- May 14, 2013
- 54
First of all, thank you TFP for finally ending about 7 or 8 years of battling a less-than-stellar 12,000 IG PebbleTec pool, which was never crystal clear and perfect. I had simply come to the conclusion that is was not possible for me to have perfect (or even near-perfect) pool water. At best is was clear but with "dust" on the bottom that would always get stirred up when someone was in the pool, or if I brushed. I even changed out the Pentair DE filter that came with the house to a Hayward sand filter (installed myself). Still, the best I could get was "somewhat okay."
What I never knew, until coming to this site, was that my pool was constantly under a low-grade algae bloom. Or to put it better, I constantly had a good amount of dead algae (what I called "dust" and thought was due to a poor filter) in the pool that the chlorine was barely keeping up with, though it never went to a full algae bloom with green water, until last month. The pool store computer print outs usually would show CYA as either 100 or 150 (depending on the store's testing upper limit), but nobody ever said that in turn I needed to keep the free chlorine level proportionally higher. They always would say "chlorine is good, maybe a little high" when it would read between 3 and 5 ppm. They would, however, always tell me I needed to shock weekly, put in phosphate remover weekly, and use algaecide whenever I had cloudy water.
So, long story short I am now BBB (no tabs), and will be draining about 60 to 70 percent of my water soon, but not yet. Why? It is too enjoyable to only be losing about 2 or 3 ppm of FC per day. Which means I only put in about a gallon of 12.5 percent HASA liquid chlorine every four or five days. I also got my K-2006 in the mail yesterday and the first test was:
FC = 15
CC = 0
PH = 7.6
TA = 110
CYA and hardness I'll test later, but I know both are pretty high.
Yes, I know I am at risk of not really knowing what the true pH is, but I'm guessing it is not too far from 7.6, maybe a little lower? The water is liquid glass clear. I have PebbleTec with a gray-blue-green color and for the first time it doesn't look brown in color. I want to wait until a cool or cloudy forecast (we do get them during the monsoon season this time of year) to do the drain, but the downside is that I know afterwards I'll have to get used to putting in a half gallon to a full gallon in per day. I plan on buying the HASA liquid chlorinator and installing it later this summer.
Thanks TFP for giving me back a normal pool that people want to swim in again. :lol:
What I never knew, until coming to this site, was that my pool was constantly under a low-grade algae bloom. Or to put it better, I constantly had a good amount of dead algae (what I called "dust" and thought was due to a poor filter) in the pool that the chlorine was barely keeping up with, though it never went to a full algae bloom with green water, until last month. The pool store computer print outs usually would show CYA as either 100 or 150 (depending on the store's testing upper limit), but nobody ever said that in turn I needed to keep the free chlorine level proportionally higher. They always would say "chlorine is good, maybe a little high" when it would read between 3 and 5 ppm. They would, however, always tell me I needed to shock weekly, put in phosphate remover weekly, and use algaecide whenever I had cloudy water.
So, long story short I am now BBB (no tabs), and will be draining about 60 to 70 percent of my water soon, but not yet. Why? It is too enjoyable to only be losing about 2 or 3 ppm of FC per day. Which means I only put in about a gallon of 12.5 percent HASA liquid chlorine every four or five days. I also got my K-2006 in the mail yesterday and the first test was:
FC = 15
CC = 0
PH = 7.6
TA = 110
CYA and hardness I'll test later, but I know both are pretty high.
Yes, I know I am at risk of not really knowing what the true pH is, but I'm guessing it is not too far from 7.6, maybe a little lower? The water is liquid glass clear. I have PebbleTec with a gray-blue-green color and for the first time it doesn't look brown in color. I want to wait until a cool or cloudy forecast (we do get them during the monsoon season this time of year) to do the drain, but the downside is that I know afterwards I'll have to get used to putting in a half gallon to a full gallon in per day. I plan on buying the HASA liquid chlorinator and installing it later this summer.
Thanks TFP for giving me back a normal pool that people want to swim in again. :lol:
