Do i need to slam?

Marsee

0
Jun 15, 2017
12
Hesperia California
Ok so i have had my pool up for 10 days. Testing w the 6 way hth. Filled w city water but am told its the
best in CA. Tastes great for drinking water. Due to family illness was unable to shop for stabilizer. Was able to bleach and keep at 4 fc except for the last 2 days. Ran out of bleach. Ph is 7.5. My pool was at 0 chlorine for 2 days. I vaccumed the bottom, i believe i could smell the water turning green. If that makes sense.
I was able to get to walmart for the stabilizer (clorox 4 lb)
Before they put it back on shelf i ordered it 8 days ago. I put 35 oz stabilizer in sock in front of outlet. 48 oz of bleach 8.25% ran pump all night. I still have to test the water. Also concerned that my test kit only has 2 cya tests. I was so worried about the pool i put all the stabilizer in the sock at once but my goal was 40 not 50 so i hope i didnt mess up bc i only can test twice? i can not buy another test kit right now. My question is how will i know if i have to slam it hoping not to.
 
A pool with zero sanitizer for two days is an open invitation to an algae party.

We recommend performing the Overnight Chlorine Loss Test to determine if organics (algae & bacteria) have begun to grow in the water.

Unfortunately, you cannot perform the OCLT, or SLAM without a FAS/DPD FC test kit.

With a CYA of 50ppm, your daily FC is 6-8ppm, which the HTH kit will not measure either.

https://www.troublefreepool.com/content/128-chlorine-cya-chart-slam-shock

You can order just the FAS/DPD test from TF Testkits:

http://tftestkits.net/FAS-DPD-Chlorine-CC-s-test-p47.html
 
It reads chlorine upto 5. I just tested with my 2way. Chlorine is 4-5. That is probably going to be ok but ph dropped from 7.5 down to 7.2. Stabilizer is almost melted. I will test again today. I still have not used the 6way tester. Really thinking of returning it to walmart and upgraded.
 
I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but the OTO chlorine test in both your 2-way and 6-way kits only measures total chlorine (TC). TC is the sum of free chlorine (FC, good) and combined chloramines (CC, bad). It doesn't differentiate between the two.

So you could have all FC and zero CC, which would be good, or zero FC and all CC, which would be bad, or anything in between. With that test, there's no way to know.

This is why we always insist upon a FAS-DPD test, because it measures both FC and CC separately. Both of the two kits we recommend contain this test.

That said, with your pool's size, draining and refilling is an option, and if you do that, as long as you keep your CYA level 30-40 and never let your FC drop low enough (I'd shoot for 5 to be safe) to let algae take hold, you can get by with the OTO test. I personally did this for a couple of years successfully before I broke down and bought a TF-100.
 
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