CYA rising in pool, Leslie's Pool Supply says to drain?!

[twoolley]

Welcome to the forums, Hot-in-NV!

I'm sorry to see you got Pool Stored. I was there, did that and I have the T-shirt. I am happy to answer any questions and try to chime in when i can. I have spent hundreds of hours on this site and read almost everything here. I have messed around with my pool for just as long in the short time I've had it. I've replaced a lot of equipment, upgraded some, cleaned and maintained and I have my very own Trouble Free Pool.

Stick with it and keep reading, everything here is worth seeing and knowing.

 

[RafaelS]

I for one will never use Leslie's again, at least not the one near me in NJ, they repeatedly gave me bad water test results and told me my water is fine when my tests showed bad numbers. I finally took it to another pool place closer to me and they finally gave me proper results. It seems to me that the Leslie's on route 23 hires young kids that have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

 

[twoolley]

Ours here is the same way accept I've never seen more than 1 person in the store at a time. The same person does water testing, answers the phone, sales, check out and gets chemicals from the back.

This weekend I went and got chemicals from the warehouse after she gave me permission because she was busy. It was better than standing there waiting though!

 

[gatorsms]

My name is Tom and I just bought a house with a pool 3 weeks ago. I've been working hard at learning the ins and outs of pool care but I am running into a snag.

The pool is clear right now, and I just added acid to bring the PH down to 7.5. Here's the problem:

My first trip to Leslie's Pool Supply the guy tests my water. The results are "good news, your pool is in balance but there's no chlorine in it". My pool has a chlorine tablet tower. Per his advice I buy a giant bucket of 3" tablets, go home, fill said tower and turn it on full.

Fast forward to this weekend and now my CYA is 100 and my pool is good in every other respect. My research here has taught me that those tablets have Chlorine and CYA in them so I asked her if I should keep using the chlorine tower because while it's adding chlorine it's also dissolving more CYA into my pool!

She assures me that Leslie's is the leader in pools and if there were a way to control and/or remove CYA from pools they would be aware of it and sell it since they're at the top of the swimming pool research. The only way to do this is to do a partial drain and then add water. In the meantime I apparently am going to have to shock my pool more often to compensate for the CYA levels not allowing my chlorine to be effective.

Now I am here because i'm not really sold on what i'm being told. There's to much CYA in the pool but I think the tablets are going to keep adding more! Draining the pool isn't a sustainable method and it's going to cost me a fortune in the middle of a drought.

I will post a full set of test results when I get home tonight. If there's any advice you guys can give me i'm listening!!!

-Tom

Yes, you must drain the pool to lower the cyanuric acid. You are guaranteed to have too much cyanuric acid if you keep using tri-chlor tablets. As someone else pointed out, the cyanuric acid test is not all that accurate either. Get the test done a couple of times when you refill your pool and are adding powdered cyanuric acid to get it up to 50 or so.

Once you get the cyanuric acid down to 50 or below use tri-chlor tablets only when going on vacation, otherwise use liquid chlorine.

I'd be a rich man if I had a dollar for every time I've overheard a Leslie's employee telling someone to drain their pool because of excessive cyanuric acid. But they're also trying to sell you more tablets at the same time!

Find a pool store selling 12.5% chlorine in refillable deposit bottles. I pay a bit less than $2.50 per gallon (including tax) for this chlorine. I think Leslie's charges $4 per gallon for 10% chlorine in those two gallon packs. Ditto for phosphate remover. Leslie's sells a very diluted product at a high price. Professional pool services use a highly concentrated product (Orenda PR10000) that you really have to work hard to find a source for.

Whenever I've asked if there are tablets that don't have cyanuric acid I get a response on how great that would be, but there must be something that makes such a thing not possible to produce.

My cyanuric acid finally came down enough after a very heavy rainy season where I had to pump water out of the pool when it overflowed several times. Cyanuric acid does not evaporate with water evaporation.