How do you maintain FC daily?

[John2]

I feel like I’ve read most of the pool school and it just says to test daily and add bleach as needed. Using just bleach once a day however means there’s time for the sunlight to burn off the chlorine, even with proper CYA levels unless I’m missing something.
So here are my questions
1) How often do you add bleach to your pools? Every 24 hours?
2) Do you bring it up to the recommend level and hope that it doesn’t fall below the minimum level before the next time you check it? Or do you bring it slightly higher than the recommended level so that it has room to fall before the next time you test?

I have been using a floating dispenser and adding some pH up as well as aerating often but now that my CYA level is somewhere between 40 and 50, I’m going to stop using those tablets and try to just use bleach.

This is my first summer with a pool.

 

[mknauss]

You add liquid chlorine/bleach each day. Use the Target level for your CYA based on [FC/CYA][/FC/CYA]. With normal loss of 2-4 ppm you should stay above minimum FC until you add LC the next day.

Until you see what your pool consumes in FC each day, raise your FC to a point or two above the target level upper range. Then you can adjust if you wish.

 

[woodyp]

Hotter ambient temps, water temps, and bather load all play a part too.

 

[Dirk]

Hey John, welcome to TFP. I loved your signature. It's funny, but not. A pool is a pool. Enjoy!! Hey, in some ways a smaller pool is harder to care for than a larger one, and the need to test and know what's going on in it are just as important. So good job on the test kit. Like aquariums, the smaller the volume the bigger the challenge. Less buffer, less wiggle room. Kids don't pee proportionally less in a smaller pool!! But their, uh, contribution to the water chemistry has a much bigger effect. You'll have a nicer pool for the testing and learning from TFP...

 

[Richard320]

I wander out to the pool sometime before dinner after the pump has come on and slop in the required bleach every day. In the summer, I barbeque a lot, so I usually start the fire, then go deal with the bleach since it's stored right close by.

It will soon become as routine and mindless as brushing your teeth before bed.

 

[Luis A]

I wander out to the pool sometime before dinner after the pump has come on and slop in the required bleach every day. In the summer, I barbeque a lot, so I usually start the fire, then go deal with the bleach since it's stored right close by.

It will soon become as routine and mindless as brushing your teeth before bed.

I never added CL before, just allowed the SWCG to do its job. Over the years, had a few algae outbreaks mainly due to the SWCG not being able to keep up with hot days and rain.

Since joining TFP, I have been adding CL daily, but, I am now thinking, what’s the point of a SWCG if I have to add CL?

Run pump 6 hours and SWCG at 80% and don’t want to increase neither. Thinking of adding second SWCG and adjust output based on conditions. Will also run two 3 hours shift 12 hours apart.

will that do it?

 

[John2]

Thanks for all of the replies, everybody is so helpful. Sounds like once daily should be enough and I’ll get use to it as I do it. That leads to another question, what if I wake up and it’s gonna be storming all day? I guess find a break when there’s no lightening and run out there real quick? I mean it seems like there’s some days that I just don’t make it to the pool.
Do y’all find that you just find a way to get to the pool every day or what? If I skip a day, I’m guessing I’ll have another algae outbreak.
Thanks everybody.

 

[andy33gmail]

I’m a big fan of ORP monitors. Feels like an unneccessary expense to avoid 5 mins work a day. But for £750 (sorry, not hot on exchange rates) and a couple of hours of work, I can keep my chlorine levels lower without worrying about it “turning” (previously screwed up twice in 12 months).

Biggest bonus - when the neighbours ask what to do with the pool when you’re away, the answer is “nothing”

 

[mknauss]

I’m a big fan of ORP monitors. Feels like an unneccessary expense to avoid 5 mins work a day. But for £750 (sorry, not hot on exchange rates) and a couple of hours of work, I can keep my chlorine levels lower without worrying about it “turning” (previously screwed up twice in 12 months).

Biggest bonus - when the neighbours ask what to do with the pool when you’re away, the answer is “nothing”

We find very few successful implementation of ORP systems. They only work with very low CYA. And in outdoor pools, it is difficult to maintain a pool with well under 30 ppm CYA.

The easiest and least problematic method of adding chlorine daily in an outdoor pool is a SWCG or a liquid chlorine Stenner pump system.

 

[andy33gmail]

Interesting. So I guess only reliable for indoor or well shaded pools

What would happen in an outdoor pool if you used an ORP monitor and had no CYA in order for it to work? Would FC burn off by the time it does a full circuit, meaning only some of the pool chlorinated and a lot of bleach to buy?

 

[mknauss]

Half life of chlorine in sunshine with 0 CYA is in minutes. So it degrades rapidly. Public pools that run 0 CYA have continuous chlorine addition with chlorine gas or liquid chlorine.

 

[Dirk]

Thanks for all of the replies, everybody is so helpful. Sounds like once daily should be enough and I’ll get use to it as I do it. That leads to another question, what if I wake up and it’s gonna be storming all day? I guess find a break when there’s no lightening and run out there real quick? I mean it seems like there’s some days that I just don’t make it to the pool.
Do y’all find that you just find a way to get to the pool every day or what? If I skip a day, I’m guessing I’ll have another algae outbreak.
Thanks everybody.

To take care of a pool properly, which includes healthy and sanitized, sometimes that means testing and dosing everyday. So it's either manually dosing, or overdosing (like once-a-week pool maintenance guys do), or automation (SWG or automated pump/tank). You can try skipping days by adding more chlorine every other day. You might find a good rhythm, but the CYA/FC ratio is pretty strict. If you allow FC to drop too low, you risk algae. If you goose FC too high, it'll just burn off faster (harmful mostly only to your wallet).

I had been dosing everyday, for months, and it got old. So I solved for that with automation, like many here do.

If you don't feel like dodging lightning bolts, you might have to keep an eye on the forecast and overdose the day before, and hope that it lasts 2 days. That's all I can think of, without automation.

 

[getreal720]

I don't usually add every day, but I know my pool pretty well by now and have a good idea of it's needs.

If my FC target is 3-5ppm... I'll normally run at the higher end of that range (5ppm) plus an additional
for a one day "safety blanket".

I was keeping it close to 8 ppm. That would allow for a day of not testing / not adding any chlorine with
no ill effects. I make it a habit to never go more than 2 full days between testing.


Since you are new to your pool, I'd recommend doing regular testing at sun up and sun down for a week
or so. Using this, you can determine your chlorine demand for each 24 hour period and you can use the
sun down to sun up test results to determine if your losing chlorine overnight.

If your passing the overnight chlorine loss test, you can conclude you have no organics in the water.

You can then use the 24 hour test results to determine what your "demand" is.

Once you get that comfortable with your pool, you can work out a reasonable schedule in which you
don't need to test daily or add chlorine daily. CYA protects your chlorine from the sunlight, it "buffers"
an amount of chlorine as well. Think of it as a reserve. Makes the chlorine last a lot longer, but also
requires more to keep the pool sanitized.

You would only need about 2ppm of chlorine in an unstablizied pool (no CYA) but the sun would kill
that unstabilized chlorine in no time flat. You'd have to constantly add chlorine to the water during
the hours that the sun is up.

 

[John2]

Thanks everybody, I had passed the overnight test a few weeks ago but recently let the FC get a little low and didn’t realize the CYA had been rising from my floating tablet that I was putting in for half a day and then taking out for half a day. So now algae is trying to grow again. I’m gonna SLAM again for a couple days and hopefully pass the overnight test again real soon. Then I’ll just do like you said and keep it at the high end of the range daily and maybe 2 points higher if I think I might have to skip a day.
Then towards the end of summer, I’m hoping to get a new pool and hopefully get something a little more automated as y’all mentioned. I’ll have to do a lot of reading on this forum before I know what automation system and what AG pool I’ll be going with.

 

[Dirk]

Excellent plan!!

 

[getreal720]

Looking at the info in your signature, if you pool really only contains 1000 gallons of water... be careful of how much bleach you add.

Use the pool math calculator to be sure.

32 oz of bleach raises the FC level by 15ppm in a pool with 1000 gallons in it.

40 oz of bleach raises the FC level by 20ppm.

3 or 4 gallons of regular 6% bleach can probably get you through a week or two worth of SLAM... depending on what your daily demand is.

 

[LongJohn]

I wander out to the pool sometime before dinner after the pump has come on

You make it sound like you are running your pump at night? I had learned that it needs to be run during the daytime in the summertime, which is what I do, and I have been wondering how that jived with adding the LC at night when it is hidden from the sun, but while the pump is circulating to mix it all in?

 

[Richard320]

You make it sound like you are running your pump at night? I had learned that it needs to be run during the daytime in the summertime, which is what I do, and I have been wondering how that jived with adding the LC at night when it is hidden from the sun, but while the pump is circulating to mix it all in?

It runs roughly 5-7 PM. Sometimes I'll move the dial so it runs longer while I[;m vacuuming or something and forget to change it and it runs 2 hours earlier or later.

I don't see what the difference is. The stuff on the surface gets pushed to the skimmer and the chemicals get mixed. And for testing, you want to do it when FC is at the low point,m which for me would be just before sunset, when I dose.

I don't know what it's like in Texas, but here we have tiered rates and if someone has signed up for that program, there can be sizeable savings to run the pump at night. If I was signed up for that, I'd be filtering between 10 PM and 8AM!

 

[Rancho Cost-a-Lotta]

I run my pump at night. Here's why...

 

[jstblush]

Wow, Rancho,
That's a great chart for your electric prices. How did you get that? Wish our electric co had one of those. VERY handy!
Sherry