Newbie weaning off of pucks and pool guy

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W

wolfeman007

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Jul 15, 2013
12
First time pool owner, I really appreciate all the info here.

When I bought the house the pool water looked great but being a newbie I called a recommended local pool service to help get me started. They came out and informed me that the TA was zero and the TDS and CYA was through the roof and they recommended that I drain the pool and start all over or I would be chasing it in circles all summer. I was scared to death of draining the pool because its fiberglass and read that was a huge NO NO but trusted them (siphoned out 90%) and had it refilled via tanker truck the next am with city water (i'm on a well) This was in April...

Since then I have been paying $30 a week for the pool guy to come out and test things and have noticed that other than him shocking it maybe once a month, I was basically paying for the dude to come out once a week and drop 1 or 2 pucks in the feeder as things were stable and my family enjoyed our pool basically everyday.

I found this site and am interested in doing the BBB Method but wonder if its a good idea to continue with the pucks but turn it all the way down (almost off) while using 8.5% bleach for my FC...I had a little outbreak of algae when I got back from a vacation and found the feeder was empty (pool guy swears he dropped a puck in it while I was gone... but algae disappeared after I dropped two pucks in and let the filter run for 24hrs. Noticed that it came back today so I shocked (or should I say sorta SLAMd) with 121oz of 8.5% Bleach. My concern with the BBB method is that it seems like the FC will be swinging up and down from day to day and do like the consistency of the puck feeder but understand that the building up of CYA will eventually cause me an issue.

My readings today before shocking were.

FC 2.5
PH 7.7
TA 150ish
CYA 50-60ish

It was my first time using the test kit and I had a bit of a hard time deciding on which color it was closest to (sounds like I need to get a better kit as mine is the Total Poolcare DPD Test Kit from Leslies)

from what I have read on this site, I probably need to lower my TA, CYA will continue to climb if I keep using the pucks but everything else is pretty good...I have the filter timer set to come on from 8am to 2pm and back on at 8pm to 10pm (the thought being that the two hour night session filters out anything from swimmers and adds a little extra chlorine for the night :)

I'm in Charlotte NC and we have had tons of rain lately (the now ex-pool guy said they were having tons of algae issues around town because of that)

Any advise would be greatly appreciated!
 
My concern with the BBB method is that it seems like the FC will be swinging up and down from day to day and do like the consistency of the puck feeder but understand that the building up of CYA will eventually cause me an issue.
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Welcome to the forum. :lol:

That you understand the consequences of pucks makes you a BBB'r. BBB is not ever using pucks (or anything else) but knowing the side effects when you do and knowing how to manage them properly.

You can get a seperate FAS/DPD test and that coupled with your Leslie's DPD kit will work fine.
 
OK, couple of weeks in and the water has been beautiful the entire time, everyone that uses the pool comments on how the water just glows... I have had the puck feeder off for a couple of weeks now, testing in the morning and just adding 13-18oz of 8.5% Bleach a day as I have been going from 6 to 4.5 FC with about 8 hrs of sun a day. Did a full on test of everything in my kit today and got the results below.

FC 4.5 (haven't added Bleach since 8am yesterday)
CC .5

PH 7.9 (kinda hard to tell but I think its slightly darker than 7.8, which means its ticking up)
CH 80 (looks like way low, first time I have tested for this)
TA 140 (same as when I started BBB)
CYA 50 (ditto)

So from what I see on the pool calculator I need to go get some muriatic acid from Home Depot and 128oz of Calcium Chloride to bring down the PH and up the CH.

FYI, we did get some significant rain in the past 24hrs...

any advise is greatly appreciated!

JW
 
For fiberglass pools the CH is recommended to be 220-320 range. If you want to add calcium without having to buy it, you could start using cal hypo for your chlorine source for a while.
 

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Thanks Ping! I just called alaglas pools and they confirmed that its not a calcium carbonate filler and they do not recommend anyone adding CH to one of their pools. While I had her on the phone I asked her if they had heard of the BBB method, she said no..I told her about using bleach as my chlorine source and she said she had heard of that but that they still recommend that people use a Chlorine Feeder..I then asked what they recommend when that CYA level gets out of control and she said at that point you can drain to the stairs and refill and repeat until its within acceptable levels..I'll stick with BBB :)
 
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