I bought a house with a pool last summer. My first pool, so I had the previous owner give me a tutorial. He used Trichlor pucks in the skimmers and shocked regularly with Dichlor. I took up this same regimen and didn't think too much about it. Frankly it was easy and aside from the occasion algae with a storm- it worked. When I did start testing I found that the pH levels were below 6.8, as read by my initial test kit. I couldn't get the pH to rise so I took a sample to Leslies. They tested it and I was all out of whack. No chlorine, low pH, low CH, high CYA. They sold me some pH up, told me to drain some of the pool water to lower CYA and then bring back another sample. This started a myriad of problems.
So I added the pH up and chlorinated- metal stains. This was about a month ago. Over that time, I've been replacing water- on average I would imagine an inch a day. I lowered the pH back down to 7.2 (from 7.6) and did an ascorbic acid treatment and put in metal free. That worked very well. I decided to shock it last night because the FC had been at 0 for a few days. That turned the water green. No metal stains though. This morning I go back to Leslies and my levels are:
FC:+5 (about 25 based on my 5:1 dilution test)
pH: 7.2
TA: 70
CH: 115
CYA: Still reading 100!
Buy some metal free and 8 pounds of CH Up. Add the CH Up and 16 oz of Metal Free. The CH is now 180 and the pool is getting back to blue (4 hours later). Now my FC levels are back to 0. I added 19 oz of 73% Cal-Hypo to boost the FC and add some additional CH. (I bought the Cal-Hypo right before finding this website- kind of got it by mistake as I intended to replace the Dichlor from the previous owner.)
Where did my Chlorine go? Is in the sun? I would think that the high CYA would make the chlorine more stable to the sun. I read in another post that high CYA's can bind up the chlorine, which got me thinking. How high is/was my CYA and could this be a problem in maintaining chlorine. The previous owner was adding CYA in the tri/dichlor without regard to CYA and the test only goes to 100.
I'm still trading out water and periodically adding MA to keep it at 7.2 to prevent stains. Long story but that's my pool history. And no, I don't have the primo test system yet. Again, I bought the Taylor 2006 kit not realizing that the max FC level it could read was 5.0. Not helpful when your CYA levels is off the charts.
What next? Keep replacing water? Is that my first priority?
Thank in advance. Love the site.
So I added the pH up and chlorinated- metal stains. This was about a month ago. Over that time, I've been replacing water- on average I would imagine an inch a day. I lowered the pH back down to 7.2 (from 7.6) and did an ascorbic acid treatment and put in metal free. That worked very well. I decided to shock it last night because the FC had been at 0 for a few days. That turned the water green. No metal stains though. This morning I go back to Leslies and my levels are:
FC:+5 (about 25 based on my 5:1 dilution test)
pH: 7.2
TA: 70
CH: 115
CYA: Still reading 100!
Buy some metal free and 8 pounds of CH Up. Add the CH Up and 16 oz of Metal Free. The CH is now 180 and the pool is getting back to blue (4 hours later). Now my FC levels are back to 0. I added 19 oz of 73% Cal-Hypo to boost the FC and add some additional CH. (I bought the Cal-Hypo right before finding this website- kind of got it by mistake as I intended to replace the Dichlor from the previous owner.)
Where did my Chlorine go? Is in the sun? I would think that the high CYA would make the chlorine more stable to the sun. I read in another post that high CYA's can bind up the chlorine, which got me thinking. How high is/was my CYA and could this be a problem in maintaining chlorine. The previous owner was adding CYA in the tri/dichlor without regard to CYA and the test only goes to 100.
I'm still trading out water and periodically adding MA to keep it at 7.2 to prevent stains. Long story but that's my pool history. And no, I don't have the primo test system yet. Again, I bought the Taylor 2006 kit not realizing that the max FC level it could read was 5.0. Not helpful when your CYA levels is off the charts.
What next? Keep replacing water? Is that my first priority?
Thank in advance. Love the site.