Hi everyone. Just opened my pool a week ago and the water was clear and I have all my chemicals balanced and in line except for my free chlorine. I continue to show low and can't seem to raise it. I will provide some true numbers tomorrow afternoon to hopefully help us figure out which direction to go. My main concern is the chlorine I'm using. I have always used 3 inch chlorine tabs in a floating dispenser with no real issues in my pool. I always liked the idea of having chlorine slowly dispensing into the pool so it doesn't drop off. I'm currently using Leslie's 3 inch jumbo tabs which are slow dissolving, but they seem like they are taking way longer than usual to dissolve. I have my floater open all the way with 3 tabs inside and it looks like they've hardly gone down in a week. By reading this site, I never knew CYA was directly impacted by granulated chlorine and tablets. My CYA looks good, but I'll give true numbers tomorrow. I'm thinking about possibly switching to liquid chlorine so I won't raise my CYA to high levels. I have never used liquid chlorine and I can get the 12% stuff from many pool stores in the area so that isn't a concern. Will the liquid chlorine bleach my vinyl liner because I definitely don't want that? I always run my pump daily for about 8 hours (usually from 10 am-6 pm) and then pull my solar cover on for the night to keep the warmth in the water. I know its recommended to add liquid chlorine in the evening but I really don't like running my pump overnight, especially since I ran it all morning and afternoon. Is it fine to add the liquid chlorine in the morning or late morning instead of evening and will it have any negative effects on my solar cover? I'm a newbie to the idea of liquid chlorine so any advice you can give me on the best way to use it would be appreciated. Am I running my pool pump the proper way too? Should I run it in the evening and not the middle of the day? Thanks and I'll post some water test numbers here tomorrow. I'm looking forward to getting this situation figured out.
Chlorine Issue
- Thread starter digger0713
- Start date
pinguy
0
You should definitely switch to liquid chlorine. Long term use of Trichlor pucks will almost inevitably lead to unmanageable CYA levels. Check out this article: Pool School - How to Chlorinate Your Pool
Liquid chlorine/bleach does not need to be added in the evening. Anytime is fine. Give us a CYA number and we can go from there. Do you have an FAS/DPD chlorine test? Perform the Overnight FC Loss Test (OCLT) to see if you have algae growing in your pool. That is the most common cause of FC dropping quickly.
I currently use the LaMotte Color Q Pro 7 test kit 2056. I purchased it before this swim season began and I really like it. In the past years I always used test strips along with water testing at a pool store which I have since learned is a huge no no and I will stop doing that. This seems like a really good test kit that I have.
Good afternoon all. Here are the numbers on my pool that I just ran. The water is crystal clear and I can see the bottom with no difficulty at all.
FC- 0.23
TC- 0.44
PH- 7.5
ALK- 146
CH- 334
CYA- 51
I said I'm going to start using liquid chlorine since my CYA is good in the area I don't mind. I'm going to punch in my numbers to pool math and see what I need to do for Chlorine. Any reason as to why my tablets are taking forever to dissolve and the chlorine never really went up? I probably needed to do an initial hard dose of chlorine in the beginning and didn't.
FC- 0.23
TC- 0.44
PH- 7.5
ALK- 146
CH- 334
CYA- 51
I said I'm going to start using liquid chlorine since my CYA is good in the area I don't mind. I'm going to punch in my numbers to pool math and see what I need to do for Chlorine. Any reason as to why my tablets are taking forever to dissolve and the chlorine never really went up? I probably needed to do an initial hard dose of chlorine in the beginning and didn't.
Tablets normally take forever to dissolve. But with your CYA of 51, you need to cease using them else you are going to have a whole different issue unless you normally drain your pool at the end of swim season.
I do drain my pool at the end, leaving about 25% before covering for the winter. I'm going to stop the tablets right now and head to the pool store for some good old liquid chlorine and see what happens.
How about the grocery store or WalMart for some good old liquid bleach or liquid chlorine? No reason to get overcharged for pool store stuff. Bleach is cheap! Just make sure it's not scented or "no splash".
Good idea RobbieH. I think I might go check out a walmart to see their strengths and go from there. Got to get this chlorine level up. Heading out to the store right now. I'll post some new results later this evening once the chlorine has had some time to mix. Probably just going to run my pump overnight tonight as well. Give it a really good mixing.
pinguy
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Most walmarts this year have 10% chlorinating liquid in the garden section for $2.50
Good call pinguy. I found some 10% stuff at Walmart for $2.39. Bought 3 boxes. Just added the pool math recommended amount of chlorine to the pool and I'll retest in a few hours. I don't know why I'm so excited to switch to this stuff, but if it works as good as everyone says on here, I'm going to be sold for sure. That will mean no more "pucks" for me, unless I need to leave town for a few days like some of you have suggested.
Sucess!!! By following the pool math calculator for the liquid chlorine, I was able to get my FC up from 0.23 to 3.73. My TC is up from 0.44 to 3.74. All my other numbers are pretty much the same from my earlier test before adding the liquid chlorine. The floating dispenser is now out of the pool and I'm officially converted to liquid chlorine. I know I have to test it a lot more now because the sun will burn it off quicker. How often should I be testing my chlorine levels now? Every day or every other day? If it's everyday, I'm going to need more reagents for testing chlorine. I don't mind doing it, but I don't want to run out of drops midway through the pool season. I plan to do a full run of tests at least 2-3 times a week.
pinguy
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After a while you will get an idea of what your pool needs, and you'll be able to adjust your testing schedule based on that.
Starting out for the year I usually test FC/CC/PH daily, and CYA maybe every 2 weeks.
CH doesn't change much for me, and you don't have to worry about it with vinyl unless it's super high. You don't really need to worry about TA either unless you are having issues stabilizing your PH.
Thanks pinguy. I'll test chlorine and ph daily for awhile. My PH looks good and that's good to know with my TA because it's 147 and I was a little concerned with that, but I'll monitor it and just try to keep things running right where they are. I want to get my chlorine to at least a 4.5 or 5 so I'll retest in the morning and add a little more. I feel much better knowing I've got enough chlorine in there now to stave off any issue with algae. The water is sparkling clear and I want to keep it that way. This website has been a godsend for me and I love the pool math calculator as well. I'm looking forward to many years of having a trouble free pool and knowing if I get in trouble there are some great people here to help me get out of it.