OK, so this is my first post here, so I’ll start by saying hello and giving you a bit of background. And so you can understand how we have wound up in the situation we are now in I will fully admit that I am the type of person who will buy something first and do my research second. I realize this is backwards and often winds up costing me more time and money in the end, yet here I am. But hey, they say that admitting you have a problem is the first step, right? 
So my pool journey started last year when my parents were visiting and bought my kids a little 6x10x2 inflatable pool. I would set it up and fill it and they would play in it for a weekend and then I’d take it down a couple of days later so the water wouldn’t get stagnant and the grass under the pool wouldn’t die. The kids loved playing in the pool, but I hated dragging it out and setting it up and then emptying it and putting it away a few days later. After dealing with this for much of the summer one fateful day last august my kids were begging me to set up the pool again and I thought that there must be a better way. I looked around and discovered that since it was near the end of the season Target had a 15x48 intex pool on clearance for $150. I figured that this pool was big enough that even I could use it, plus came with a filter so it could be set up permenantly. So I ran to target and got the pool and some chlorox pool test strips and some of the chlorox shock and chlorine tablets.
I set up the pool and filled it... and then realized that it was 6” off level. Like I said, I tend to act first and research second. So I spent a bit of time on google and discovered that this was a bad thing and then drained the pool and spent much of a day leveling the ground where it was going to go. I refilled the pool and the good news is that it’s less than 1/2 an inch off now
Even though it wasn’t set up until halfway through august I live in Florida, so we still had a couple of months to use it before it got too cold out. I used the chlorox test strips and the chlorox app to tell me what chlorox chemicals to put in. I struggled keeping up with the water chemistry a bit during that time, primarily because I didn’t really even understand what I was doing... I was just letting the app tell me if things were good or bad or what chemicals I needed to add. I was also doing my testing with cheap test strips of questionable accuracy. But I made it through the end of the season without ever letting algae overtake the pool or having any other really bad things happen. Since it doesn’t freeze here in Florida I decided to just leave the pump running all winter and keep the pool chlorinated rather than shutting it down and winterizing it. Unfortunately I wasn’t quite as diligent about adding chlorine as I should have and I wound up with very green water.
As it is starting to get warmer again here in Florida I decided that it was time to get the pool back in shape and I decided that I needed to do a bit more research and try to do better this year. I discovered a number of things... First, I needed to get a real test kit instead of relying on the test strips, so I ordered the K-2006 kit.
Second, I had seriously overdosed on CYA... right from the the beginning, because I didn’t realize that it needed a long time to dissolve. The chlorox app told me to add stabilizer to the new water, which I did, then I tested 4 or 6 hours later and it was still showing very low, so I added another full dose of CYA. Then to make things worse, the chlorox products I was using for chlorine and shock were Trichlor and Dichlor, so that just kept adding to my CYA. According to my new Taylor test kit it was somewhere north of 100ppm. I realized that I needed a better way to chlorinate the pool.
Third, I realized that the tiny pump and cartridge filter that came with the pool was very undersized and I needed a better filter.
I liked the chlorine tablets because I didn’t need to worry about chlorinating the pool every day. I could just add some tablets every week or so and be done with it, so I really didn’t want to switch to liquid chlorine that I would need to measure and add more frequently... that seemed like taking a step backwards. As I looked at chlorinization options I realized that a SWG was probably the best option for me and since I wanted a bigger filter too I immediately set about researching SWG and filter options... OK, so if you know anything about me by now you know that’s not true. Instead I immediately went out and bought the Intex ECO-20110 salt water system. This has a pump, a 16 inch sand filter, the intex SWG in one unit and it moves 2150GPH through the system. It’s definitely oversized for my little 4440 gallon pool, but I didn’t want to wind up with too small of a filter and I figured that if I upgraded to a larger pool in a few years that I could keep using the same filter.
I also realized that I needed to do something about my very high CYA levels, so I drained and replaced more than half of the water in the pool. This brought it down to 48ppm according to my Taylor test kit.
So as I’ve been continuing to research water chemistry I discovered the TFP website and read many of the pool school articles. I also found the recommended water parameters for SWGs. After the partial drain and refill my water isn’t bad, but alkalinity was a bit higher than ideal, so I’ve been slowly bringing down with muriatic acid while aerating the water to keep the pH from dropping too low. When I tested this morning my parameters were as follows:
6.4ppm free chlorine
<.2ppm combined chlorine
7.4 pH
105ppm total alkalinity
180ppm calcium hardness
48ppm cya.
I added another dose of muriatic acid after I took those readings and that should bring my alkalinity down to 80 or 85ppm, but I’ll test again in a few hours.
So, after all that, here is my question... the recommended parameters for SWG pools suggest keeping CYA at 70 or 80ppm (on a side note, I really wish I had read that *before* I drained and refilled my pool to bring my cya down to 48). However, the all in one Intex filter/SWG doesn’t have any way to schedule the pump to run without the SWG... the SWG is always at 100% and runs whenever the pump is running.
Since this SWG system is oversized for my small pool I’m a bit concerned that the SWG will be limiting my pump runtime... in other words, if I run the pump long enough to keep the water circulated and the pool clean then my chlorine levels will be too high. If I lower the runtime to keep my cholorine levels where they should be then the filter won’t run long enough to keep the pool clean.
So with that in mind I’m thinking it might make sense to keep my CYA levels lower than the 70-80ppm that’s recommended to allow some of the chlorine to burn off which would allow me to run the system longer to give the filter more time to clean the pool. However, in my research I couldn’t really find any explaination of why it is recommended to keep the CYA levels higher on a pool with a SWG than a pool without one. Is there a problem with keeping my CYA levels a bit lower, other than a need to run the SWG longer (which in my case may be a benefit)?
And if you’ve made it through this entire post, thanks for reading and any thoughts you have here
So my pool journey started last year when my parents were visiting and bought my kids a little 6x10x2 inflatable pool. I would set it up and fill it and they would play in it for a weekend and then I’d take it down a couple of days later so the water wouldn’t get stagnant and the grass under the pool wouldn’t die. The kids loved playing in the pool, but I hated dragging it out and setting it up and then emptying it and putting it away a few days later. After dealing with this for much of the summer one fateful day last august my kids were begging me to set up the pool again and I thought that there must be a better way. I looked around and discovered that since it was near the end of the season Target had a 15x48 intex pool on clearance for $150. I figured that this pool was big enough that even I could use it, plus came with a filter so it could be set up permenantly. So I ran to target and got the pool and some chlorox pool test strips and some of the chlorox shock and chlorine tablets.
I set up the pool and filled it... and then realized that it was 6” off level. Like I said, I tend to act first and research second. So I spent a bit of time on google and discovered that this was a bad thing and then drained the pool and spent much of a day leveling the ground where it was going to go. I refilled the pool and the good news is that it’s less than 1/2 an inch off now
Even though it wasn’t set up until halfway through august I live in Florida, so we still had a couple of months to use it before it got too cold out. I used the chlorox test strips and the chlorox app to tell me what chlorox chemicals to put in. I struggled keeping up with the water chemistry a bit during that time, primarily because I didn’t really even understand what I was doing... I was just letting the app tell me if things were good or bad or what chemicals I needed to add. I was also doing my testing with cheap test strips of questionable accuracy. But I made it through the end of the season without ever letting algae overtake the pool or having any other really bad things happen. Since it doesn’t freeze here in Florida I decided to just leave the pump running all winter and keep the pool chlorinated rather than shutting it down and winterizing it. Unfortunately I wasn’t quite as diligent about adding chlorine as I should have and I wound up with very green water.
As it is starting to get warmer again here in Florida I decided that it was time to get the pool back in shape and I decided that I needed to do a bit more research and try to do better this year. I discovered a number of things... First, I needed to get a real test kit instead of relying on the test strips, so I ordered the K-2006 kit.
Second, I had seriously overdosed on CYA... right from the the beginning, because I didn’t realize that it needed a long time to dissolve. The chlorox app told me to add stabilizer to the new water, which I did, then I tested 4 or 6 hours later and it was still showing very low, so I added another full dose of CYA. Then to make things worse, the chlorox products I was using for chlorine and shock were Trichlor and Dichlor, so that just kept adding to my CYA. According to my new Taylor test kit it was somewhere north of 100ppm. I realized that I needed a better way to chlorinate the pool.
Third, I realized that the tiny pump and cartridge filter that came with the pool was very undersized and I needed a better filter.
I liked the chlorine tablets because I didn’t need to worry about chlorinating the pool every day. I could just add some tablets every week or so and be done with it, so I really didn’t want to switch to liquid chlorine that I would need to measure and add more frequently... that seemed like taking a step backwards. As I looked at chlorinization options I realized that a SWG was probably the best option for me and since I wanted a bigger filter too I immediately set about researching SWG and filter options... OK, so if you know anything about me by now you know that’s not true. Instead I immediately went out and bought the Intex ECO-20110 salt water system. This has a pump, a 16 inch sand filter, the intex SWG in one unit and it moves 2150GPH through the system. It’s definitely oversized for my little 4440 gallon pool, but I didn’t want to wind up with too small of a filter and I figured that if I upgraded to a larger pool in a few years that I could keep using the same filter.
I also realized that I needed to do something about my very high CYA levels, so I drained and replaced more than half of the water in the pool. This brought it down to 48ppm according to my Taylor test kit.
So as I’ve been continuing to research water chemistry I discovered the TFP website and read many of the pool school articles. I also found the recommended water parameters for SWGs. After the partial drain and refill my water isn’t bad, but alkalinity was a bit higher than ideal, so I’ve been slowly bringing down with muriatic acid while aerating the water to keep the pH from dropping too low. When I tested this morning my parameters were as follows:
6.4ppm free chlorine
<.2ppm combined chlorine
7.4 pH
105ppm total alkalinity
180ppm calcium hardness
48ppm cya.
I added another dose of muriatic acid after I took those readings and that should bring my alkalinity down to 80 or 85ppm, but I’ll test again in a few hours.
So, after all that, here is my question... the recommended parameters for SWG pools suggest keeping CYA at 70 or 80ppm (on a side note, I really wish I had read that *before* I drained and refilled my pool to bring my cya down to 48). However, the all in one Intex filter/SWG doesn’t have any way to schedule the pump to run without the SWG... the SWG is always at 100% and runs whenever the pump is running.
Since this SWG system is oversized for my small pool I’m a bit concerned that the SWG will be limiting my pump runtime... in other words, if I run the pump long enough to keep the water circulated and the pool clean then my chlorine levels will be too high. If I lower the runtime to keep my cholorine levels where they should be then the filter won’t run long enough to keep the pool clean.
So with that in mind I’m thinking it might make sense to keep my CYA levels lower than the 70-80ppm that’s recommended to allow some of the chlorine to burn off which would allow me to run the system longer to give the filter more time to clean the pool. However, in my research I couldn’t really find any explaination of why it is recommended to keep the CYA levels higher on a pool with a SWG than a pool without one. Is there a problem with keeping my CYA levels a bit lower, other than a need to run the SWG longer (which in my case may be a benefit)?
And if you’ve made it through this entire post, thanks for reading and any thoughts you have here
Woo, that was a lengthy intro. 
