Hi everyone,
First off, I wanted to introduce myself. I'm fairly new to the world of pools after purchasing a home with an "under appreciated" 20x40 pool in late 2013 (full details in signature). We tore it basically back to the hole in the ground and completely renovated it for the long run (it's a thing of beauty now! ). Meanwhile in terms of chemistry I stumbled through last summer with some guidance of the pool store and their "pool school" (read: chemical marketing) but my wallet sure suffered.
After having them open the pool in the spring ($400 for them to remove the safety cover, prime the pump and dump some chlorine in???) we promptly were served up with an algae bloom. Well $200 later through algaecide, phosphate remover and other nonsense the algae came back. Next visit I was sold chlorine to shock the pool but the amount recommended by the store wasn't even close to enough after looking into it myself, and low and behold I was back at the store days later buying more chlorine - the first batch completely wasted/consumed by the algae fight.
Fed up I finally turned online, figuring if I'm going to own a pool I'm going to know what I'm doing and take control of the situation. And so I found TFP and was an instant convert I've truly enjoyed educating myself from the great resources here and the community seems amazing!
I've since shocked (well SLAMed) the pool (unfortunately only had test strips to go by at the time so there was some guessing involved) and for the past few weeks our family has enjoyed pristine, clear water. Next step is to keep that trend going based on the recommendations here I ordered the Taylor K2006 kit (wanted the TFTestKit but not really possible in Canada).
The kit finally arrived yesterday so I ran through my first test last night, and fortunately the results are actually pretty good I think:
FC 5.4
CC 0.2
pH 7.4
TA 110
CH 170
CYA 33
My question from all of the experts here is what is your initial thought on the results? Would you adjust anything? My thoughts based on my new (and hopefully accurate) TFPC knowledge are:
Thanks for any insights and sorry for the long post - figured I should give some background! I feel like I'm getting a good understanding of the concepts but in terms of priority I'm not sure what to tackle first
First off, I wanted to introduce myself. I'm fairly new to the world of pools after purchasing a home with an "under appreciated" 20x40 pool in late 2013 (full details in signature). We tore it basically back to the hole in the ground and completely renovated it for the long run (it's a thing of beauty now! ). Meanwhile in terms of chemistry I stumbled through last summer with some guidance of the pool store and their "pool school" (read: chemical marketing) but my wallet sure suffered.
After having them open the pool in the spring ($400 for them to remove the safety cover, prime the pump and dump some chlorine in???) we promptly were served up with an algae bloom. Well $200 later through algaecide, phosphate remover and other nonsense the algae came back. Next visit I was sold chlorine to shock the pool but the amount recommended by the store wasn't even close to enough after looking into it myself, and low and behold I was back at the store days later buying more chlorine - the first batch completely wasted/consumed by the algae fight.
Fed up I finally turned online, figuring if I'm going to own a pool I'm going to know what I'm doing and take control of the situation. And so I found TFP and was an instant convert I've truly enjoyed educating myself from the great resources here and the community seems amazing!
I've since shocked (well SLAMed) the pool (unfortunately only had test strips to go by at the time so there was some guessing involved) and for the past few weeks our family has enjoyed pristine, clear water. Next step is to keep that trend going based on the recommendations here I ordered the Taylor K2006 kit (wanted the TFTestKit but not really possible in Canada).
The kit finally arrived yesterday so I ran through my first test last night, and fortunately the results are actually pretty good I think:
FC 5.4
CC 0.2
pH 7.4
TA 110
CH 170
CYA 33
My question from all of the experts here is what is your initial thought on the results? Would you adjust anything? My thoughts based on my new (and hopefully accurate) TFPC knowledge are:
- the FC is a bit high, but I'd prefer to run it near the top of the range to be safe. Any concerns?
- Do most of you SLAM you pool at CC of 0.2? I've read up to 0.5 is okay with the ideal of 0.0?
- I'm considering doing the acid/aerate method to lower TA a bit. Is it necessary at 110?
- our setup has an off-line chlorine feeder, and not knowing any better at the start of the season I was sold a $80 bucket of tabs from the pool store. I'm planning on using as many up as I can (knowing now the implications of CYA up, pH down) before hopefully switching to liquid chlorine after that and getting into the true BBB method. Because of the potential pH drop over time I'm thinking also I should work to raise pH up to maybe 7.6 or 7.7?
Thanks for any insights and sorry for the long post - figured I should give some background! I feel like I'm getting a good understanding of the concepts but in terms of priority I'm not sure what to tackle first