New House, New Pool

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hartmabd

hartmabd

0
Aug 8, 2014
7
Lake in the Hills, IL
Finally received my test kit yesterday afternoon and tested my water this morning. Here are my results:
FC=0.1
CC=0.4
pH=7.0
TA=50
CYA=100
The previous owner said she only maintains the pool with the auto pop up dispenser and 3 pucks of chlorine.
Based on reading the website, it seems that I am gonna have issues with maintaining my chlorine levels with my high CYA. And my only option for significantly lowering CYA is to drain.
Do I have other options besides draining?
Am I a candidate for SLAMing or can I correct this pool another way?
Thanks in advance.
 
Hi, welcome to TFP! You can maintain a clear pool with high CYA by keeping the FC in correct ratio with the CYA level. However, the test maxes out at 100 so you should dilute the pool water sample with a equal part of tap water (1 cup pool water mixed with 1 cup tap water) use that to test the CYA level and double the result. That will give you an idea how high your CYA really is. Based on water costs and restrictions in your area, you will need to decide when it is more cost effective to drain and refill vs keeping the FC in the correct range for your pool. Also you must be very diligent in keeping the FC in range. Allowing it to drop out of range for a day or two will quickly begin to cloud the water and you will need to slam. Slamming with very high CYA is just not practical. If you need to drain, use PoolMath to determine how much to drain and refill. How does your water look now?
 
Pool is very clear. It looks pretty nice just needs a little vacuuming.
From PoolMath, to lower CYA to 40 I would need to replace 60% of my water. With only about 1-1.5 months of swimming weather here in NWburbs Chicago, I need to determine if it makes sense to drain that much of my pool this late in the year.
How much would this affect my winter maintenance with these numbers?
I don't mind spending the time/money on chlorine to maintain a clean pool. I would need about a gallon of bleach to get my FC up to recommended level of 10 at my current CYA.
 
First it would be good to to the 50/50 dilution and retest CYA to find out what it really is.

For winterizing, you will need to drain the water below the retrurns, which is a good bit, so that will help bring down the CYA anyhow.
Considering thats the case, it might be worthwhile to wait till winter closing providing of course, the CYA is actually 100.

If you do the 50/50 test and find your CYA to be quite a bit above 100, then it will have to be drained significantly no mater what the season, so it would be reasonable in this scenario to go ahead and do it now so you dont need as much chlorine and to just make maintaining it easier.
 
So I contacted local pool supplies in search of bulk chlorine prices. The response I got from one of them was:
"I will recommend that you not use only liquid chlorine in the pool as a means to supply chlorine to the pool. Liquid chlorine is used as a means to shock the pool, therefore it is quickly used up and burned off in the pool, levels lasting for about 4-8 hours. This means that there is not a constant amount of sanitizer in the pool. If you would like to maintain the pool in a healthy state with minimal use of chemicals, adding tablets and shocking once per week will do the trick."

Is there some truth behind this or is it them trying to sell me of their products?
I recently purchased a 4-1 gallon pack of 10% chlorine for $12.49. Seems pretty reasonable.
Could I also add a combination of tablets and bleach to maintain pool at a slightly lower cost?
Thanks in advance.
 
If you have the proper CYA level you will only burn a few ppm of any chlorine..including the liquid form. I see you are in Illinois. If you live close to a The Great Escape store they have a regular price of liquid chlorine 12% (Shock) $2.50 per gallon. Menards has a sale about twice a year for 12% for buy one get one free which comes out to $2.00 per gallon. I should also note that you should get a good test kit like the TF-100. You need to know where your CYA level is at. I have my pool drained and power washed every spring and then add an initial dose of CYA. I use a combination of chlorine tabs (which add about 1.7ppm CYA for my pool volume) and additional liquid chlorine to keep my CYA/Chlorine ratio in check. Once I reach a CYA of 40ppm I stop the tabs and use the liquid chlorine the rest of the season.
 
Welcome to the forum :wave:

We use bleach and it works well for us. Most of us used to use chlorine tablets but at some point ran into trouble with the CYA continuing to build with each tablet. It's a pool store and they should know but it seems they're schooled in selling their product and it's what they know. The worst part is what they will say at times isn't true.
 
So I contacted local pool supplies in search of bulk chlorine prices. The response I got from one of them was:
"I will recommend that you not use only liquid chlorine in the pool as a means to supply chlorine to the pool. Liquid chlorine is used as a means to shock the pool, therefore it is quickly used up and burned off in the pool, levels lasting for about 4-8 hours. This means that there is not a constant amount of sanitizer in the pool. If you would like to maintain the pool in a healthy state with minimal use of chemicals, adding tablets and shocking once per week will do the trick."

Is there some truth behind this or is it them trying to sell me of their products?
I recently purchased a 4-1 gallon pack of 10% chlorine for $12.49. Seems pretty reasonable.
Could I also add a combination of tablets and bleach to maintain pool at a slightly lower cost?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Oh wow, I had to get on my computer chair and lift my feet because it was too deep.
Chlorine is chlorine is chlorine. It does not matter if it comes in solid form, liquid form, gas form, or an SWCG.
In short, find another pool store. That one is only interested in making money from uninformed people.
 

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Can you add your pools info to your signature as outlined here :lookhere: http://www.troublefreepool.com/content/165-getting-started

It's hard to say what the motivation behind each person is as each pool store is different and even the individual employees are different. If they hired someone off the street with little experience and taught them with some chemical companies video tapes I guess you can expect some tunnel vision. I don't understand how as an employee you don't try to learn more.
 
Sorry, I was using iPhone to quick reply and my signature does not get auto included.
I have not responded to the pool company yet and she finally sent me a follow up email. Here is the main part of her response:
"We do sell liquid chlorine , for swimming pools liquid chlorine is NOT the same as bleach. Bleach has chemical whiteners in it that can have an impact on vinyl liners and other pool surfaces.

As far as adding minimal amounts of chemicals to the water , you need to ensure that you are watching other levels in the pool such as Ph and Alkalinity. The pool can appear clear and at the same time be eating up or scaling up the pool and your equipment without you knowing it. The key is knowing what you should add and when to add it."

Well, duh. I know I have to watch all levels in my pool with my Taylor 2006.
I would like to ask her more questions about how her pool chlorine chemicals differ from bleach in stores. Maybe she has a magical formula nobody knows about.
 
So I finally responded to her explaining that I have a Taylor kit and constantly tracking my levels. My concern is that my CYA level is too high to use tablets and bleach is my cheapest option until I can find cheaper bulk liquid chlorine locally. Asked her to give me the chemical % in her chlorine so I am curious on what she responds. They are charging $5/gallon, so unless their chlorine is above 12.5% I will pass on going through them.

By the way, my Great Escape here only had the standard pool supply items (bags of shock, tablets, etc) and no liquid chlorine for $2.50/gallon. Unless they are hiding it in back.
Thanks again to everyone who has helped me out.
 
The Great escape by me has 4 gallon cases of shock (Fox Valley Mall). Ask them if they have liquid shock that is what I use all season. I also buy my muriatic acid from them. If you have an American Sale by you they also have good prices on liquid shock. Costco has unscented chlorox for 8 bucks for three gallons of 8.25%. I used that before I found the deals on the 12.5% shock.
 
hartmabd said:
Sorry, I was using iPhone to quick reply and my signature does not get auto included.
I have not responded to the pool company yet and she finally sent me a follow up email. Here is the main part of her response:
"We do sell liquid chlorine , for swimming pools liquid chlorine is NOT the same as bleach. Bleach has chemical whiteners in it that can have an impact on vinyl liners and other pool surfaces.

As far as adding minimal amounts of chemicals to the water , you need to ensure that you are watching other levels in the pool such as Ph and Alkalinity. The pool can appear clear and at the same time be eating up or scaling up the pool and your equipment without you knowing it. The key is knowing what you should add and when to add it."

Well, duh. I know I have to watch all levels in my pool with my Taylor 2006.
I would like to ask her more questions about how her pool chlorine chemicals differ from bleach in stores. Maybe she has a magical formula nobody knows about.
Click to expand...

Tell her that the chemical whitener in bleach is sodium hypochlorite and ask her what the main ingredient of her liquid pool shock is...
 
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