A Question or two About Cyanuric Acid Build-Up

[Gilly McFinn]

Hi.
I just learned all powder & puck chlorine has CA. It boggles the mind.
My sister, who knows nothing about pool maintenance, has been renting a house with a pool in Vegas for a few years.
Her pool guy seems alarmingly inept.
Her water is always a bit dull. It has no sparkle. We’ve been troubleshooting for a couple weeks now, while I learn to maintain my own pool here in Houston.
But my question is this- If they’ve been using powder chlorine with CA all this time, well,... surely she must need to partially drain it and refill it by now to bring down the CA level, right?
And is this what people do? I know many pool owners rely on pucks and powders, adding CA every time they add chlorine. So they must HAVE to do regular partial water changes, right?
It doesn’t seem possible, but nothing else makes sense.
Thanks for your time!

 

[wogster]

In the North, winter and the fact we dumped half the water when we closed in the fall, means that the CYA level is below 10 this time of year, so if I intentionally bring my CYA up to 30, then add .5PPM a day for the 12 week season, I will have a CYA of 72, which I can live with.

Down south, where the pool is open all year, it's a bigger concern, but you can be sure 99.99% of all southern pool owners do not know, that the reason they have 12 algae blooms a year, isn't that they need another bottle of magic potion # 666 at $475/bottle; but that their CYA is too high for their chlorine to work effectively. Maybe suggest to the owner to put in a SWG, and buy a K2006C, and let the tenant look after the pool, probably be cheaper then the inept pool guy....