Due to a lifeguard shortage my friend who lives in my apt complex is now the lifeguard at our apt pool. The company that runs the pool doesn't have much good instruction on running this pool. Before I sold my home/pool (long bad story), this forum taught me everything about how to balance my old in ground pool to perfection. I added bleach every day and it was perfect.
So now I'm helping my friend balance this 50,000 or so gallon public pool. with a sand filter There is an inline chlorination system and buckets of tri-chlor in the mechanical room.
I have lived here for about 10 months and the pool is uncovered even during the winter. It has always been perfectly clear. Gorgeous pool. That said, when we did the first chlorine test it showed <1. Two huge scoops of DPD barely turned it light pink. I noticed the chlorinator was off. The instructions to the lifeguard are "do not run chlorinator overnight." So we ran the chlorinator, full of tr-chlor pucks at level 5 (max) for about 4 hours. We got the chlorine to about 2ppm. It seemed to rise about 0.5 ppm an hour. To sorta follow their rules we dropped the chlorinator to <1 over night to let it run a little bit but not full blast. The pump runs 24 hours a day with fountains. Today at 3pm the pool was open and we tested again. The chlorine was at 1. Luckily CYA is <30 so I assume this is still sanitizing.
This leads me to my questions:
- this is a decently high load pool. Lots of people and full sun. I assume this chlorinator needs to be running around the clock, right? Or is this a game of turn it on/turn it off/measure - repeat and adjust.
- I always thought adding solely tri-chlor was a recipe for disaster because of the eventual overload of CYA that will come with the addition of the pucks. That said, I don't know if life guards are supposed to be adding a gallon of bleach to a pool every day so I don't know what other choice there is. How does this work for a public pool? Will the CYA eventually get so high that we have to drain it and refill with fresh water?
From memory the test results were: chlorine: 1. CC:0. pH: 7.4. Calcium: 110. TA: 70. CYA <30 (I saw the dot with the tube full). It's a Taylor K2006 test kit.
Thanks!
So now I'm helping my friend balance this 50,000 or so gallon public pool. with a sand filter There is an inline chlorination system and buckets of tri-chlor in the mechanical room.
I have lived here for about 10 months and the pool is uncovered even during the winter. It has always been perfectly clear. Gorgeous pool. That said, when we did the first chlorine test it showed <1. Two huge scoops of DPD barely turned it light pink. I noticed the chlorinator was off. The instructions to the lifeguard are "do not run chlorinator overnight." So we ran the chlorinator, full of tr-chlor pucks at level 5 (max) for about 4 hours. We got the chlorine to about 2ppm. It seemed to rise about 0.5 ppm an hour. To sorta follow their rules we dropped the chlorinator to <1 over night to let it run a little bit but not full blast. The pump runs 24 hours a day with fountains. Today at 3pm the pool was open and we tested again. The chlorine was at 1. Luckily CYA is <30 so I assume this is still sanitizing.
This leads me to my questions:
- this is a decently high load pool. Lots of people and full sun. I assume this chlorinator needs to be running around the clock, right? Or is this a game of turn it on/turn it off/measure - repeat and adjust.
- I always thought adding solely tri-chlor was a recipe for disaster because of the eventual overload of CYA that will come with the addition of the pucks. That said, I don't know if life guards are supposed to be adding a gallon of bleach to a pool every day so I don't know what other choice there is. How does this work for a public pool? Will the CYA eventually get so high that we have to drain it and refill with fresh water?
From memory the test results were: chlorine: 1. CC:0. pH: 7.4. Calcium: 110. TA: 70. CYA <30 (I saw the dot with the tube full). It's a Taylor K2006 test kit.
Thanks!
