I'm a new pool owner trying to get our above ground pool water in balance. We bought a house with an above ground pool last fall. The pool had already been closed when we moved in.
Our pool was opened last Friday by the nearby pool store. We had a miscommunication about timing so we weren't there when they opened the pool. They added some pool shock but didn't turn the filter on because there's a pool frog system and we needed new minerals/chlorine. We went to the store on Saturday and bought those (ugh, I know better now) and set everything running as instructed. Since then we've struggled to get the chemistry right. My good test kit was just delivered while I was writing this post, but we we've been doing the best we can with test strips and the pool store while trying to get things going.
The pool has been slightly cloudy but not awful. Sadly, we also have a nest of grackles nearby that keep dropping poop in the pool so we've been vacuuming a lot. When the water was tested on Monday at the store, we had 0.1 ppm FC, TC over 2, very little CYA (I don't remember the exact number), and high pH. We added CYA and then 2lbs of packaged pool shock that night. Our test strips wouldn't register FC chlorine at all even that night but the CYA was up.
When we had it tested at the pool store yesterday morning, our results were FC 0, CC 2.2, pH 7.4, Total Alkalinity 40, Total Hardness 200, and CYA 15. After some more googling around here, I decided there was a good chance we had ammonia in the pool since every time we added chlorine it disappeared immediately and it looked like we were losing CYA. Following suggestions here we added 5 g of liquid chlorine last night since I knew the CC meant there was something we need to kill. After that our test strips finally started registering FC. We don't have a good measurement since we only had test strips available but it seemed to actually go up overnight (I'm assuming that was actually just better mixing).
The water was crystal clear this morning and we had it tested again. FC 1.9, CC 0, pH 6.9, Total Alkalinity 40, CYA 10, and Total Hardness 225.
My inclination is to add some baking soda to up the total alkalinity and possibly the pH a bit and then test again tonight and go from there. We have some old borax already we can add or we could go get some pH up instead. Any suggestions as to which of these is best?
Would you suggest adding CYA now or waiting until we get the pH up a bit since it will probably drop again with the CYA?
Thanks!
Any other suggestions? We're trying to catch up on pool knowledge (and wishing I'd found this site BEFORE we opened the pool).
Our pool was opened last Friday by the nearby pool store. We had a miscommunication about timing so we weren't there when they opened the pool. They added some pool shock but didn't turn the filter on because there's a pool frog system and we needed new minerals/chlorine. We went to the store on Saturday and bought those (ugh, I know better now) and set everything running as instructed. Since then we've struggled to get the chemistry right. My good test kit was just delivered while I was writing this post, but we we've been doing the best we can with test strips and the pool store while trying to get things going.
The pool has been slightly cloudy but not awful. Sadly, we also have a nest of grackles nearby that keep dropping poop in the pool so we've been vacuuming a lot. When the water was tested on Monday at the store, we had 0.1 ppm FC, TC over 2, very little CYA (I don't remember the exact number), and high pH. We added CYA and then 2lbs of packaged pool shock that night. Our test strips wouldn't register FC chlorine at all even that night but the CYA was up.
When we had it tested at the pool store yesterday morning, our results were FC 0, CC 2.2, pH 7.4, Total Alkalinity 40, Total Hardness 200, and CYA 15. After some more googling around here, I decided there was a good chance we had ammonia in the pool since every time we added chlorine it disappeared immediately and it looked like we were losing CYA. Following suggestions here we added 5 g of liquid chlorine last night since I knew the CC meant there was something we need to kill. After that our test strips finally started registering FC. We don't have a good measurement since we only had test strips available but it seemed to actually go up overnight (I'm assuming that was actually just better mixing).
The water was crystal clear this morning and we had it tested again. FC 1.9, CC 0, pH 6.9, Total Alkalinity 40, CYA 10, and Total Hardness 225.
My inclination is to add some baking soda to up the total alkalinity and possibly the pH a bit and then test again tonight and go from there. We have some old borax already we can add or we could go get some pH up instead. Any suggestions as to which of these is best?
Would you suggest adding CYA now or waiting until we get the pH up a bit since it will probably drop again with the CYA?
Thanks!
Any other suggestions? We're trying to catch up on pool knowledge (and wishing I'd found this site BEFORE we opened the pool).
