New to the Board

[dm912]

What a great site this is. I've been lurking for some time and learning, finally ordered my TF-100 test kit (with stirrer) and here we go. Bought the house a couple of years ago and continued to use the trichlor pucks until this summer when I switched to bleach. Knew from pool store tests that my cya was very high. Fought cloudy water and some algae all summer. Drained half the pool this w/e,refilled with city water and have the results:

Old readings TF-100:
CYA 240
FC 24
CC 0
TA 130
CH 1050
PH 7.5 (but how accurate at FC 24?)

New readings TF-100:
CYA 80-85
FC 9
CC 0
TA 120
CH 575 (new fill water 375)
PH 7.5

Things sure moved in the right direction, but should I do more partial drains to lower CYA some more?
Do I need to do an OCLT? Can I live with 575 CH? This is not a salt water pool. Thanks for all the help. Dave

 

[Smykowski]

I know you're not new, but glad to have you as a poster!

Couple more questions before we give you a course of action...

1. What's the water temp?
2. How does the water look right now?
3. How long ago was the last algae battle?

 

[Patrick_B]

Welcome to the forum. New or not, this is a great place to learn.

 

[dm912]

Water temp. 56
beautifully clear now (and was before the partial drain)
last cloudy water/algae problem was 3 months ago when water was 85-90. Wife likes it warm!

 

[Smykowski]

You can live with the high CH as long as you keep a close eye on your pH. While the temp is cold, you're fine, but with no other changes, if the temp goes up to 85 and the pH goes to 7.8, you're opening yourself up to a scaling problem.

You can live with a CYA in the 80s, but again, you have to watch FC carefully. You probaby want to keep it between 9 and 11, but never ever below 7. If you have to SLAM the pool in the future (for whatever reason), it will be much easier to do another partial drain first.

Given the fact that both CYA and CH are still high, just doing another small drain (20-30%) might be worth it just to not have to walk the tightrope. I certainly think it could be done either way.

As for the OCLT question, I'd like to hear other opinions besides mine. While you can certainly do one, the cold water slows down algae, so I have a hunch you could likely get a false positive (very little loss overnight even though there's something in the pool simply because it's so slow). If it's my pool, I would just run maintenance numbers for now, and then pay attention to the chlorine consumption as the water warms up.

 

[duraleigh]

Unless your water isn't clear, +1 what smykowski said.

 

[dm912]

I think I'll drain more this week to try to get better CYA/CH, especially since my water rates are going up Jan. 1st. I know that CYA has to be diluted out and it's the same for CH?
What would be an ideal CYA?

 

[danacc]

Yes, both CYA and CH need to be diluted out, so you're getting a double benefit by draining a bit again.

Ideal CYA depends on how much sun your pool gets (and whether or not you use an SWG for chlorine). If you get a lot of direct sun on the pool during the summer in your location, I'd shoot for 50. I wouldn't go below 40 in southern California unless you have a very shaded pool.

 

[dm912]

Can I consider topping off with water from my home water softener? I'm assuming the CH would be better than the outside hose bibs. Perhaps there are reasons not to do this.

 

[Smykowski]

Can I consider topping off with water from my home water softener? I'm assuming the CH would be better than the outside hose bibs. Perhaps there are reasons not to do this.

The only issue I can think of is the demand being placed on the softener. I don't have one, though, so I can't speak from experience.

And by "topping off" you mean after the drain, correct?

 

[dm912]

Right, I would drain off a foot at a time, replace with softened water. My softener has about 550 gal. capacity per cycle, and because it's a rented unit they supply all the salt I need! Just wasn't sure if there are things in softened water that I don't want in my pool.

 

[danjaymor]

I fill/filled my pool through the softener, it's a whole house system and did not bother using the bypass hose bibb in the front of the house to run to the backyard.

The unit blew through it's salt supply, but salt is cheap, especially if the service company is providing it. You may want to keep an eye on salt level and give them a call if it's low. You will use it up faster than they may have on their regularly scheduled check up.

We've got nasty hard water here in Mesa, so it was worth it to me to keep some of that out of the pool. The pool auto-fill valve is also connected to the softened water supply.

There shouldn't be much of any problematic byproducts in softened water. The salt is consumed and exhausted to drain during the backwash cycle only.

 

[dm912]

I'll do a CH test on the softened water and if it's better (it should be) I'll go ahead and use it. I actually was using it to top off before I drained half my water, but with CH at 1050 it wasn't going to do much of anything. A big drain was the only thing I could do. Looking forward to a much easier pool to maintain after this. Thanks for the reply's!

 

[Patrick_B]

Right, I would drain off a foot at a time, replace with softened water. My softener has about 550 gal. capacity per cycle, and because it's a rented unit they supply all the salt I need! Just wasn't sure if there are things in softened water that I don't want in my pool.

It's fine to use softened water in your pool, but be sure to give the proper amount of regen time between cycles when you are using it for the pool. Also, You may have to force it into manual regen afterward to make sure you don't run hard into the house between cycles. No big deal, you just have to know your hardness, and softener capacity.