General Testing Questions

[Springer]

New pool owner, new-to-us house came with a pool (1 month).

Really minor questions here to start with;

Testing kit - does it need to be stored inside the house (as opposed to the garage) for the reagents - for temperature. Live in Houston, hot most of the time...

Cleaning - when I clean the vials - is it ok to just rinse and clean in the pool water? Or should I go inside and use the tap water at the sink?

Free Chlorine levels - from the Chlorine / CYA chart I get my target FC - is this the level I should try to maintain when considering the daily loss? That is, say I want to target 11 ppm, I test every afternoon when I get home and lose maybe 3-4 ppm per day, should I be aiming for 14-15 each evening so that the next day it falls to 11 OR do I aim for 11 each evening letting it fall to 7-8 by the next evening?

Latest test;
FC 7.7
TC 7.9
PH 7.7
ALY 98
CH 258
CYA 82

 

[tim5055]

Welcome to TFP!!

Yes, all test kits should be kept in a controlled environment.

You say you are not using the Nature 2, but how are you adding chlorine? This will tell us if your FC and CYA are OK or out of our recommend range. We generally do not track TC, but do watch CC (TC - FC = CC). CC is an indicator of partially oxidized organics and CC is eliminated by the UV of the sun. Depending on the amount of organics being dealt with you may/may not actually get a CC reading, but an increasing CC reading is an indicator that something bad may be happening.

As to your testing, I am slightly concerned, but not totally alarmed. Please do not confuse the specificity of the results the ColorQ gives with accuracy. We have had members attempt to use the ColorQ to follow our methods and almost all have abandoned its use due to inaccuracies and inconsistencies. We even had one member test the same sample of water three times in a row and ended up with three different sets of results. Here is an example of a ColorQ post: ColorQ vs TF100 and here is a review where the Color Q was used alongside a TF-100. Test Kit Comparison So, follow LaMotte's cleaning/maintenance procedures carefully.

 

[Springer]

Adding chlorine each day by pouring it in around the pool from the Chlorine jug from Lowes - 10%. Only been here a month - soon after reading here I stopped re-filling the pucks as CYA was high - 100 to 105 to "hi". Have done some partial water drains just before heavy rains to bring it down.

Have read some on the ColorQ - basically I want to keep using if possible since I've bought it now. My readings do seem pretty consistent and I'm not real good reading colors. For now that's all I have. Did try to cross-reference from two different Leslies - got nothing out of it - what a disappointment.

Thanks.

 

[tim5055]

Well, as you are manually chlorinating your CYA is too high, but you know that already.

In you example, yes - target 11 as you always want to stay above 7.

Keep it up with the water exchanges. I even rigged up a hose from one of my gutter downspouts to harvest rainwater so i could get my CYA down a little quicker (I started at 250ish)

 

[Jimrahbe]

S,

Not sure of the water prices in Houston, but in the DFW area, where I live, I can fill my 17K pool for $50..

If you contact the city they usually won't charge you for the sewer fee, if you tell them you are filling your pool.

Thanks,

Jim R.