Ascorbic Acid Treatment

[kfpool]

What he said. I did an AA treatment a few weeks ago and now have a algae problem. SWG could never catch up, added some bleach still no dice. On day 3 of my second attempt at a SLAM. (First one forgot to turn off SWG so I thought I was done because < 1 ppm loss). I'm now a total of 7 days of no pool use in last 3 weeks and probably have 3 more days until this SLAM is done.

For what? A whiter bottom and walls and 10 of the 90 swimming days with a closed pool.

Frankly, I'm probably never going to do a AA treatment again. If I do it's gonna be right at opening or closing.

As I saw a reply. "Is you pool for swimming or for looking at?"

I have to agree. I would advise anyone wanting to do an AA treatment to think long and hard about the problems involved, the expense and the length of the process. My water chemistry has been very unstable since an AA treatment in April.
I would only advise doing the treatment at the end of the season so you have all winter to get the water straightened out.
If I ever need to do one again, I will do it in the fall and drain & refill the pool as soon as the metals are sequestered so I can start out with cleaner water Instead of trying to continue with sequestrants​ and attempting to filter out the iron.

 

[wfrobinette]

I have to agree. I would advise anyone wanting to do an AA treatment to think long and hard about the problems involved, the expense and the length of the process. My water chemistry has been very unstable since an AA treatment in April.
I would only advise doing the treatment at the end of the season so you have all winter to get the water straightened out.
If I ever need to do one again, I will do it in the fall and drain & refill the pool as soon as the metals are sequestered so I can start out with cleaner water Instead of trying to continue with sequestrants​ and attempting to filter out the iron.

I'd have been better off renting scuba equipment and getting a bottle or two of pills and spot treating the whole pool, I'd be $150 ahead now.

 

[pooldv]

Hi. Sorry, not following your last post, how does this relate to figuring out why my CYA reading has gone up? I have been diligently keeping my FC above minimum and close or at target. But it's been difficult holding at target, and given that our CYA is so high (and just spiked even higher for some unknown reason), pool is still guzzling bleach.

Let me see if I can find more info. There must be some interference with sequestrant or something.

 

[DOMO]

Thanks, pooldv, much appreciated!

wfrobintte & kfpool, I completely hear you. It's a painful and expensive and time consuming process! That said, if it wasn't for mbar's post on AA treatment procedures and pooldv's help, is be in much worse shape. I'm certainly not out of the woods as in low light, I have noticed a slight stain tint remaining, and I have not been able to get my FC to completely stabilize, and it's guzzling bleach daily. That said, my 2nd AA treatment was much more successful with regards to removing the terrible staining I had and I'm hopeful that the info on this post will help others in the future.

But now I have to get that FC more stable and figure out this CYA issue. :grrrr:

 

[pooldv]

Ok, we have talked to Proteam and had some discussions with some TFP folks and there is no interference between the Metal Magic and CYA or the CYA test. We think it is most likely just testing variation, lighting conditions and test accuracy of +/- 10 ppm.

 

[DOMO]

Hi. Thanks. That's good to know, thank you. Given the subjectivity of the CYA test, I can full appreciate a +/- 10 variance. That said, if being optimistic, that still leaves me at approximately 70 for CYA at best, which isn't good. Is there another way to get a more accurate CYA test value or to validate my results?

 

[pooldv]

The best thing to do is do the test on a sunny day. Bck to the sun. Hold the tube at the top between your thumb and finger. Let as much light flood in the side of the tube as you can without letting it into the top. Pour the sample back and forth and walk around in different light. Pour it to 60 and look, 70, etc until you feel confident in the number. Give or take 10 isn't a big deal because it is only 1 more PPM of FC for 10 more CYA.

 

[DOMO]

Thanks, I have been doing all those things with the exception of 'let as much light flood the side of the tube'. With my back to the sun, the tube is in complete shade, so allowing light to hit the tube, but not get in the top, may make a difference in my reading! Will do that with this morning's tests.

 

[DOMO]

Not much change in the results. Still looks to be high, around 80. Better than when it looked like it spiked, but still don't understand why it hasn't gone down at all all season when I haven't used and tri-chlor and there has been splash out and only rain water as fill. ????

 

[pooldv]

That is assuming that the test in spring was right? And not 10ish ppm higher? Pools tend to lose 3-5 ppm per month.

 

[DOMO]

That's a fair point, but I haven't changed much in the way of how I perform the test. Even when allowing light to hit the tube, the reading was still around 80.

As for FC, still going through a lot of bleach, which I understand I require more due to the high CYA, however, I still can't seem to get it to stabilize at target. It holds stable at minimum. For example, yesterday morning it was at min, so I added enough bleach to be a few ppm over target. End of day test had it at 10.5 which I thought was good, but then my morning test today was at 7.5, which meant another 75 oz of bleach again today. Should I be losing 3 ppm overnight?

 

[pooldv]

No, losing 3 ppm overnight is not normal. But, I don't know how much sequestrant can impact chlorine consumption. Actually, higher CYA should lower your daily FC use because it protects it more from the sun.

 

[DOMO]

That's what I assumed on the CYA level, which makes the FC more concerning. I can call the ProTeam folks about the Metal Magic impact on chlorine, but I'm now 4 weeks removed from the AA treatment and only using 2-4 oz/wk in sequestrant, so I wouldn't think that would eat up 3-6 ppm of FC per day.

 

[DOMO]

So after bringing FC to 13 yesterday, my FC was even lower in today's first test. FC 5. There goes another big jug + of bleach. Have to say, am starting to lose faith in the bleach method as I'm spending $3-$6 a day on bleach which is not sustainable. Tri-Chlor is obviously much less expensive, and if my CYA isn't dropping at all, then what's the point? But I can't keep up with 80-140 oz of bleach daily. :grrrr:

 

[pooldv]

Trichlor will add cya to the pool. I dont know how much trichlor pucks cost vs bleach in terms of cost per ppm. There has to be some algae hiding somewhere in the pool. Like in a light, under ladder rungs or inside a pool cleaner?

 

[DOMO]

Hi. As always, appreciate your reply and thoughts. As for trichlor vs bleach coats, for me, it's a significant difference. In the past, I have gone through one bucket of pucks per season which is about $100. Even though we're in New England, we try to stay open for 6 months, so that works out to about $4. per week. Conversely, since switching to bleach, we are going through about $14. per week on bleach just to keep FC above min and never stabilizing at target. At that pace, it will be appropriately $350. for the season, which is 3 1/2 times more than trichlor.

I completely hear you about the CYA, but as we have not made ANY progress in lowering our CYA over the past 2 months, I'm not seeing any benefit there, and when you consider the above at 3 1/2 times more expensive (and more daily maintenance with bleach), I'm losing confidence in the benefits.

An interesting thought on the algae. A few point on that:
- we are a FG pool and have no ladders on the stairs and only one light niche.
- we do have a robot cleaner, but I am diligent in cleaning the bag, etc and it only goes in the water when needed and is removed after it finishes cleaning.
- I used a good amount of algecide when opening this year, however, based on our earlier chats I have avoided using algecide as my understanding is that it could have added metals to my water and contributed to my staining issue. ? The algecide I currently have is Phoenix Poly 30.

All of the above said, I'm not saying that an algae could be eating up the chlorine and keeping me from stabilizing at target, but it does seem unlikely, yes? But how would I test for that and then treat to resolve?

Thanks!

 

[Swampwoman]

Domo, I am a regular user of sequestrant and it does NOT consume that kind of FC for me.

Also, I am unsurprised that your cya has stayed stable...mine does too. Unless you have major cannon ball splash out or need to backwash all the time, the rate of erosion is really slow in my experience. Rain only replaces the evaporated water, which concentrates the cya.

I realize this may not seem like a palatable option, but those pucks got you into this situation and if you were to revert to pucks now it will be virtually impossible to keep the FC at the level required for true sanitation. (7.5% of cya)

If you were instead to consider a 50% water change, trucking in metal-free 5,000 gallons of fresh water, you'd accomplish 2 goals...reduce your built up cya AND reduce the metal concentration that lead to the staining/AA/sequestrant cycle. As a result, you'd need less sequestrant to keep stains at bay, and have a much more economical FC diet.

In my area, 24,000 gallons cost me $1,000. Hopefully, in your area, less than a quarter of that would cost less than you'd spend on treatments and chlorine this season, and the results would make future seasons much more manageable.

 

[DOMO]

Hi Swampwoman, and thanks for your reply and insight. Good to know the sequestrant is not a culprit here. I didn't think it would be, but what do I know?? I'm only using 2-4 oz. per week (as prescribed by ProTeam), so I'd have been surprised if that was the issue beind the FC consumption.

Re: CYA, we actually do have a good amount of splash out as we have 2 kids, 2 labradors who love to swim, and host many gatherings at our house with families of young kids. Also, due to a very rainy Spring/Summer in New England, and the AA process that we've gone through twice this year, we have actually backwashed a LOT. So between splashout and backwashing, and moving to bleach this year, the CYA needle has not moved downward at all, which is very frustrating.

I hear you on the water replacement and the benefits. We have considered it and around here 9k gallons is around $350 ish. The bigger challenge is that we are a fiberglass pool so removing that much water is not recommended from a structural standpoint. That issue is further compounded by the fact that our PB did a HORRIFIC job installing our pool (we just ended/lost a 4 year legal battle, there is NO justice in this world!!), where they literally cracked the Fiberglass shell in multiple places, therefore, we are extremely reluctant to do anything that could test the remaining integrity of the shell.

 

[pooldv]

Ok, I was curious about the math. It looks like a $100 bucket of trichlor pucks should be 50 lbs. 50 lbs of trichlor pucks will give you 274 ppm of FC and 166 ppm of CYA. That is 36.5c/ppm FC for trichlor vs 121oz of 8.25% bleach for $3 that adds 8 ppm FC is 37.5c/ppm FC. So, the cost per ppm of FC is similar. Are you using fresh bleach/chlorine? And testing after adding to make sure it raised FC as expected?

I certainly agree that it is frustrating and your pool should only use 2-4 ppm FC per day. 2 most of the time and 4 with more swimming. Mine used about 1.7 ppm FC per day on average in June with higher use on weekends with lots of swimming. My CYA is 80. I don't normally track that but I had occasion to monitor my SWG for most of June so I happen to have that data point. I supplement with bleach on the weekends rather than changing the SWG output.

Your thoughts on the algae seem reasonable. I would remove the light from the niche just to check behind it and flush it out. There should be one screw at the top holding it in and a tab on the bottom that fits into a slot in the niche. There should be enough cord coiled up behind the light to remove it and place it on a towel on the deck.

 

[DOMO]

Frustrating indeed!

Correct, I am using fresh bleach (buying several jugs of bleach about every 3 days lately) and I'm testing after I add bleach to confirm I have reached the FC # I'm shooting for. Raising the FC to target (or sometimes above) is not a problem, but the daily loss is high. I typically hold steady at minimum by each morning.

Good to know that our pool should only consume 2-4 ppm/day. We're essentially losing 5-7 / day currently.

Interesting on the light niche, haven't ever had to do that! The trim ring around our light has multiple screws, probably about a dozen or so. Will look into that and give it a try.