Frequency of Brushing & Vacuuming

[wjmano]

What is the suggested frequency for brushing and/or running my Dolphin Active 30 robot? And how much manual brushing is necessary if I have a robot? I assume I need to catch the areas the robot misses, such as my Baja shelf with 1 foot of water, but is it wise to manually brush beyond this to help avoid increasing chlorine demand?

I ask because after having to slam my pool a 2nd time within 2 months, I’m searching for what I may be doing wrong. I was trying to be careful and over-tested my water the past month. Everything seemed fine until the water started to turn cloudy rather quickly. At the same time, my chlorine demand increased and I found my FC dropping toward 2.5-3 (CYA was in the 60-70 range). I was trying to maintain it around 6 with some added liquid bleach use until recently.

Thanks in advance for the help.
Bill

 

[cowboycasey]

Bill,

I think your robot is doing fine.. I would keep doing exactly what you have been doing..

Except I would change the following..

Take you CYA to 80, you live in FL, the land of rain.. your can get 6 inches a month for 6 months... so check your CYA monthly and keep it at 80..

Take your FC to 7... check it every day for a week at the same exact time and same exact place for that week... once you know you FC stays above 7 keep it there.. check FC at least 3 times a week, same spot same time...

Fc below 5 is a cliff, you never want to go off a cliff and you never want to get near a cliff... stay at or above 7 and you will be good...

This is probably what happened when it went cloudy...

It rained, dropped your CYA to 60.. dropped your chlorine to 4 or 5, the rain water had no chlorine in it and started a bloom that you could not see.. then the SWG with low CYA could not keep up with the algae and then, BAM, it goes cloudy and your FC drops to 2 or 3..

Also check your salt level, with all that rain I bet you have a auto drain that empties your water... every time it does that it lowers everything...

 

[V___25]

My pool is vinyl so I brush when it starts to feel really slippery even with running the robot. I brush the steps at least once a week because the robot doesn't clean those.
Do you have any ladders or lights that could use a good scrubbing and maybe have algae hiding?

 

[wjmano]

Bill,

I think your robot is doing fine.. I would keep doing exactly what you have been doing..

Except I would change the following..

Take you CYA to 80, you live in FL, the land of rain.. your can get 6 inches a month for 6 months... so check your CYA monthly and keep it at 80..

Take your FC to 7... check it every day for a week at the same exact time and same exact place for that week... once you know you FC stays above 7 keep it there.. check FC at least 3 times a week, same spot same time...

Fc below 5 is a cliff, you never want to go off a cliff and you never want to get near a cliff... stay at or above 7 and you will be good...

This is probably what happened when it went cloudy...

It rained, dropped your CYA to 60.. dropped your chlorine to 4 or 5, the rain water had no chlorine in it and started a bloom that you could not see.. then the SWG with low CYA could not keep up with the algae and then, BAM, it goes cloudy and your FC drops to 2 or 3..

Also check your salt level, with all that rain I bet you have a auto drain that empties your water... every time it does that it lowers everything...

Ok thanks. I will certainly try this approach. Makes sense as we have been getting a lot of rain. I’ll get my CYA up a bit as suggested…I was reluctant to go to 80 for fear of having to do another slam at this level.

My salt levels have been plenty high at 3400 per my Taylor drop testing, but my SWG reports a level of 3100. My SWG is optimized at 3200 with a high-end target of 3400. If I trusted the SWG (which is consistently lower than Taylor testing) I would add some salt, but I haven’t because I trust the Taylor test more and don’t want to exceed 3400.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[wjmano]

My pool is vinyl so I brush when it starts to feel really slippery even with running the robot. I brush the steps at least once a week because the robot doesn't clean those.
Do you have any ladders or lights that could use a good scrubbing and maybe have algae hiding?

No ladder, just 3 small LED lights and a umbrella hole. Plus the pool is only 7 months old. Couldnt hurt to pull the caps off the LEDs to take a closer look though.

Thanks for the help!

 

[cowboycasey]

As long as the SWG is happy don't worry about it...

As far as the CYA at 80 your SWG has to work less to keep it at the 7 FC.. it works better... But I know what you are saying, SLAMimg at 31 FC is a pain..