My story begins with a broken pool pump motor six months ago. A number of unfortunate events conspired to keep us from getting it repaired or replaced, so for the last 5 months or so, we've been incubating tadpoles and mosquitoes in our backyard. Lovely.
Two weeks ago my saint of a FIL spent his weekend trying to first repair and then eventually replacing our entire pool pump. Then we started what I'd like to call, THE GREAT CHLORINATION! For the first few days, we were adding 4 2.5 gallon jugs of 12.5% chlorine per day, just to try and kill the algae and the tadpoles. (My daughter is still calling me a frog murderer) After about a week of adding chlorine, skimming, scooping, sweeping and obsessively rinsing the filter, the pool finally turned (mostly) blue. And that is when I made my first mistake. I took a sample of my pool water to the pool store.
I KNOW, I KNOW!!! What a dumb move!!!
These are the numbers that they gave me last Saturday:
FAC 0
TAC 0
CH 90
CYA 0
TA 50
PH 7.4
$259 poorer, I came home and commenced their complicated and confusing series of chemical additions (7lb 11oz of Alkalinity Up, 22lb of Hardness Plus, 3lb 9oz of stabilizer, 4oz of clarifier, and something for weekly adding once the pool was clear "in a few days" .) On Monday my husband took another sample back to the store and they said our water was balanced and that we should start adding Clear Aid to clear the water up. So he came home, followed the directions on the bottle and poured it into the water. By the time I came home, it had foamed up and created these really yucky filmy gross patches on the surface (and there was a dead rodent of some sort floating in the pool, but I'm pretty sure THAT part wasn't the fault of the pool store... but EW!!!!!!) And that is when I Googled my way to TFP.com.
First thing I did was order my TF100 - then I started reading obsessively, and trying to figure out what was what on my pool and how to fix it - I feel dumber now than I did when I started... at least before I didn't know what I didn't know! After all the reading I replaced the following things: Almost all of the O-rings in the filter housing, the PSI gauge (which was broken), the cartridge filter (which was at least 4 years old) and our pool brush and leaf net (which were falling apart.) I was hoping that a new cartridge would help us maintain PSI within 25% of the starting pressure, but so far we can only go about an hour in between filter cleanings before the pressure goes from 7 to 12. It's pretty frustrating.
So after stepping up the vacuuming, scrubbing and cartridge rinsing, we can now ALMOST see the bottom of the shallow end, and the cartridge isn't nearly as green when we clean it post-vacuuming. Today my TF100 arrived and these are my 1st testing numbers (I'm not 100% sure I did it right, so I plan on retesting tomorrow.)
FC - 18.5
CC - 2
CH - 575
TA - 140
CYA - 70
PH - 7.2
Do these numbers look right?
Due to water restrictions, draining almost 50% of the pool and refilling to lower the CYA is impossible - so according to the Chlorine/CYA Chart with a CYA of 70 I need a FC of 28 to SLAM the pool - but the Pool Calculator says 20. I thought it would be better to follow the Chlorine/CYA chart, so I added 3 quarts and 1 cup of Chlorine to the pool tonight and will be heading to pick up more Chlorine tomorrow so that I can maintain SLAM levels until I lower the CC to .5, pass the OCLT and clear up the water.
I have more questions and will be posting pictures to illustrate my questions (which have to do with plumbing and pump/filter size and return jets and my skimmer... but for now I really, really just want to pool to be clear enough to see the bottom and to swim in. (After the rodent, there is NO WAY I'm getting in the pool until I can see the bottom!!!)
If you've made it to the end of this, THANK YOU, I appreciate any advice or guidance you could offer me. This forum is going to be a lifesaver, I can tell already!
Two weeks ago my saint of a FIL spent his weekend trying to first repair and then eventually replacing our entire pool pump. Then we started what I'd like to call, THE GREAT CHLORINATION! For the first few days, we were adding 4 2.5 gallon jugs of 12.5% chlorine per day, just to try and kill the algae and the tadpoles. (My daughter is still calling me a frog murderer) After about a week of adding chlorine, skimming, scooping, sweeping and obsessively rinsing the filter, the pool finally turned (mostly) blue. And that is when I made my first mistake. I took a sample of my pool water to the pool store.
I KNOW, I KNOW!!! What a dumb move!!!
These are the numbers that they gave me last Saturday:
FAC 0
TAC 0
CH 90
CYA 0
TA 50
PH 7.4
$259 poorer, I came home and commenced their complicated and confusing series of chemical additions (7lb 11oz of Alkalinity Up, 22lb of Hardness Plus, 3lb 9oz of stabilizer, 4oz of clarifier, and something for weekly adding once the pool was clear "in a few days" .) On Monday my husband took another sample back to the store and they said our water was balanced and that we should start adding Clear Aid to clear the water up. So he came home, followed the directions on the bottle and poured it into the water. By the time I came home, it had foamed up and created these really yucky filmy gross patches on the surface (and there was a dead rodent of some sort floating in the pool, but I'm pretty sure THAT part wasn't the fault of the pool store... but EW!!!!!!) And that is when I Googled my way to TFP.com.
First thing I did was order my TF100 - then I started reading obsessively, and trying to figure out what was what on my pool and how to fix it - I feel dumber now than I did when I started... at least before I didn't know what I didn't know! After all the reading I replaced the following things: Almost all of the O-rings in the filter housing, the PSI gauge (which was broken), the cartridge filter (which was at least 4 years old) and our pool brush and leaf net (which were falling apart.) I was hoping that a new cartridge would help us maintain PSI within 25% of the starting pressure, but so far we can only go about an hour in between filter cleanings before the pressure goes from 7 to 12. It's pretty frustrating.
So after stepping up the vacuuming, scrubbing and cartridge rinsing, we can now ALMOST see the bottom of the shallow end, and the cartridge isn't nearly as green when we clean it post-vacuuming. Today my TF100 arrived and these are my 1st testing numbers (I'm not 100% sure I did it right, so I plan on retesting tomorrow.)
FC - 18.5
CC - 2
CH - 575
TA - 140
CYA - 70
PH - 7.2
Do these numbers look right?
Due to water restrictions, draining almost 50% of the pool and refilling to lower the CYA is impossible - so according to the Chlorine/CYA Chart with a CYA of 70 I need a FC of 28 to SLAM the pool - but the Pool Calculator says 20. I thought it would be better to follow the Chlorine/CYA chart, so I added 3 quarts and 1 cup of Chlorine to the pool tonight and will be heading to pick up more Chlorine tomorrow so that I can maintain SLAM levels until I lower the CC to .5, pass the OCLT and clear up the water.
I have more questions and will be posting pictures to illustrate my questions (which have to do with plumbing and pump/filter size and return jets and my skimmer... but for now I really, really just want to pool to be clear enough to see the bottom and to swim in. (After the rodent, there is NO WAY I'm getting in the pool until I can see the bottom!!!)
If you've made it to the end of this, THANK YOU, I appreciate any advice or guidance you could offer me. This forum is going to be a lifesaver, I can tell already!