chlorine levels off my chart.

[CGDogs]

Hi all,
I'm new to the forums and new to keeping a large inground pool. Have experince only with the intex blow up jobs. Been using these forums for a month trying to learn as much as I can.

I don't have a serious problem. But from reading here I started today to use regular house hold bleach to shock my pool. I added a gallon of 6% bleach then waited a while with filter and robotic cleaner running. My chlorine level went from 0 to off my poolmaster drop tests chart witch only goes to 5. My back up aquacheck strips show it somewhere between 5 and 10. Is this normal?? According to poolcalculator I would have needed much more.

I usually shock once a week and adjust ph with muratic as needed.

Test levels that I know are
Ph 7.6
Alk 120
Copper .4
Tds 1000ish
Filter runs 12pm -6pm and 12am - 6am
Pool is around 26000 gallons

This is all I can currently test myself. Looking into better test kits.

 

[Charlie_R]

For a good test kit, look no further than http://tftestkits.net/

When you get your kit, post the numbers here.

Have you been reading Pool School, link in upper right of this page?

Once you have a handle on how your pool behaves, you should never have to "shock" your pool, although we call it SLAM (Shock Level And Maintain) here, to differentiate it from the products by that name.

Maintaining FC (free chlorine) levels with bleach or liquid chlorine is the prefered method here, and again, we don't call that "shocking".

Have you looked at http://wwwpoolcalculator.com yet? if you plug your numbers into that, you will be able to see why your FC level went higher than you expected.

 

[CGDogs]

Yes I just changed from shocking to using liquid chlorine. Poolcalc says one gallon would raise it to 2.4. However it went above my ability to drop test. Mine currently only tests up to 5. Just wondered why this would be.

 

[BoDarville]

Looking into better test kits.

Your search ends here: http://tftestkits.net/ You are already seeing the limitations of most other test kits that can only measure chlorine up to 5 ppm. Any of the kits we recommend can measure chlorine up to 50 ppm.

The first concept to get a solid understanding of is the chlorine/CYA relationship. The amount of chlorine needed for day-to-day maintenance as well as shocking (what we call The SLAM Process), should the need ever arise, depends on your pool's CYA level. I do not see CYA in your test results. Here are a couple of resources that explain this relationship in a little more detail: ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry, and Chlorine CYA Chart.

Tds 1000ish

You can ignore TDS. It is completely irrelevant to managing a pool. It is made up of several components and without knowing the values of each component, it is a worthless indicator. The recommended test kits test the individual components that are important to managing pool water chemistry.

Copper .4

This is a little concerning. I think the "Power Ionizer" may be responsible for the copper in the water. You still need to maintain the proper amount of chlorine according to your CYA level - ionizer or no ionizer. That's why we do not recommend ionizers. BTW, if anyone's hair starts turning green, the copper is responsible - not the chlorine.

 

[CGDogs]

Yea so far I have been following what the ionizer said to do. Witch was maintain a copper/silver readingbof .3-.5 and to merely shock once a week. I havnt had any issues all year but decided to just add chlorine once a week instead of the shock packets. Was startled by the level attained by one gallon. The TDS was attained by adding softner salt per my pool store. I will definitely look into the links you provided. Thanks.

 

[CGDogs]

I did locate a test page from the pool store but it was a few weeks ago. It list my cyanuric acid at just 4.

 

[jblizzle]

You are not going to get anywhere based the results you have posted. A third vote for tftestkits.net

What is the ingredient in the packets you were adding every week?

 

[CGDogs]

You are not going to get anywhere based the results you have posted. A third vote for tftestkits.net

What is the ingredient in the packets you were adding every week?

Ok here the shock packets I have been using.

Poolife turbo shock
Active Ingredient:Calcium Hypochlorite - 78%
other - 22%
Min available chlorine - 75%

The pool place thay did my pool has me using 3 1lbs per week. They had me add softner salt to bring up my TDS up to around 1000 for the ionizer to work properly.

You guys had me learn about my CYA levels and how it effects chlorine. Maybe I'm not understanding what I read. But what I understand is that it effects the level of chlorine needed to be an effective sanitizer and to control the rate of chlorine loss from the sun.

So I guess I'm having trouble wraping my head around the fact that poolcalculator says that while my cya is 0 or 100 that 128oz of bleach @6% would raise my initial chlorine level of 2.4.

Now I understand that need a better test kit to measure higher than 5ppm. But how in the world would that amount of bleach put me around 7ppm fc when I started at zero.

 

[Bama Rambler]

It's very rare for 6% bleach to come in gallons, so if you actually have gallons, it's either 10 or 12.5% bleach. Where did you get it from?

Even 8.25% would have raised it by 5 ppm. 12.5% would have raised it by almost 8 ppm.

It doesn't matter how much CYA you have, if you add a specific amount of chlorine it will raise the FC by a set amount. The killing potential varies based on how much CYA you have, but the amount of FC it adds is bases strictly on volume of the pool, volume of the chlorine and concentration of the chlorine.

 

[Smykowski]

So I guess I'm having trouble wraping my head around the fact that poolcalculator says that while my cya is 0 or 100 that 128oz of bleach @6% would raise my initial chlorine level of 2.4.

This is a difficult concept for most people to get when they first move to the BBB method. While the following is not exactly correct, conceptually it may help you understand:

FC is FC, no matter what the CYA level is. All the CYA does is adjust the speed at which the FC is used up by the sun or how fast is does its work in sanitizing/oxidizing. Not enough CYA and the FC is used up by the sun very, very quickly and will react to contanimants very quickly (creating lots of irritating byproducts). Too much CYA and it can't kill stuff fast enough and you get a swamp. The FC/CYA chart is what gives us the optimum balance.

 

[CGDogs]

Swung in dollar general last minute.

 

[Bama Rambler]

It's been a long time since I've seen 1 gallon jugs of bleach around here.

1 gallon of 6% would have raised the FC by 4 ppm in your pool. My guess is that you had some FC.

 

[FamilyGuy]

It's very rare for 6% bleach to come in gallons, so if you actually have gallons, it's either 10 or 12.5% bleach. Where did you get it from? .

While i agree that 8.25% is more common in grocery stores now a days. 6% is also not that uncommon to find in my area.

 

[jblizzle]

The powder you have been been using is adding calcium and not stabilizer, so likely your CYA is still very low unless you have added any. So your FC is lost quickly to the sun.

3 pounds of the cal-hypo was adding 10ppm of FC every week, but with no CYA, it would have been gone in a day.

 

[CGDogs]

Yeah I never added any stabilizer. Since I was using copper and silver for sanitizer. Going to be switching your guys bbb method and adding borites. Sure wish I would of found this forum before letting the pool company take out the chlorine feed and put that ionizer in. Not that I have had any problems at all. But with reading here the slow rate of sanitation worries me. I get a pretty heavy swimming load with my two young kids and all thier niehborhood friends that swim almost daily. Live and learn i guess.

And yeah btw chlorine didn't even read this am lol. Cant wait to get my test kit here and going to run to town for cya.

 

[Smykowski]

Yeah I never added any stabilizer. Since I But with reading here the slow rate of sanitation worries me. I get a pretty heavy swimming load with my two young kids and all thier niehborhood friends that swim almost daily. Live and learn i guess.

I think you misunderstood me. For an outdoor pool, you need stabilizer. I was just trying to explain WHY you need stabilizer. If you follow our recommendations with stabilizer and chlorine (specifically, follow the FC/CYA chart), you'll be fine.

 

[CGDogs]

No I think I got ya now. Was just saying that I had been getting "pool stored" and had never added any. They had me under the impression it didn't matter since they had me on the Dang ionizer. Thanks though and to all who gave imput.