Hi Guys,
I suspect this question has been asked before, but such is my ineptitude that I couldn't seem to find a thread about it. Anyway, my circumstances are as follows:
1. I am a relatively new pool owner with our first swimming season in our newly installed pool being last summer after we installed a new salt water pool in the Spring. I had relatively few problems which pretty much dropped to zero when I got a TF test kit here. Everything has been totally fine from the opening this year with the water crystal clear. The only problem of note was this summer (for the first time) I note a build up of a powdery gray substance on the pool bottom when I neglect to run the robot every couple of days. It's super fine and goes into suspension and disappears if you disturb it, but the robot does a great job of sucking it up. From research, I'm pretty sure it's dead algae, but it's not really a problem and the water is crystal clear.
2. However, over the last week or so I've had a hard time maintaining the chlorine level in the pool. We've had killer sun but that notwithstanding, I didn't have this problem last summer and my CYA level is 60 so I'm figuring the chlorine should be pretty stable. That said, my chlorine level has dropped to 0.5 and I've even got the chlorinator cell cranked up to 100% (to no avail). In desperation, I dumped a pound of granulated shock in the skimmer (our pool volume is 23,000 gallons) to see if that would help. I know that's not much but I didn't want to overdo it. That bumped the CL level up marginally, then it dropped again. Two days ago I put in 2 pounds of shock and it bumped the level up over 1.0 but this morning I'm back to 0.5 again. Also, normally when I run the chlorinator at anything over 60 to 70%, I have to add Ph Down because of the NaOh waste product that drives the Ph up. But through all of this my Ph has remained very steady at around 7.6. It kind of seems like maybe the chlorinator cell is not working, but I cleaned it at the start of the season and there doesn't appear to be in build up on it. All of the other water chemistry is within acceptable parameters and again, the water LOOKS great.
3. I'm using last season's left over reagents, etc., but the chlorine level is down not only by the 'quick test' but also by the more accurate Free Chlorine test. I can see maybe one of the reagents being bad, but the results match from the two different tests.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Thanks,
Bob in TN
I suspect this question has been asked before, but such is my ineptitude that I couldn't seem to find a thread about it. Anyway, my circumstances are as follows:
1. I am a relatively new pool owner with our first swimming season in our newly installed pool being last summer after we installed a new salt water pool in the Spring. I had relatively few problems which pretty much dropped to zero when I got a TF test kit here. Everything has been totally fine from the opening this year with the water crystal clear. The only problem of note was this summer (for the first time) I note a build up of a powdery gray substance on the pool bottom when I neglect to run the robot every couple of days. It's super fine and goes into suspension and disappears if you disturb it, but the robot does a great job of sucking it up. From research, I'm pretty sure it's dead algae, but it's not really a problem and the water is crystal clear.
2. However, over the last week or so I've had a hard time maintaining the chlorine level in the pool. We've had killer sun but that notwithstanding, I didn't have this problem last summer and my CYA level is 60 so I'm figuring the chlorine should be pretty stable. That said, my chlorine level has dropped to 0.5 and I've even got the chlorinator cell cranked up to 100% (to no avail). In desperation, I dumped a pound of granulated shock in the skimmer (our pool volume is 23,000 gallons) to see if that would help. I know that's not much but I didn't want to overdo it. That bumped the CL level up marginally, then it dropped again. Two days ago I put in 2 pounds of shock and it bumped the level up over 1.0 but this morning I'm back to 0.5 again. Also, normally when I run the chlorinator at anything over 60 to 70%, I have to add Ph Down because of the NaOh waste product that drives the Ph up. But through all of this my Ph has remained very steady at around 7.6. It kind of seems like maybe the chlorinator cell is not working, but I cleaned it at the start of the season and there doesn't appear to be in build up on it. All of the other water chemistry is within acceptable parameters and again, the water LOOKS great.
3. I'm using last season's left over reagents, etc., but the chlorine level is down not only by the 'quick test' but also by the more accurate Free Chlorine test. I can see maybe one of the reagents being bad, but the results match from the two different tests.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Thanks,
Bob in TN
