I live in CA and really don't feel right draining my pool and filling it during a drought. What other options do I have? Will the cost the be the same as if my cya were lower? Meaning, I would be adding bleach more often at lower amounts compared to adding a lot and it lasting longer.
How is your water? Do you have a test kit and a full set of test results?
If you water is good and you are not battling algae then your CYA level is something you can deal with. When I was in your shoes (bought a house with high CYA pool) I was lucky to have a clear pool and find this web site. The pool stores (my first pool, I also had no clue) wanted me to stick with floating 3" pucks and shock it every Saturday. Oh, and a little algacide, a little clarifier, a little of this and a little of that. I stared my research on line and ended up here.
A water exchange is your best course of action and reverse osmosis is certainly a viable solution if available in your area. What I'm going to talk about is based on a clear pool, no algae. I've read through your other threads quickly and don't see any comments about cloudy/green water.
My CYA was 200+ to start with. I have slowly worked it down to 50, right where I want it. How? Using
NO solid chlorine products, none. I use bleach, it's all I can get in South Carolina. I got a
good test kit and I was off to the races. Keep chlorine at appropriate levels. If algae gets afoot hold at these CYA levels the amount of chlorine necessary to eradicate it is massive.
For the past year I have been quick to back flush, I do it a little longer than necessary and look for any source of water to get into my pool. My main source was harvesting water from a roof gutter downspout. When it rained my pool level went up and I pumped some out. Slow but steady.
You are lucky. In your area there are
HASA Dealers who sell higher % chlorinating liquid. Usually this will work out a little less expensive.
You need to get a test kit and figure out how your pool is doing.
We generally do not recommend extended tests anymore as there is a greater error factor when doing testes this way, but you may need to do it. 100 is the limit of the CYA test, so you have to do a diluted test. While the full instructions are in the Pool School, here is the short version. Mix 50% pool water with 50% tap water. Use this mixed sample as your test water. Multiply the test result by 2 and you have your CYA. In the past we may have recommended further dilutions but history has shown that even a 1:1 dilution introduces error into the computation. Further dilutions introduces errors that are just too high to make the test results usable.
Read Pool School. Read the forums here. You will begin to understand what is going on. At first it is like drinking from a fire hose, too much information too fast.
For now, keep liquid chlorine in the pool to keep the algae away.