A few weeks ago, I had what I assume was an algae bloom. Water temperature was in the mid 80s from the previous weekend. It was a chilly week and nobody was using the pool. I was working long hours and didn’t check chemicals from Sunday to Thursday. When I removed the cover Thursday evening for the kids, the water was super cloudy and circulation was awful because my de filter was ‘clogged’. My fault...lesson learned there. It was really the first issue I’ve had since becoming a pool owner lart year and finding this site right away.
So...I slammed. Ph was ok and I brought the pool right up to shock and kept it there. I brushed twice a day, vacuumed once per day...the cloudy algae (?) was dissipating quickly and was showing up on the bottom as brown heavy powder (best I can describe it). I was having to change my de about every four hours as it was clogging that quick. But...less than 48 hours later the pool was crystal clear and I was all the wiser.
I maintained shock level until the water was crystal clear, cc was 0, and passed the oclt...at least I think. my oclt was ‘bordeline’ but I was out of reagent because of the slam. I was sure I was good and let it drop to normal levels while I waited for more reagent in the mail.
Since that time, the pool has been using what I think to be a lot more chlorine than last year (going by memory). It had been in the back of my head that just maybe that last oclt wasn’t quite less than 1 ppm loss.
My pool gets pretty heavy use. My wife and two kids are home all summer and we have frequent guests use it. It’s also been very sunny and hot. The pool gets a solid 8 hours of 100% full sun every day and the cover is usually off most of that time.
My water has been absolutely crystal clear this entire time (as it always is)... Never even a hint of cloudiness or anything. I was also noticing my eyes were irritated much more than last year which I attributed to cc because everything else was fine. I was occasionally getting a 0.5 cc reading but not every day.
cya has been around 50 all season.
ph has been hovering on the low end of range 7.2-7.4. I’ve added washing soda a couple times to get it up.
Ta has been 90-100 all year.
Last weekend I did a three hour tsp soak followed by a three hour MA soak of my de filter ‘fingers’ just to make sure I undid any ‘damage’ Done by the algae bloom...I had it in my head that my pressure hadn’t quite been the same. The cleaning of the filter put my mind at ease but didn’t have any effect on the pressure...better safe than sorry I guess. and I’ve still been using ‘more’ chlorine.
My chlorine use was probably averaging one to one and a half gallons per day of 12.5% liquid chlorine in an approximately 20 k gallon pool. I tend to aim for the high end of ‘target’ (maybe even a touch higher) and let it fall through the ‘zone’.
So. I did a couple oclt with a borderline pass/fail in night 1 and screwy results in night 2 (FC went up??? Which I know isn’t possible...and yes-I gave it plenty of time to circulate before doing the night test).
i finally had Enough speculating and decided to just slam the heck out of it again. I figured if I have a tad bit of left over algae it’s not going to take much. Yesterday evening I added five gallons of liquid chlorine which should have brought me up to 30 ppm (I didn’t check after adding it) and brushed every inch of the pool.
five hours later, fc was atound 15! What the heck! I over zealously added another five gallons and checked about an hour later. Now I was at 44! Oops! I left the ladders out to be safe. I have no other items in the water-just a skimmer and return jet. Early This morning on the other end of the oclt, I was at fc 40 with cc 0.
I disassembled and scrubbed the ladders with chlorine solution this morning and dipped them in the pool to ‘rinse’ the higher concentrate solution. I have not reinstalled them yet.
This evening, I’m back down to fc: 15. Cc: 0-0.5. I’m not sure if it even turned pink or not.
Im going to return it to shock level overnight and do another oclt. I hope to find that it passes but why did the pool use 25 ppm today? Nobody swam in it. It was sunny. I did confirm cya of 50 again. I’m worried that I will pass the oclt and cc tests in the morning but will continue to use up chlorine every day!
I feel like I’ve dine everything right and can’t figure this out. Help!
sorry for the long post but I wanted to provide the entire context because I feel I’ve already researched thus to death on this site.
Thanks in Advance fir your time.
- - - Updated - - -
One thing I forgot to mention is I’ve left the cover off for this slam to take it out of the equation like the ladders.
So...I slammed. Ph was ok and I brought the pool right up to shock and kept it there. I brushed twice a day, vacuumed once per day...the cloudy algae (?) was dissipating quickly and was showing up on the bottom as brown heavy powder (best I can describe it). I was having to change my de about every four hours as it was clogging that quick. But...less than 48 hours later the pool was crystal clear and I was all the wiser.
I maintained shock level until the water was crystal clear, cc was 0, and passed the oclt...at least I think. my oclt was ‘bordeline’ but I was out of reagent because of the slam. I was sure I was good and let it drop to normal levels while I waited for more reagent in the mail.
Since that time, the pool has been using what I think to be a lot more chlorine than last year (going by memory). It had been in the back of my head that just maybe that last oclt wasn’t quite less than 1 ppm loss.
My pool gets pretty heavy use. My wife and two kids are home all summer and we have frequent guests use it. It’s also been very sunny and hot. The pool gets a solid 8 hours of 100% full sun every day and the cover is usually off most of that time.
My water has been absolutely crystal clear this entire time (as it always is)... Never even a hint of cloudiness or anything. I was also noticing my eyes were irritated much more than last year which I attributed to cc because everything else was fine. I was occasionally getting a 0.5 cc reading but not every day.
cya has been around 50 all season.
ph has been hovering on the low end of range 7.2-7.4. I’ve added washing soda a couple times to get it up.
Ta has been 90-100 all year.
Last weekend I did a three hour tsp soak followed by a three hour MA soak of my de filter ‘fingers’ just to make sure I undid any ‘damage’ Done by the algae bloom...I had it in my head that my pressure hadn’t quite been the same. The cleaning of the filter put my mind at ease but didn’t have any effect on the pressure...better safe than sorry I guess. and I’ve still been using ‘more’ chlorine.
My chlorine use was probably averaging one to one and a half gallons per day of 12.5% liquid chlorine in an approximately 20 k gallon pool. I tend to aim for the high end of ‘target’ (maybe even a touch higher) and let it fall through the ‘zone’.
So. I did a couple oclt with a borderline pass/fail in night 1 and screwy results in night 2 (FC went up??? Which I know isn’t possible...and yes-I gave it plenty of time to circulate before doing the night test).
i finally had Enough speculating and decided to just slam the heck out of it again. I figured if I have a tad bit of left over algae it’s not going to take much. Yesterday evening I added five gallons of liquid chlorine which should have brought me up to 30 ppm (I didn’t check after adding it) and brushed every inch of the pool.
five hours later, fc was atound 15! What the heck! I over zealously added another five gallons and checked about an hour later. Now I was at 44! Oops! I left the ladders out to be safe. I have no other items in the water-just a skimmer and return jet. Early This morning on the other end of the oclt, I was at fc 40 with cc 0.
I disassembled and scrubbed the ladders with chlorine solution this morning and dipped them in the pool to ‘rinse’ the higher concentrate solution. I have not reinstalled them yet.
This evening, I’m back down to fc: 15. Cc: 0-0.5. I’m not sure if it even turned pink or not.
Im going to return it to shock level overnight and do another oclt. I hope to find that it passes but why did the pool use 25 ppm today? Nobody swam in it. It was sunny. I did confirm cya of 50 again. I’m worried that I will pass the oclt and cc tests in the morning but will continue to use up chlorine every day!
I feel like I’ve dine everything right and can’t figure this out. Help!
sorry for the long post but I wanted to provide the entire context because I feel I’ve already researched thus to death on this site.
Thanks in Advance fir your time.
- - - Updated - - -
One thing I forgot to mention is I’ve left the cover off for this slam to take it out of the equation like the ladders.
