New pool owner, pool is sucking down chlorine and money!

Jump to latest Follow Reply
J

Jcgage0

0
Jul 1, 2013
68
Cincinnati OH
I bought a house with a pool this winter so I'm a rookie to say the least. I have read up on here and feel that I have a basic understanding of how each of the chemicals are contributing to the health of my pool. I've been having issues the last three weeks keeping chlorine in the pool. For instance I'll dump three gallons of 10% liquid chlorine in around 9pm which will bump me up from 0ppm to 11ish ppm. By the morning I will be at 2-3 ppm and by the next evening I will be back close to zero. All this trouble and reading on this forum convinced me to by the TF100 test kit and I just took my first readings tonight. FYI...I just got back from a four day vacation today so the water is cloudy and I was expecting no chlorine which is what I got. It also rained a lot this weekend. The water may be a little green but mostly just cloudy.

Here are the results of my testing:
FC, CC, TC =0
PH =7.1
TA =180
CH = 180
CYA = 80-100

Planning to have a pool party on Friday so need some assistance! This test result matched my test strips pretty well and I had been thinking that I should drain to lower CYA, but shouldn't the chlorine be much more stable than my pool is acting with high CYA? I'm loosing 100% FC in less than 24 hours! Also, before vacation I had gotten my PH closer to 7.5, but with the solar cover on and a bunch of trichlor pucks in the pool it come back down.

Thanks for any help,
Jeff
 
I know that you will get better advice from others than I can give as I am still learning as well. However you are going to have to start the shock process which is going to require a lot more chlorine or bleach than you have used. With your CYA that high it will take a lot.
 
Hi Charlie, thanks for the help. I'm basically waiting for someone to confirm I need to drain, which you did, so I'll start that tomorrow. I'm still a little confused though as to why my high CYA levels would contribute to my rapid chlorine loss. Everything I read leads me to believe that the CYA should slow down the loss of chlorine not speed it up. I do understand that the FC must be higher to effectively clean when CYA is high but seems like FC would be more stable once those high FC levels are reached.

Can you help me out with this question?
 
My limited experience has shown -- at least on my own pool -- that high CYA + something growing in the pool can still give high FC losses.

CYA in your pool only helps prevent losses to sunlight.

Have you been reading in Pool School?

Here's a page from there on the CYA/FC relationship: http://www.troublefreepool.com/pool-school/chlorine_cya_chart_shock

If you don't have one, it is strongly suggested that you purchase a good test kit. You are going to need it to properly follow the shock process you are about to start.
 
Like Charlie sad above- CYA only protects the chlorine from sunlight, not organics. If you are losing that much overnight then something is growing in your pool. Drain to get to proper CYA levels and then follow the shock process and stay on top of it. Friday may be a little optimistic. Without a good test kit (FAS-DPD), your chances will be nil. You have to keep it at shock level an test frequently to see if it has dropped below shock level and then redose back to shock level. It sounds like you will be dosing hourly at the rate your FC is dropping.
 
I'll just join the pile-on here.

Let's say you dump chlorine in a freshly filled pool. It's active - all of it. 100% fighting algae. But the sun breaks it down with UV light. So...you put in some stabilizer. It's like umbrellas shading the chlorine molecules. The ones holding the umbrellas have their hands full. The others can fight algae. If you keep adding CYA, eventually all the chlorine molecules have their hands full holding umbrellas, so the algae has no resistance. The only way to get some fighting chlorine in there is to add a lot more chlorine, more than you need to hold up all the umbrellas. The problem is, with the CYA levels you have, that's a HUGE number, way higher than the level you've been maintaining. That's why your pool keeps clouding up.

To beat the algae, you need an overwhelming force of fighters. Which is shock level. And the more stabilizer in the water, the more chlorine you need to hold up all those umbrellas and have numerical superiority to the algae. When you start getting above 50 CYA, the shock level starts getting ridiculously high.
 
You do understand that shock is a process, not a one time application of a product, right?

Will you be able to test chlorine levels as high as 25ppm? I ask because your signature line doesn't list a test kit.

That is with guestimating your new CYA level being somewhere close to 60 ppm. You will need to maintain that level until the pool is clear, loses no more than than 1 ppm FC overnight, and has less than .5 ppm CC.
 
I'm realizing now that shock is a process, but no I did not understand this before all of my problems. Thanks for the heads up on the test kit. I forgot to add that in my signature. In the original post I did point out that I just got a TF100, so yes I can test up to 25 ppm.

How long should I need to keep the pool at a "shock" level of chlorine?

Thanks for the help
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
If you are able to be vigilant and test/dose at least every couple of hours, it should go fairly quickly. Do expect a few days, though.

With an expected CYA of 50-60, if the pool is at least mostly clear, your guests may be able to enjoy the pool even at shock levels. Do warn them to wear old suits, however. If I am incorrect, I would expect an expert here to make that correction.
 
Thanks for all the help. The pool is looking much better. Maybe the slightest bit of cloudiness at this point. A couple of questions.

I just measured FC=11, CC=1.0, TA=160, CH=150, PH=7.5, CYA=50-60

This after 1/2 drain and refill and about 2 straight days of holding the pool at shock levels (although not checking every couple of hours so brought to shock levels then dropped and brought back up a couple times a day). At this point I'm loosing about 45-50% of my FC in 24 hours and my CC is 1 ppm. I've brought the pool back up to 14.5 from 11 (shock level is 16-18). I'm hoping to use the pool weather permitting tomorrow around 3pm and I want the FC levels to drop to a high normal level so this is the reason that I did not bring the pool all the way back up to 18.

Is this a big mistake?

Also I did see the post about it being ok to let people swim when the pool is at shock levels but to wear old trunks. My wife's reaction to this was "No way it can be safe to swim if it is going to fad swim suits! I'm not putting my baby in there". Any good advice to ease her concerns, or should we be concerned.

Love this forum! Thank you so much for all the great advice!
 
Update.

Last night when I added a gallon on liquid chlorine 10% in intending to go from 11 ppm to 14.5, I tested an hour later around 10pm and got 18 ppm!

This morning at 8:40 I tested and got 11.5 ppm FC and 1 CC.

That test last night seems to have jumped as if I have a pool half the size, but either way my overnight FC drop is still a lot higher than 1 ppm. Does this mean there is still some algae hiding somewhere?
 
Jcgage0 said:
Update.

Last night when I added a gallon on liquid chlorine 10% in intending to go from 11 ppm to 14.5, I tested an hour later around 10pm and got 18 ppm!

This morning at 8:40 I tested and got 11.5 ppm FC and 1 CC.

That test last night seems to have jumped as if I have a pool half the size, but either way my overnight FC drop is still a lot higher than 1 ppm. Does this mean there is still some algae hiding somewhere?
Click to expand...
Yes, there is still something in the pool eating chlorine. Have you checked in all the hiding places like light niches, ladders, nooks & crannies and brushing everything?

I'm guessing the FC jump was just a testing error.
 
Thanks for all the help everyone! I was able to use the pool on Friday and ended up letting the DC drop to high normal levels for swimming even though I new that there was still something eating my chlorine. Yesterday I cleaned out the pool thoroughly (brushed, removed and cleaned out light housing, removed and cleaned latter, scrubbed nooks and craneys around steps, scrubbed skimmer and returns). I then brought the pool back to shock levels. Still had a high overnight drop in FC of 6.5 ppm then from 20 to 13.5. I realized today I didn't backwash after stealing up all that dirt/Algiers cleaning yesterday so I have vaccines to waste and backwashed today.

One more thing I'm wondering about. Should I take the floor drain cover off and clean in around the drain?
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply