I almost screwed the pooch with cya and pucks. And I knew better!

[ezchief]

My cya was at 40 just two months ago. I kept using those Dang pucks and it got to 50 a month ago. Still in the zone I said. I mean the tf100 is literally telling me to stop and my logs in pool math are confirming it. But l kept on using the pucks.

Sunday, my cya is at 65 and I am now aware of the seriousness of my sutuation. Turn off the auto feeder and remove the pucks. Pool math says add gallon of bleach 6% so I do that. Monday morning , went from 6 fc to 3.5 fc and tells me to add another gallon trying to hit 7 fc on the fc/cya chart.

This could get expensive adding a gallon a day so I play with the pool math at 50 cya and it tells me that would be a pint roughly. At 40 cya, that would be a cup roughly.

So I do the math and start draining the pool at the shallow end with my sump pump. It's draining 406 gph with a test using a 5 gallon bucket. My fill line is at the other end of the pool. It so happens to fill at the same rate. I let the pool drain to the tile line and turn on the fill at the other end. That was at 1:45 pm yesterday when the pool was at the bottom of the tile. About 3800 gallons of my 16500 pool was my aim.

I did a water swap at 23% to get down to cya 50. That meant I stopped pumping out at 9:45 PM last night and let the fill line finsh at roughly 12:45 AM this morning. Long day and night.

Drum roll please........
CYA was at just below 50 this afternoons 2 tests. Much more manageable. I would love to get it to 40 but that would have been another 7 hours and I wanted to be awake to monitor it. Maybe some splashing and I read a 3ppm per month degaradation of cya will do it for me.

My ta was at 90 and pH was 7.8 so I added 2 cups of ma to drop those. Will add more later today if needed after a retest.

Fc was 6
Cc was 0
Ch was 325 ( dropped from 400)

No more pucks for this guy's family pool.

I guess I learned that you really need to be all in with the tfp system.

Thank god I caught it early.

Side note. My neighbor came over and inquired what I was doing. I tell him about cya and chlorine and tfp. He doesn't get it so I test his cya and fc and cc. They were 95, 0, and .5. Told him to search tfp, water chemistry abc and cya and he comes back 2 hours later with a sheepish grin. Asks when I can lend him the sump.

 

[Jeff J.]

My cya was at 40 just two months ago. I kept using those Dang pucks and it got to 50 a month ago. Still in the zone I said. I mean the tf100 is literally telling me to stop and my logs in pool math are confirming it. But l kept on using the pucks.

Sunday, my cya is at 65 and I am now aware of the seriousness of my sutuation. Turn off the auto feeder and remove the pucks. Pool math says add gallon of bleach 6% so I do that. Monday morning , went from 6 fc to 3.5 fc and tells me to add another gallon trying to hit 7 fc on the fc/cya chart.

This could get expensive adding a gallon a day so I play with the pool math at 50 cya and it tells me that would be a pint roughly. At 40 cya, that would be a cup roughly.

So I do the math and start draining the pool at the shallow end with my sump pump. It's draining 406 gph with a test using a 5 gallon bucket. My fill line is at the other end of the pool. It so happens to fill at the same rate. I let the pool drain to the tile line and turn on the fill at the other end. That was at 1:45 pm yesterday when the pool was at the bottom of the tile. About 3800 gallons of my 16500 pool was my aim.

I did a water swap at 23% to get down to cya 50. That meant I stopped pumping out at 9:45 PM last night and let the fill line finsh at roughly 12:45 AM this morning. Long day and night.

Drum roll please........
CYA was at just below 50 this afternoons 2 tests. Much more manageable. I would love to get it to 40 but that would have been another 7 hours and I wanted to be awake to monitor it. Maybe some splashing and I read a 3ppm per month degaradation of cya will do it for me.

My ta was at 90 and pH was 7.8 so I added 2 cups of ma to drop those. Will add more later today if needed after a retest.

Fc was 6
Cc was 0
Ch was 325 ( dropped from 400)

No more pucks for this guy's family pool.

I guess I learned that you really need to be all in with the tfp system.

Thank god I caught it early.

Side note. My neighbor came over and inquired what I was doing. I tell him about cya and chlorine and tfp. He doesn't get it so I test his cya and fc and cc. They were 95, 0, and .5. Told him to search tfp, water chemistry abc and cya and he comes back 2 hours later with a sheepish grin. Asks when I can lend him the sump.

Just so you know, the CYA test is a logarithmic scale. It's not accurate enough to get a 65. You always round up to the next ten, so 65 is a 70.

 

[ezchief]

Got it.

 

[mknauss]

Good job on using the processes.
Your pool will still consume about 2-4 ppm FC per day. So still add chlorine every day based on your testing.

 

[setsailsoon]

Chief,

Thanks for the post. You're certainly not alone learning the hard way. You can look at some of my posts in the past... Sadly there are way too many out there that go way further with the pucks before they have a very messed up pool. Congrats on catching this quickly and recommitting to the program. It will serve you well!

Chris

 

[ezchief]

Good job on using the processes.
Your pool will still consume about 2-4 ppm FC per day. So still add chlorine every day based on your testing.

Will do. I test FC, CC, and pH daily and will dose bleach as needed.

 

[Richard320]

I completely understand how it could happen. A few years back I replaced a lot of water to lower CH and of course, CYA dropped too. So I was able to use pucks. For several weeks I always had enough FC and I never needed to adjust pH. It was wonderful while it lasted.

Be aware that your pH will start rising again without the steady acidity of the pucks.

 

[ezchief]

Richard, thanks for that heads up. pH for the past few weeks was a consistent 7.6. That's a guess because it wasn't 7.5 or 7.8 based on the Taylor tf 100 kit I use. Those dang pucks worked great on pH.

I'll adapt and overcome.