FC/CYA won’t budge. Help!

[aggiekat]

Hi all! I’ve done lots of reading on this forum and in Pool School and am still trying to figure out my chlorine and CYA for my 10x30 above ground pool.

I set it up last week, filled with regular hose water, used the Pool Math app and added dichlor, stabilizer, and PH down the first night to recommended levels by the app.

I just ordered the HTH 6 way test kit as I saw that recommended to start for seasonal pools my size because the test strips I am using are absolute garbage.

I went out of town the last week and had my mom doing the test strips (since that’s what I had on hand) and pretty much every morning the FC was between 0-0.5 ppm. Sometimes the TC would read higher between 1-3 ppm but as y’all have said, the strips aren’t great for accuracy. My CYA remains at 0 even with adding stabilizer. I also had her adding at least 7 fl. oz of liquid bleach each day to try to bring the FC back up but every morning, no dice. The alkalinity and PH are fine, so that’s a plus.


Now that I’m back, I’m hoping I can get it back on track and not have to drain the whole thing and start over. It’s a lot of water (roughly 1175 gallons). The pool isn’t cloudy and not slimy, just had some leaf and tree debris in it when I got back, which I spent time this morning cleaning out.

My question is: is my pool water salvageable? I get the reagent test kit tomorrow for better accuracy, but I went ahead and added 7.1 oz of stabilizer in a sock in front of the pump water blowing back into the pool, and another 6.1 oz of liquid bleach for chlorine.

Thanks for all the help and advice!

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

Toss the test strips into the trash and wait until you get the HTH test kit to have any idea of your FC and CYA levels.

 

[aggiekat]

Test strips trashed. They were absolutely the worst indicator ever. I feel like things are completely off because that’s what I was trying to go off of before finding you all and the wealth of knowledge here. Will update with test results tomorrow when the kit comes in.

 

[aggiekat]

Well. I knew better and I should have waited but I added chlorine and stabilizer before I had posted here yesterday.

My HTH 6 way kit came in and of course, both of those are measuring super high.

TC- 5
pH 7.2
TA-100
CYA- 100

From reading here I know that when the CYA measures 100, it’s probably more than that since the test maxes out there. I’ll need to drain some and refill. Ugh.

Is that the best place to start? This HTH kit only has enough reagent for 2 CYA tests. Pretty lame.

Also would it be better to know free chlorine instead of the total chlorine? I’m feeling like now I should have just bought the 2006 Taylor kit but I felt like that was a LOT for my small above ground seasonal Intex pool. It’s just 10x30.

Thanks for all the help!