- May 3, 2014
- 62,727
- Pool Size
- 6000
- Surface
- Fiberglass
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I've been trying to get my CYA levels to about 30. They were very high. Since I only have a skimmer, and it's the only way I can drain the pool on my own, I've been doing it gradually draining about 1000 gallons and then refilling with tap water. I've been using a lot of taylor R-0013 cyanuric acid to test the water and it is starting to run out. I noticed I have a bunch of stabilizer with is 100% cyanuric acid, so I thought, maybe there was a way to test the CYA levels in the poll using powder cyanuric acid vs R-0013. Worth a shot I thought.
Unfortunately this is not possible. It’s worth noting that the Taylor R-0013 is not actually cyanuric acid, but a reagent used to determine the amount of cyanuric acid in the water sample.
How high is your current CYA level? It’s very time consuming and wasteful to do multiple small drain/refill cycles, especially if you’re trying to come down from a high level.
If your CYA level was at, say, 150 and you drained and refilled 10% of your water then it would come down to 135. If you did another 10% then it would come down to 122, after another 10% it would be down to 110, after another 10% it would be down to 99, and after another 10% it would be down to 90.
At that point you would have added 50% of the water capacity of your pool in new water, but because the new water mixes in with the old each time you drain and refill then you are draining and replacing some of the new water each time, and the more you do this the more new water you are wasting.
Instead, if you drained 50% of your pool at once and refilled it your CYA level would drop to 75. Using the same amount of water you get a bigger drop in the CYA level.
The farther you have to drop the CYA level the more inefficient doing small changes is going to be. If you were at a CYA level of 150 and wanted to get down to 30 then you could drain and replace 80% of your water at once, or do fifteen 10% water changes, which would require adding 150% of the water volume of your pool.
All that said, you’re probably better off getting a sump pump so you can drain more water at once.
How high is your current CYA level? It’s very time consuming and wasteful to do multiple small drain/refill cycles, especially if you’re trying to come down from a high level.
If your CYA level was at, say, 150 and you drained and refilled 10% of your water then it would come down to 135. If you did another 10% then it would come down to 122, after another 10% it would be down to 110, after another 10% it would be down to 99, and after another 10% it would be down to 90.
At that point you would have added 50% of the water capacity of your pool in new water, but because the new water mixes in with the old each time you drain and refill then you are draining and replacing some of the new water each time, and the more you do this the more new water you are wasting.
Instead, if you drained 50% of your pool at once and refilled it your CYA level would drop to 75. Using the same amount of water you get a bigger drop in the CYA level.
The farther you have to drop the CYA level the more inefficient doing small changes is going to be. If you were at a CYA level of 150 and wanted to get down to 30 then you could drain and replace 80% of your water at once, or do fifteen 10% water changes, which would require adding 150% of the water volume of your pool.
All that said, you’re probably better off getting a sump pump so you can drain more water at once.
I would like to challenge the statement that the skimmer is the only way you can remove water. Let me introduce you to my good friend the utility pump:
Attach a garden hose, drop it in your pool, and plug it in. Unplug it when you have removed enough water.
Attach a garden hose, drop it in your pool, and plug it in. Unplug it when you have removed enough water.
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