PH is up .... why?

[TizMe]

To make a long story short. Our water has been cloudy for the past few days. I had bought some dollar store bleach because we needed some and didnt want to drive all the way to walmart to get some reg clorox. I used it for a few days and it didnt seem to be working. We went yesterday and got some regular 6% bleach ( dollar store stuff didnt have a % on it :?: anyway i was brushing vaccuming backwashing and it was staying cloudy. I can see the bottom of the pool and all but the water just isnt as crisp as it had been before the dollar store bleach was added. Our bleach consumption has been on an average of 2-4ppm each day. Last night I went ahead and shocked the pool and checked it this morning and no FC loss during the night ... so I guess thats a good thing :!: Now our PH has shot up dramaticly to 8.2 or more.
My question is , should I just add acid to reduce the PH and ignore the possible algae bloom since there was no FC last night and will high PH levels cause water to be cloudy ?

I also added when I shocked the pool last night a little more bleach than I should have. I hate having part jugs of chlorine laying around!

This mornings test results were

FC 20 (no loss from last night)
CC .5
TA 100 ( Also up a little bit since last tested)
CYA 50
Water Temp 76

Have been brushing twice a day and vacuuming in the evenings after work since its a more time consuming adventure !

 

[JasonLion]

Don't trust the PH test results when the FC level is that high. Wait till FC is 10 or lower and test the PH again. Most likely that is a false PH reading caused by the high FC level.

Dollar store bleach is sometimes quite old and if so will have lost much of it's disinfecting chlorine over time. Chances are the low chlorine level allowed algae to get started. Shocking should take care of that easily because you caught it so soon. If it was the start of algae, it can take the filter several days to clean up the cloudiness.

 

[TizMe]

Should I keep the FC at shock levels for a few days to be sure we got rid of the algae or just let it drop back to a normal limit ?
Also is it ok to swim with FC levels that high ?

 

[JasonLion]

You didn't have any FC loss overnight so it is safe to let the FC level start drifting down.

With CYA at 50 I wouldn't swim with FC above 16, but this is a very subjective decision. Many indoor public pools have an active disinfecting chlorine level that is far higher than what you have in your pool and people swim in them all the time.

 

[TizMe]

Last night I shocked our pool because of a suspected algae bloom caused by stupidity on my part. This morning I checked the chlorine and there was no FC loss during the night remaining at 20ppm. Tonight I went to check levels and our ppm loss for the day was 7ppm from 20 to 13. I did the test twice to make sure. Is this an unusual amount to drop or is this within acceptable numbers . It wasnt overly sunny today, overcast with sun towards midday. We had 3 teenagers in the water for perhaps 2 hours and thats stretching it

I have never noticed a drop like that before and I had thought a drop of 2-3 ppm was the accepted number?

 

[JasonLion]

The amount of chlorine you lose due to sunlight is a percentage of your starting chlorine level. Higher starting chlorine levels mean more chlorine lost. You lost less quite a bit less than 50%, which is doing really well for a CYA of 50.