Learning the Ropes

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quizzicalchimp

Member
Jun 2, 2021
6
Fort Worth, TX
Just finished a gorgeous pool build on a new home about 2 months ago. Pool Builder advised the only maintenance we needed was to check and balance pH weekly, vacuum, and brush. Check the stabilizer and salt levels monthly. They gave this cute pentair test kit that tests pH and TC levels. My gut sent warning flags all over the place but my wife was committed to maintaining the pool and the info came from the "experts"... so I said, what the heck - can spend my focus elsewhere.

Fast forward 2 months and.....

We have been vacuuming up a ton of "dirt" that we thought was being blown in from the backyard which has no grass yet. So we kept vacuuming it up daily and put sod down.

No dice..... Then it dawned on us as we saw brown "stains" or "marks" that would not brush off that the dirt that kept "coming back" was Algae. I shocked with Yellow-Out and some Calcium Hypochlorite (yay pool supply stores). Water cleared up and dirt has mostly subsided - but stains remain and we have some bugs swimming in the pool now. Clear sign that we're not done.

Found this site and have been reading non-stop the past three days and just got my test kit in today.

So, here's where my numbers stand:

FC - 2.0
TC - 3.0
pH - 8.0
TA - 120
CYA - 58
CH - 600

I've added muriatic acid to address the pH.

I think my plan of attack is:

- Drain/Refill 25% of pool to address CH
- Add CYA to get back to 60+
- Balance pH to 7.2
- Shutoff salt cell and start my SLAM

Is there any way to address the CH without a drain/refill? I assume my high CH is from the Calcium Hypochlorite shock used and that my fill water is much better.

I'm starting to understand all of the chemistry for doing this but still quite overwhelmed.....
 
Hey quizzical and Welcome !! Dang you’ve been doing your homework for sure. Way to go.

Couple of pointers are the CYA always rounds up to the next 10. You may think you can see the different of a 55 (?) but you can’t. So you already have a 60. 70 is probably bare minimum this time of year in TX (wait until after SLAM). Once the season gets ramped up you will probably need 80.

The only way to remove Calcium/CYA/Salt with any speed is to drain. Rain will help if it overflows your pool but you’ll need 48 inches to overflow 2/3 of it. (Or whatever the math works out to for your specific pool). ‘splash out’ and subsequent refilling *helps* too but I feel it’s overstated. Any idea how many cannonballs it takes to give you a 25% drain. Yeah. Don't hold your breath. :)


A 600 CH isn’t bad although it’s on the high end of the scale. You also won’t add any more now that you are here. If your CSI is ok per pool math you may rethink the draining.

So. Lower the PH and SLaM away, or drain / PH / SLAM. Either way you’ve met a small army of helpful folks here. Glad to have you
 
great callouts. I was just sitting thinking about how accurate my CYA test was compared to the titrations 🙃

I have some scale so I'm going to address my CH first so I don't make it worse during the SLAM.

My fill water is 100 CH so I'm good there. Not going to do a full 25% drain and fill, just whatever I can get done today. Maybe 15% if I'm lucky?
 
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