Can’t seem to get it right.

[Brosputni]

Morning! So it’s been about a week or so since moving in to the new house and taking on our first pool. Here is our equipment list:

8700 gallon pool (assuming calculations are good) Salt Water with Pebble Tec Liner

Pentair Superflo VS

Pentair FNS Plus Fiberglass Diatomaceous Earth Filter

Breeze (320 I think) Sanitizer

A&A Low Profile 6 Port with 13 Pop Up Heads

Waterfall ( Aesthetic or useful. I don’t know?)

ok. Now. Being a first time pool owner I was not aware that if it’s used daily and heavily that you need to add chemicals almost daily. For the first week I let the Chlorine tabs chill in the bucket in the pool and didn’t worry about it. Then I had the water tested at the pool store. All was well. Just needed about a pint of Acid. Cool. Put it in. Went on my way. Tested again two days later. Another 5 oz of acid and two pounds of shock were recommended. Chlorine was completely gone. Added the acid at 1pm. Shocked at 5pm. Guy said I had to wait after adding the acid. Tested this morning using the strips they recommended. Obtained the following readings.

FCI - 10
TCI - 10
ALK - 80
PH - 7.8
TH - 800+
CYA - 100+

Test Strip Brand - Insta-Test 6 by LaMotte

These numbers seem high to me. Granted it’s only been 14 hrs since I shocked. I know nothing about this and I’m learning as I go. I thought my only issue was the pop ups being kinda useless. They don’t seem to do much but I am not 100% on how they function and all the manuals I’ve pulled from the net seem kinda useless when your looking at the system as a whole. I don’t want my wife and kids getting irritated skin or worse. Want it to be clear and comfy! Any help is appreciated. Just bare with me as this is all new to me and I’m still confused....

 

[MrBfromNC]

Welcome to the forum, Bros. I'd recommend starting with these two short reads if you haven't already:

TFPC for beginners
ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry

 

[Brosputni]

On it! Thanks for the links!!

 

[Jimrahbe]

B,

The first thing that you will notice is that we are very different than most pool stores and other pool websites... We base almost everything we do on test readings and science. In order for us to provide accurate advice, we have to have test readings from a known test kit, so that we can compare apples to apples.. We can only use results from either the TF-100 (The one I have) or the Taylor K-2006C (And yes, the 'C' is important..) We have learned from experience that other sources for testing, such as 'guess' strips, and pool store testing are very inaccurate and in most cases just flat out wrong.

The first thing you need to do is find out your actual CYA level.. This is important because the only way to lower your CYA is to replace all or some of your water. Adding chemicals to a pool you might have to drain just does not make a lot of sense. I suspect your CYA level is a lot higher than 100.

The reason that the CYA test is important is that we base our Chlorine (FC) level on the amount of CYA in the water. See this chart [FC/CYA][/FC/CYA]

As a side note... using the TFP pool care process means never having to "shock" your pool again. Weekly doses of shock are just not required if you maintain the proper FC to CYA relationship.

Your water fall is for Aesthetics. The main downside to running it is that it will cause your pH to quickly increase... In fact, we use the aeration from water features when we want to increase the pH.

I suggest you read through our Pool School... Pool School - Pool School and then decide it the TFP pool care process is for you..

Thanks for posting,

Jim R.

 

[Brosputni]

Thanks! I’ll get there. Reading through the Pool School now. Just figured out my valves as none of them were labeled. I was running the waterfall over the pop ups thinking it circulated better. I see I should’ve had that reversed. Pop ups now get the flow and waterflow will be a as needed or wanted feature. I’ll test again this evening after keeping the fall off and reading up as much as possible. Still trying to decipher which pipe is for the skimmer and main drain. For now I’ll leave them getting even flow. Based on the test I’ll figure out if I want to add the chlorine tabs or not. Thanks for all the help and direction.