danobrien, what eventually did you do to resolve your chlorine levels? Did they eventually come down on their own or did you need to drain? I’m fighting the same issue and starting the process of exchanging water
Jacks Magic Stain Solution 2 Recovery
- Thread starter JeanZ1
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calinb
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I ran the Jack's #2 treatment for about 10 weeks late last season. Then I balanced and closed the pool in December but had zero FC in testing. (Tests reported all Cl as combined.) I opened to a green pool about a month and a half ago, which was abnormal. FC is very gradually coming back but it's taking far longer than Jack claims! I'm also convinced that chlorine levels need to be higher than normal, due to the reduced effectiveness of the bound chlorine form the Jack's sulfamic acid treatment, or I get algae. How much higher? I don't really know but I definitely need to use use the higher "target" end of the TFP recommendations as a minimum! Jack says use OTO test but both OTO and FAS-DPD tests are much more timing sensitive than normal too (color very strongly depends on timing during the test for both OTO and FAS-DPD).
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Thanks, I have been in a similar cycle for a few months where my Cl almost all turns to CC within a day or two after adding. It only leaves a residual of about 0.8ppm FC, with CC > 10ppm. At one point a couple months ago I had the thought of adding a lot of chlorine (5 gal) to break it, but this did not work.. just gave me very very high CC which FAS-DPD test showed 110ppm at peak. Over 4 weeks, that slowly came back down to around 10ppm CC, but the pool will still not maintain FC. I was just curious to f you were ever able to get out of the cycle and restore FC levels. Sound like not so much....
terrible product after effects with no end in sight. I’d drain it and start fresh if only I weren’t worried about my inground fiberglass pool getting damaged in the process
terrible product after effects with no end in sight. I’d drain it and start fresh if only I weren’t worried about my inground fiberglass pool getting damaged in the process
calinb
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It's getting there (CC continues to drop), but I started the treatment 10 months ago! I used 20 lbs of sulfamic acid / #2 in a 17,500 gal. pool instead of the recommended 17.5 lbs so my dosage was a little high, but not that much higher than recommended so I don't think that's my problem.
My guess is that cold water and cloudy weather slows the breakdown of the sulfamic acid-bound chlorine. We've had very little warm and sunny weather this year in N. Idaho and I observed that the CC readings didn't change significantly between closing and opening either. (There's thick ice over the pool for much of the winter here.) In fact, I'd guess that the only CC reduction upon opening that I measured was due to dilution after returning the water level to normal. (I drain down something close to 10% of the pool's volume for closing.)
Now the sun is back out again and CC was dropping last I checked so maybe it takes sun, warmth, AND free chlorine to break down the Jack's #2 chlorine lock. Last I checked (as best as I could check with the timing-dependent FAS-DPD test for sulfamic acid bound chlorine), my FC and CC were about equal. Now that I have at least decent FC showing, I'm just going by the FC results of FAS-DPD testing, which is not dependent on timing--at least not significantly. I usually don't even bother to add DPD test reagent R-0003 to check for CC now. Hopefully the diagnostic value of that part of the test will eventually return completely. I'm guessing around closing time (one full year after treatment began)! In the early stages of the chlorine lock, I recommend the OTO test over FAS-DPD (even if you have to dilute the OTO sample to get "on scale") but no test works very well during the early post-treatment stages, due to the abnormally high timing sensitivity of all tests.
I installed an SWG this year and my CYA is 70. I'm using the TFP calculator's SWG recommendation of 5 ppm FC target as my MININUM. The TFP non-SWG target recommended range is 8-10 ppm FC, so 10 ppm is the maximum I've adopted--at least until my false CC FAS-DPD numbers go away. I've had two algae outbreaks this year, which I've never had previously, but using 5 ppm to 10 ppm FC on the FAS-DPD test and the SWG seems to be working for me now. If you still have very low FC readings, I recommend keeping your TC a bit higher than your normal FC levels until FC returns to something closer to normal. My guess is roughly halfway between normal max target and SLAM should work. Of course mileage always varies between pools!
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calinb
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Okay guys. My CC is finally back to zero! It's been nearly 10 months since I started the treatment. I checked it last night and again this AM and it's zero. It fell fast (relatively) once the sun came out and water warmed-up. The water is about 84 F now. We had cloudy, weather and a cool and cloudy spring and cool and cloudy early summer here. The CC reading just about came to a standstill during off-season weather, it seems but the last 4 or 5 ppm of CC vanished within a couple of weeks.
Subjectively (there's no easy way to measure and photos are very lighting and conditions dependent), I'd say that my light gray-ish copper stains are about 75% lighter than before the treatment (or maybe only 50% lighter, worst case, based on my memory--it's hard to say). They were very old stains and apparently, very well "set." Thirty to forty-five seconds treatment duration during the Jack's #2 test did not fully remove the test area stain either, and I left it on for the full 45 seconds. Matt told me that the timing is intended to predict and represent the level of the eventual full treatment result, which I'd say it accomplished quite accurately and the test results were good enough to motivate me to attempt the lengthy treatment. If I left the test sulfamic acid on the Gunite for 15 minutes or more, the stain was fully removed so spot treatment appears to work even better for small stain areas .
I wonder what would happen if the full treatment dose were sprinkled (or delivered via PVC pipe) onto the problem areas only and then left to sit with the pump off and the water still for a good while before stirring up the pool and finishing the test as prescribed.
I"m curious. How did your stains turn out?
Oh well. I'll probably never know, because I don't think I'll go through it again!
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