Chlorine will not stop increasing!

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R

rdbrya1

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Jul 11, 2016
27
Gonzales
Hi All,

I am hoping someone can help me out on this one, as I am stumped. Thanks to this forum, I've been able to keep my pool crystal clear for 2 years now. All of a sudden though, my Chlorine level keeps going sky high. My current levels are below. I am not adding any chemicals at all...there are no chlorine tabs or anything like that. No other level is changing except the chlorine. I was almost thinking I had bad testing chemicals or something (brand new K-2006 kit) but everything else seems to be testing perfectly...and I can smell chlorine walking near the pool.

FC - 25 at the moment - even after lowering the percentage on the saltwater generator down to 35%. It was originally 16, so I lowered it down from 45% to 35%, and then it creeped up to 25..how is that even possible?

Alk - ~80
Ph - 7.6
CYA - 70
My salt level is around 3200

I will say that my pump has been running 24/7 because I have an issue with the on/off timer where it would not kick on automatically and I got tired of turning it on manually every morning so its running 24/7 until we can change the timer out this weekend. I did not really think that would make CH shoot up like crazy though.
 
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Are you in Gonzales Texas? My water temp is about 60, so I'm guessing yours is close. FC (not CH) will not fall very fast at all. My FC is holding to the point I barely add any bleach in a week. So if your SWG is producing any chlorine at all, that can explain why the FC is climbing. I would recommend turning the SWG off completely for a few days and monitoring the FC level for the next week or so. We have a cold spell coming which will only slow-down FC consumption further.
 
Texas Splash said:
Are you in Gonzales Texas? My water temp is about 60, so I'm guessing yours is close. FC (not CH) will not fall very fast at all. My FC is holding to the point I barely add any bleach in a week. So if your SWG is producing any chlorine at all, that can explain why the FC is climbing. I would recommend turning the SWG off completely for a few days and monitoring the FC level for the next week or so. We have a cold spell coming which will only slow-down FC consumption further.
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Hi! I am in Gonzales, Louisiana so just one state over :) Yes, the water temp is prob low 60s as well and we are about to have a major storm tonight and temps dropping to 30-40s for the next week. I have never experienced this before in the winter and I have never had to adjust my salt generator output before so the thought never crossed my mind for sure, especially since my pool sees full sun all day long. I am going to test this theory and see if that could be the cause. I just turned it off and I will wait a few days and confirm that it decreases (even though it sounds like with the cold it is still going to decrease pretty slowly :-( ). I appreciate this info and idea!!

Side note: so do people in cold climates normally turn their SWG way down (or off) in the winter then?
 
rdbrya1 said:
Side note: so do people in cold climates normally turn their SWG way down (or off) in the winter then?
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For those who's water gets really cold (i.e. 55 or below), the SWG typically shuts-off anyways. If their pool is still open, then they just add chlorine/bleach manually each week or so as needed. So yes, it's quite common.
 
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R,

If you have not already done so, you just need to set your SWCG to "zero" percent output... If your pump is running your SWCG is making chlorine if the output is set to anything but zero...

Jim R.
 
You also said your pump is now running 24 hours a day. How many hours did you run it before? You generate chlorine when the pump is running. If, as an example, you were running your pump 12 hours a day before, you are now generating 2 times the amount of chlorine you were before
 
According to pool Math, at 35% and 24 hour runtime, you are creating 2.8 ppm of FC a day.

You might only be using .5 this time of year
 
Thank you, everyone! I am convinced this is my problem after all the replies! ALL of them were super helpful!! Very good point about maybe previous years it shut off.

I also wondered about the run time and how that affected the amount it was generating. I always figured since it was still full sun, that I was using more than .5 per day, even with the chillier waters.

For now, I have the SWG set on off and just regular circulation going! Thank you again, everyone!!
 

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