Post ascorbic acid treatment - confirming the next steps

[Metsy10]

Hi all -

I finally now not only have a crystal clear pool but it's so blue it stings my eyes! It's beautiful and the ascorbic acid process worked like a charm!!! (Not that I expected differently from this place, but felt it was worth declaring.)

Now that the pool is sparkly blue (seriously, I joked earlier that it looked like we dumped blue paint into it by accident), I want to make sure that we don't mess anything up in the next steps.

To recap what has been done this week:

-Free chlorine has been continually dropping from a 7 on Monday to a 3 yesterday afternoon.
-Since FC was at a 3 yesterday afternoon and I just spent weeks SLAMing, we added the Poly60 algaecide at that time. So that container just went in yesterday afternoon.
-As of earlier this morning, the FC was down to a 0 and we moved forward with the ascorbic acid treatment to the pool. That was 4 lbs total.
-Within minutes, the improvement was noticable. Within an hour it looked perfect!

So the ascorbic acid treatment is about 2 hours in the pool at this point, but literally has erased any signs of a stain.

About a week ago, I added a full bottle of Jacks Metal Stuff for Vinyl Liner pools (which mine is).

My next steps questions are as this:

1. I have the Taylor iron test kit. When should I test for the iron in the water? Should I wait a specific period of time after doing the removal? Will the ascorbic acid throw off the numbers?
2. Adding FC - the big question - when can I start? I believe I found an old thread which says to increase it by 1ppm per day. Since I did the treatment this morning, could I start adding bleach tonight? Or is that too early and I should wait until the ascorbic acid has been in there for 24 hours? And most importantly, is that 1PPM like increasing your FC from a 0 to a 1 on the pool calc? Or is there another calculation I should be using to determine this?
3. Is there a chart I can use to reference dependent on my test kit results? IE should I be adding more than the recommended 8oz of sequestrant a week, etc...

Thanks so much!
Lorraine

 

[JasonLion]

1) You can do the iron test an hour after adding AA.
2) I would add more sequestrant today (if you haven't already) and then give it 24 hours from when the AA was added before starting to raise FC.
3) Sequestrant dosages listed on the bottle are for 1.0 ppm of metals. If your metal reading is higher than that you should scale up to dosage proportionately.

 

[Metsy10]

Thanks Jason! One more question, is there a safe to swim FC chart somewhere? IE without the FC, but with the algaecide in it, is the pool still safe for us to use? Or should the FC be at a certain level prior to doing so? And outside of safe to use, would there be any other side effects to consider? IE can utilizing the pool with no FC in it create unfavorable pool conditions?

 

[JasonLion]

You shouldn't swim unless FC is at least the minimum for your CYA and below shock level for your CYA.

 

[Metsy10]

Is it common that after doing the AA treatment the test from the Taylor kit still shows no iron in the water? Even though I just watched it lift off the liner like magic?

I know it's not okay to shock the pool (and nor do I have a hankering for adding bleach to it anymore), but given my pool size (27600 gallons) raising the FC from a 0 to a 4 (based on my CYA chart comparison) would be 161 ounces of 8.25 bleach. So tomorrow tomorrow morning, at the 24 hour timeframe, would should I be shooting to raise it to? I'm guessing just a 1? And if I raise it to a 1 how many hours should I wait to raise it to a 2, etc?

 

[JasonLion]

Having the iron test fail to measure anything is fairly common. Unfortunately I don't know why that is, but it is common enough.

You want to raise the FC level by 1 a day until you get back to your normal levels. However, it may take way more chlorine to get to a level of 1 than you might think. Any leftover AA will consume chlorine until you burn it all off. So you want to add 1 or 2 ppm of chlorine, give it half an hour to mix in with the pump running, test the FC level, and if it is still zero repeat.

 

[Metsy10]

Thank you Jason, for your direction and your patience