Original case was documented here: Helping neighbor w/ SLAM - ammonia nightmare?
I was expecting my neighbor to have troubles this year based on his CYA, which was 100-120. Tried getting him to put poly 60 in every week as an insurance policy but it didn't work. The ammonia nightmare happened again - pretty much exactly 2 years later. He has no technical ability whatsoever and uses trichlor tabs. He texted one day a couple weeks ago and pool had turned cloudy overnight.
I went straight for ammonia test and used lessons learned from the previous incident. Fish tank ammonia test only goes up to 8ppm and initial test result was way higher than that, so I went straight to diluting the sample at 1 to 5 ratio using bottled water. The shade of green indicated probably a 4ppm ammonia, but the scale jumps from 4-8ppm at the high-end so it's hard to say for sure. At 1:5 ratio the 4ppm Ammonia reading was technically a reading of 20 ppm ammonia.
I had previously used math found in the forum that 1ppm ammonia needs 10ppm FC. So, I multiplied 20x10 = 200ppm FC. Each gallon of FC in his pool adds 4.8 FC so that equated to 42 gallons of 12.5% Liquid Chlorine (LC).
To maximize time, knowing how rapidly FC would be consumed, we started adding a case at 10 minute intervals. Would add a case of LC and re-test every 10 minutes, add another case, re-test, etc. Once I saw some evidence of FC holding we slowed to down to 30 minute re-test, then a 60 minute retest. Backwashed his sand filter a couple times as well.
Final tally was 50 gallons of LC (higher than estimate of 42) and I added some dichlor to re-establish CYA so it's possible that either a) due to difficulty in exactly measuring the color scale on the fish tank ammonia test plus imperfections in the process of dilution with bottled water, the ammonia results were 25ppm instead of 20ppm, or b) after the pool turned cloudy there were other things that started growing besides ammonia that needed to be oxidized.
But I will say I found using this formula to be very successful. It gave us a good start on how much LC we would need so we didn't waste time driving back and forth to the store. He bought 42 gallons right upfront and only had to go back 1 time. This started on a late Friday afternoon and they were swimming again Sunday morning. I think it might have cleared up in 24 hours if he didn't have a sand filter. So just an FYI to anyone else who comes searching for answers to ammonia issues.
As documented in the old thread, paying the money for this much LC is still the most economical solution in our area given we are on a well with high iron and trucking in water would have been more.
I was expecting my neighbor to have troubles this year based on his CYA, which was 100-120. Tried getting him to put poly 60 in every week as an insurance policy but it didn't work. The ammonia nightmare happened again - pretty much exactly 2 years later. He has no technical ability whatsoever and uses trichlor tabs. He texted one day a couple weeks ago and pool had turned cloudy overnight.
I went straight for ammonia test and used lessons learned from the previous incident. Fish tank ammonia test only goes up to 8ppm and initial test result was way higher than that, so I went straight to diluting the sample at 1 to 5 ratio using bottled water. The shade of green indicated probably a 4ppm ammonia, but the scale jumps from 4-8ppm at the high-end so it's hard to say for sure. At 1:5 ratio the 4ppm Ammonia reading was technically a reading of 20 ppm ammonia.
I had previously used math found in the forum that 1ppm ammonia needs 10ppm FC. So, I multiplied 20x10 = 200ppm FC. Each gallon of FC in his pool adds 4.8 FC so that equated to 42 gallons of 12.5% Liquid Chlorine (LC).
To maximize time, knowing how rapidly FC would be consumed, we started adding a case at 10 minute intervals. Would add a case of LC and re-test every 10 minutes, add another case, re-test, etc. Once I saw some evidence of FC holding we slowed to down to 30 minute re-test, then a 60 minute retest. Backwashed his sand filter a couple times as well.
Final tally was 50 gallons of LC (higher than estimate of 42) and I added some dichlor to re-establish CYA so it's possible that either a) due to difficulty in exactly measuring the color scale on the fish tank ammonia test plus imperfections in the process of dilution with bottled water, the ammonia results were 25ppm instead of 20ppm, or b) after the pool turned cloudy there were other things that started growing besides ammonia that needed to be oxidized.
But I will say I found using this formula to be very successful. It gave us a good start on how much LC we would need so we didn't waste time driving back and forth to the store. He bought 42 gallons right upfront and only had to go back 1 time. This started on a late Friday afternoon and they were swimming again Sunday morning. I think it might have cleared up in 24 hours if he didn't have a sand filter. So just an FYI to anyone else who comes searching for answers to ammonia issues.
As documented in the old thread, paying the money for this much LC is still the most economical solution in our area given we are on a well with high iron and trucking in water would have been more.
