Chlorine (and cya?) too low

[grottoguy]

I have a new pool that was first filled about three weeks ago. My water is crystal clear and a beautiful blue But my PH is always very high (higher than 8.2) and I am constantly dumping acid in. I should probably do that every day but have been doing it every other or every thrid day. From hereon I will do it every day after testing PH. MY CYA is about 65. I dumped one gallon of Conditioner from Leslie's pool in last week to raise it to that level (the bottle said the gallon would raise it about 32 PPM for 10,000 gallons so about 8ppm for my 40,000 pool). My TA is about 130 and calcium hardness is 225.

I have a SWG which is a digital autopilot and I have set it at 50%. My problem is that my free Chlorine is always very low (at one if I'm lucky). For example, yesterday the FC was 1 and CC was .5 If I hit the "Boost" button on my SWG (which makes it go at 100% for 24 hours), my free chlorine tends to go to about 3.0

I have read that it is good for the salt cell not to have it at 100% so that is why I have kept it at 50%. I don't know if I should increase the percentage on the salt cell to say 75% or try increasing the CYA to help retain the free chlorine.

My bather load is not high in the pool but it does get a lot of sunlight and the water is about 85 degeres and we have never heated it.

Should I increase the percentage on my SWG or increase my CYA.

Thanks

 

[Azgirl71]

Since you have a SWG you want CYA to be 70-80.

What I would do to bring FC up is add bleach to target the level of FC you want and then use the SWG to maintains FC level. SWG are not designed to bring FC levels up a lot. They are to maintain FC levels.