K-2006 vs OTO /CYA Issues

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michmosh

michmosh

0
Jul 26, 2014
15
Longwood,FL
Hello all - this is my first post here and public "speaking" is not my passion so please be kind. ;)
I have been reading here a lot lately...so much so that I ordered and received the highly acclaimed Taylor K-2006 test kit last week to try and simplify my plight.
We are in FL and pool is in full sun all day - if this matters.

Here goes:

We re-surfaced our 22,000 gal pool last year, fired the pool guy and bought an automatic chlorinator and relied on the OTO tests and the pool store for our readings and guidance. We had no clue about different chlorine types, the fact that the pucks contain stabilizer, that dichlor "shock" adds a bunch more stabilizer or that stabilizer doesn't go away. Fast forward to today where CYA is off the charts and not even measurable. Pool store gave a reading of 150 last week, but I am wondering if their test caps at a certain amount and can't give a true reading(?). Knowing that it was (at least) that when I received my new test kit that caps at 100, I knew I needed to dilute my pool sample to even be on the chart - with a 50/50 dilution I was still not on the chart of the Taylor test kit. I did it again with only 1/4 pool water and 3/4 bottled water (I don't recall the type) and got a reading on the charts of about 75ppm. So...does that really mean my CYA is 300????? I know the further you slice down the sample, the less accurate the test becomes. But it was so far off from the pool store that their test can't possibly be accurate, can it?
Needless to say chlorinator is OFF and we are switching to liquid chlorine, but I haven't added any yet because I don't even know how to treat this. YES, I am aware we need to drain and refill - but we are on a well and guess what our water treatment system uses for sanitation???? Yup...STABILIZED chlorine pucks!! So we would want to fill with the raw well water, no? Our raw water has A LOT of iron in it. I am not sure what the lesser of two evils is here.
Back to the chlorine...new test kit gave me a FC reading of 11ppm yesterday and CC was .5. Just for the heck of it I checked it with the OTO (expecting to see the brown or orange color when 5+) and got chlorine in the normal range - the yellow was somewhere between 3-5ppm. Can these tests be wildly different??

So given all of these variables I decided ping the experts here on the forum - if you can clarify any of the issues of confusion I mention above I would greatly appreciate it!
 
:wave: Welcome to TFP!!!

Sounds like you did the CYA dilution test correctly, putting your CYA up around 300ppm (mine was that high too when I fired the pool service).
Pool stores are really bad at the CYA test and if they were using the black dot test, it stops are 100 just like yours.

Sounds like you should consider getting new water trucked in with less iron in it.

The FAS-DPD test is the most accurate. To confirm, are you using 10ml or 25ml for the test? What multiplication did you use for each drop?
 
Yup, the pool store was telling me my cya was 40 for months. I got my own test kit and soon thereafter did a diluted test finding my cya to actually be over 350. 44,000 gallons later, it was 50. You might consider getting a refill for your r-0013 reagent, you're going to go through those 2 little bottles quickly.
 
Yes, in just the two tests I have done one bottle is gone already!!! It's so high that I am not going to bother testing again until we do something drastic like drain and refill because other than that there is really no point testing other than wasting those darn drops!!
Although using the drops to fill up to the 14 ml line on the squeeze bottle is probably to accommodate those with a low reading at the other end of the spectrum. They would need to add a lot of the cloudy solution to cover the black dot. I am thinking with a very high concentration of CYA, might as well half it - only takes a tiny bit of my water to cover black dot. Fill the squirt bottle with pool water to 3.5 ml and drops to the 7 ml line - uses half the drops and gives you plenty to cover dot. I am guessing the main goal is that it's a 50/50 dilution - but why make a bigger batch than needed??? OF COURSE I thought of it after I used a whole bottle! :mad:
 
You are correct that at higher CYA levels, you can use less of the 50/50 mix and save some reagent.
Also sounds like you did the FAS-DPD correctly, just wanted to make sure that you were not using 25ml but multiplying by 0.5 instead of 0.2 (which would put the FC down at 4.4 like the OTO). A little odd that the OTO was not darker though.

Definitely order refills for the FAS-DPD and the CYA tests ... tftestkits.net offers all the refills.
 
jblizzle said:
You are correct that at higher CYA levels, you can use less of the 50/50 mix and save some reagent.
Also sounds like you did the FAS-DPD correctly, just wanted to make sure that you were not using 25ml but multiplying by 0.5 instead of 0.2 (which would put the FC down at 4.4 like the OTO). A little odd that the OTO was not darker though.

Definitely order refills for the FAS-DPD and the CYA tests ... tftestkits.net offers all the refills.
Click to expand...

Yes, I will order more of those for sure.

I know, I was totally expecting an orange reading from OTO - it just made things more complicated in my mind that they were not even close. I started second guessing the other Taylor kit and if I did it right. So confusing. Maybe I'll check them both again today. What's a few more wasted drops....:(
 

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