Good morning! Let me start by saying, I do not have a good test kit. I have taken over the pool care from my husband this year so I am just getting started. We only have the dreaded test strips. I am taking up a sample to my pool store today to get an idea so I can get started but here is my issue I am trying to figure out and get some advice to compare with theirs before I do that..
We live in TX so our pool is open all year but my husband was not really paying a lot of attention to it over the winter since we weren't using it. At some point our CYA must have dropped to nothing or so the test strip says. Just like every year, we added a new bag of CYA to the skimmers which I now know is not the best idea. But I gave it over a week to dissolve. CYA reading on test strips still said 0 over a week later. Two days ago we also took our filters out and cleaned them. They really needed it, we didn't see any undissolved cya. I tested the theory that we might have ammonia or something else by adding a 10% liquid chlorine gallon to which our 13000 gallon pool ate the chlorine within minutes (or so the dip strip said). I followed the instructions here and added more liquid chlorine until I could get it to hold for several hours. It took 3 gallons. After I could get a FC reading on the dip strip that said around 3 PPM for most of the day, we added cya in the sock method in front of the return, so far 2 pounds has fully dissolved into our 13000 gallon pool since yesterday morning. I know according to the math, I will probably need 3 pounds or just over but I still can not get a cya reading. It's 0 on the test strip. Even if I test the water right next to the sock. Shouldn't it be registering some amount of CYA at this point? Obviously the dip strip method is not preferable, but they seem to be somewhat accurately reading the chlorine so I don't think they are bad or expired or anything..? I just want to feel like I have some idea of what could be going on before going to the pool store and being sold a bunch of things I don't need. Oh and FWIW, the pool looks clear and all other readings are in the normal range. Any insight would be helpful!
We live in TX so our pool is open all year but my husband was not really paying a lot of attention to it over the winter since we weren't using it. At some point our CYA must have dropped to nothing or so the test strip says. Just like every year, we added a new bag of CYA to the skimmers which I now know is not the best idea. But I gave it over a week to dissolve. CYA reading on test strips still said 0 over a week later. Two days ago we also took our filters out and cleaned them. They really needed it, we didn't see any undissolved cya. I tested the theory that we might have ammonia or something else by adding a 10% liquid chlorine gallon to which our 13000 gallon pool ate the chlorine within minutes (or so the dip strip said). I followed the instructions here and added more liquid chlorine until I could get it to hold for several hours. It took 3 gallons. After I could get a FC reading on the dip strip that said around 3 PPM for most of the day, we added cya in the sock method in front of the return, so far 2 pounds has fully dissolved into our 13000 gallon pool since yesterday morning. I know according to the math, I will probably need 3 pounds or just over but I still can not get a cya reading. It's 0 on the test strip. Even if I test the water right next to the sock. Shouldn't it be registering some amount of CYA at this point? Obviously the dip strip method is not preferable, but they seem to be somewhat accurately reading the chlorine so I don't think they are bad or expired or anything..? I just want to feel like I have some idea of what could be going on before going to the pool store and being sold a bunch of things I don't need. Oh and FWIW, the pool looks clear and all other readings are in the normal range. Any insight would be helpful!
