Annual SWG PSA

[poolnoobgrandma]

Going on our third year with our SWG and pool. I've learned that as soon as it starts getting warm the pool will lose just a hint of sparkle, and the SWG is suddenly not "keeping up." I finally learned that the SWG can't catch up. But it can keep up as long as it's set high enough and you're not asking it to kill something that it can't kill. This morning FC was low, CC was zero, but that sparkle just wasn't there. Used pool math to bring up the FC to the high-end of the target range so we can nip whatever's going on in the bud. Also upped my SWG percentage so that it will be able to keep up once everything's good again.

Bottom line folks, don't try to use your SWG to catch up. Keep some liquid chlorine on hand so that as the days get longer and hotter if you see the SWG not keeping up, you can give the chlorine a boost and then dial in the SWG percentage and run time.

Our pool is all sparkly now and ready for a long overdue get together with friends this weekend. Hooray!

 

[Jimrahbe]

Grandma,

No where did you say what your actual readings were... So hard to know what the problem actually is..

My guess is that you are just running your FC too low, or that your run time is not long enough..

Tell us what your CYA is, where you try to keep your FC, and how long you run the pump each day.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[setsailsoon]

PNGM,

I agree with Jim your swg should have no problem keeping up if you keep the FC in the correct range. That said you definitely are correct about catching up with an swg. Bty, you're way advanced from poolnoob!

Chris

 

[Floorguy]

I run a tab floater on minimum opening. Just to help with that problem and to keep the cya enough so it doesn't ask burn off on the Utah sun.. so far zero issues

 

[Katodude]

So looking at your pool math logs shows you are testing about once a week. You are keeping your FC too low to only test that often. So you can choose to test more often, or up the range of your FC. The minimum I let my pool go to is 5 or 6. I try to keep it at the 8-11 range where I know that a mild hiccup or more infrequent testing wont result in a problem.

 

[poolnoobgrandma]

I test pretty frequently, and don't always log in pool math if nothing has changed, or everything is ok (i.e., pH is a little high, so I add some MA, test again in a few minutes, and everything is ok.) If I post asking for help, I will include more detail.
One morning I woke up, the pool wasn't as sparkly as I like it, and the test showed 2.5 FC. I used Poolmath to calculate the amount of LC I needed, dumped that in, bumped up the SWG a bit, and it's been sparkling ever since.