Vinyl Inground Outdoor Pool with SWG and I Question the Pool School's RECOMMENDATION

[fudgebar]

FOlks, I just read the article about proper SWG Water Balance recommendations and they seem to conflict with a few other pool website blogs and professional supplies stores.

Could someone please comment on what you all think?


I currently have a 14x26 12,000 gal In ground Vinyl Lined pool with a Pentair IC20 SWG system (read my signature below for full pool details) Im located in Northern, NJ area.

I've recently taken some readings on my Poolmaster 5 point test kit and got the following numbers:

pH 7.6
Free Cl 2.0
Alkalinity 190


So my first question is am I doing the right thing by attacking my Hi Alkalinity first and trying to get it down before I focus on anything else?

2ndly, what should my target Alk. be?....the article says 80 but I've read elsewhere that it should be 120-140 so Im a bit confused

3rd question, I've also read some conflicting info about the Free Chlorine levels....Pool School recommends 4.0-5.0 whereas everything else I've read recommends 2.0

So again I am confused....because even with all this conflicting info and imbalance of my water chemistry, it still looks sparkling clean and isnt cloudy...Should I be driving myself crazy with all this?


thanks

 

[pooldv]

You definitely need to follow the Water Balance for SWCGs if you want to maintain your pool TFPC style.

You need more FC. What is your CYA?

Get one of the Test Kit Comparison test kits.

The reason for the lower TA goal is to combat the tendency in saltwater pools for PH to rise. If you have higher TA, mine is 110, it will gradually lower as you add acid to lower PH. If you want to lower it faster, but still slowly, here is how, Lowering Total Alkalinity

 

[Isaac-1]

As you will learn much of the pool industry relies on VERY outdated practices for establishing suggested chemical levels, by very outdated I mean 50+ years behind the times. They are only now in the last 5 years or so starting to recognize the relationship between CYA and FC levels as regarding active chlorine sanitizing power, CYA stabilized chlorine has been on the market since the 1960's scientific papers talking about its effect on FC have been around since the 1970's yet if you look at the mainstream pool industry you will see that those various suggested levels have hardly changed since the introduction of stabilized chlorine products back in the 60's and other regulations date back to practices established in the 1940's and 1950's. Salt Water Chlorine generators have only been on the scene in residential pools for about 15-20 years, and again the mainstream industry has not adjusted their TA guidelines to deal with the side effects of pH drift in an SWG pool.

p.s. I suspect your FC is way too low, but that is impossible to know without knowing your CYA level

 

[fudgebar]

Folks I also noticed something that 'may' be odd.....I went to the Diagnostics section of my Pentair Easy Touch Automation section and checked Chlorination and it listed my Salt at 4700PPM....is that high?.....if so, why does my Free Chlorine test out at only 2.0 on both my test dropper kit and the Aquachek Test strips? Wouldnt it read much higher?

Any help you can provide would be helpful...

Also my dropper test kit doesnt have a CYA test but my Aquachek strip does and the CYA reading is approx 40. Its definitely not in the 100 box

Any ideas?...........I dumped about 5lbs of Clorox PH Reducer over the last few days and noticed that my Alkalinity hasnt really dropped much.....maybe down to 180 now??

How long does it take after dumping in PH Reducer to see Alkalinity reductions in the readings?