AA Treatment abort

[red-beard]

I've been in the process of getting ready for my AA treatment. I turned off the SWG. FC down to 3.0 today. pH is off the scale so did an acid demand test and added a gallon of MA. Looked at the weather forecast, several days dropping to 32-35F over night. I need my regular pumps running for that.
Abort - Abort - Abort
Turned the SWG back on and will let it run for the next 2 days, turn it off Friday and hope that by Sunday I'm down to 2 FC.
One question. I have polyquat. Water is 60F. My understanding is that under 60F algae will not breed. So, polyquat or not?

 

[Mdragger88]

It is insurance - better to have & not need than to need & not have.

 

[Newdude]

It's an interesting beast to say the least. Polyquat and FC are counterproductive, but either is beneficial. Normally at closing you would go half SLAM FC so that once some was lost to the polyquat, you'd have some FC and some polyquat left, most likely enough of a combo to make it until the water was cold enough and the algae went dormant. If you went to full SLAM, you'd lose too much polyquat and you would have been better off with no polyquat and full SLAM FC.

But in this case, you want your FC low immediately after the freeze, so I dunno. Target level FC might be consumed by the polyquat leaving you with none. But then there should be some polyquat left to help instead. I dunno man. I dunno.

I'd just maintain the lowest FC needed for the current daily loss so it didn't take a long time to drift down after for the AA Treatment.

My understanding is that under 60F algae will not breed.

It begins to go dormant around 60. It's greatly slowed compared to 85 degrees, but still more than 40 degrees. Keep in mind thay at 60 degrees the top inch of water may be a few degrees above the pool average. Or that corner over there that's getting direct sun. We use the 60 degree reccomendation up north assuming it's only getting lower in another week and won't be warming up anytime soon. Hovering for an extended time at 60 degrees could go either way.

 

[red-beard]

As you know, I aborted (really postponed) my treatment for a few days. The reason I think I have a problem is that the base of my pool brushes and the brushes on my pool blaster are turning brown. It looks like after repeated cycles of drying, that something stains the brushes. The screws in the brush are not corroded. Does this look like staining from iron in the water?

 

[mknauss]

There is iron in most of Houston's water. Especially in the west side, Katy. Not a lot, but some.

 

[red-beard]

My main drain looked like it had brown stains. I swam down and investigated last year and it turned out to be a brown powder which I could remove with my fingers. In the next post, that brown on the drain I could "dust off" with a brush.

The brown in the quartzite, seems to be iron stains.

 

[Mdragger88]

My brush looks like that - i can only assume there’s metal on the inside that pinches the bristles to keep them in place. Have u had your water tested for iron?

 

[mknauss]

Take some vitamin C tablets, put them in a bucket of water, and put your brush or other stained items in the bucket. If the discoloration is iron, it will quickly be removed in the bucket of water.

 

[red-beard]

Main drain photo

 

[red-beard]

Marty, I have AA, I'll put some in a bucket and see if they go away

 

[borjis]

I bet they will.
My skimmer weir gets brown like that.
I have trace iron from City water.