). Rookie learning on that test... it wasn't as sudden a color change as with the TA test, so I wasn't sure when it was changing. Anyhow, after finishing with the shock process, I retested and was at:
FC = 12
CC = 0.5
TA = 180
CH = 450
pH = 7.5
So then I went after the TA by adding a bit of muriatic acid each night and turning on the aerator while the pump ran. I was adding just enough acid to take pH down to 7.0 and by the time I was up in the morning, the pH would be back up to 7.3-ish from running the aerator through the night (~6-7 hours between adding acid and testing in the morning). TA started to slowly come down, at a rate of about 10ppm / day, and this morning it was at 90ppm. So I'll do one more night of acid & aerator, hoping to hit 80ppm tomorrow morning. Then I should be in the clear with TA. I'm not overly worried about the CH level, even at 450. We have extremely hard water here in Phx, and I'd rather not install a water softener (maybe someday, but not now). So I'm trying to make sure that my Calcite Saturation Index stays in balance to keep from having any calcium scaling issues. Right now, the pool calc is telling me that my CSI is 0.04, so almost no risk whatsoever. My goal is to keep FC around 7, pH between 7.4-7.8, TA between 70-90, CYA between 40-70. CH doesn't matter much, as I can keep the risk of scaling to a minimum by controlling the other measures, but I'll continue to test CH monthly.
I'm very happy about everything I'm learning about keeping things balanced in my beautiful, low maintenance pool! Thanks to everyone for the help! Everyone I know who owns a pool is getting tired of hearing me talk about how easy my pool maintenance is now, thanks to TFP.
Party on dudes!
Pete
Since being free of mustard algae for the past week, I let the FC level come back to normal. Well, not quite... I've been adding liquid bleach to get it back to 12ppm each morning until I can figure out how much the pool goes through here in Phx on a hot summer day on average... most mornings when I test, it's dropped to 10 but there have been a couple mornings after really hot/sunny days with the kids in the pool a lot that it has dropped to 7. Anyway, I'm learning to gauge how much it will go through on different types of days and eventually I'll keep it a little lower, but for now I don't want it going too close to my minimum of 4. I have splashed bleach on a couple of pairs of shorts... forgot to factor those into my cost of pool maint...
(doh!)Also in the past week, I've been taking steps to lower Total Alkalinity - when I started the process, it was at 180. But I wanted to get through the shock process first before addressing TA and my calcium hardness issue. I re-performed the CH test a couple of times and believe the water turns blue around 450 (not 820+ like I first posted). Rookie learning on that test... it wasn't as sudden a color change as with the TA test, so I wasn't sure when it was changing. Anyhow, after finishing with the shock process, I retested and was at:
FC = 12
CC = 0.5
TA = 180
CH = 450
pH = 7.5
So then I went after the TA by adding a bit of muriatic acid each night and turning on the aerator while the pump ran. I was adding just enough acid to take pH down to 7.0 and by the time I was up in the morning, the pH would be back up to 7.3-ish from running the aerator through the night (~6-7 hours between adding acid and testing in the morning). TA started to slowly come down, at a rate of about 10ppm / day, and this morning it was at 90ppm. So I'll do one more night of acid & aerator, hoping to hit 80ppm tomorrow morning. Then I should be in the clear with TA. I'm not overly worried about the CH level, even at 450. We have extremely hard water here in Phx, and I'd rather not install a water softener (maybe someday, but not now). So I'm trying to make sure that my Calcite Saturation Index stays in balance to keep from having any calcium scaling issues. Right now, the pool calc is telling me that my CSI is 0.04, so almost no risk whatsoever. My goal is to keep FC around 7, pH between 7.4-7.8, TA between 70-90, CYA between 40-70. CH doesn't matter much, as I can keep the risk of scaling to a minimum by controlling the other measures, but I'll continue to test CH monthly.
I'm very happy about everything I'm learning about keeping things balanced in my beautiful, low maintenance pool! Thanks to everyone for the help! Everyone I know who owns a pool is getting tired of hearing me talk about how easy my pool maintenance is now, thanks to TFP.
Party on dudes!
Pete
