Liquid Chlorine Daily Use Questions

[survivalcar]

I'm trying to get my head around how one would manage a pool daily with bleach or liquid chlorine. Is it just a matter of checking and adding it when it's needed? What does that amount to, like in gallons/week with a 30,000 gallon pool? And yes, we do live in New England and we drain a lot of water before closing the pool every winter. It seems like a bucket of those tabs goes a long way and I'm not sure I have the time to go buy 10 gallons of bleach every week.

And how come after using those things for 10+ years, when I opened the pool this year, there wasn't any CYA at all? I thought it couldn't go down except for draining.

 

[mknauss]

For daily maintenance it is recommended to use liquid chlorine. How much you will need depends on your CYA, your climate, your pool use, and your pool size. Most pools consume 2-4 ppm FC per day. Pool School - How to Chlorinate Your Pool

CYA during the winter has been known to disappear due to a bacteria that eats the CYA and whose by-product is ammonia. It takes large amounts of chlorine to clear the pool when this happens. The CYA can also lower when winterizing a pool as you drain some water and then during the winter snow melt and/or rain may require draining. All that dilutes the CYA. It may not be zero, but it has fallen below the level that can be tested (20 - 30 ppm).

How do you test your pool water? Can you post up a full set of test results?

Take care.

 

[survivalcar]

Thanks.

Prior to coming here I had a simple 2-tube tester that needed 5 drops to test for chlorine, 5 drops for pH. I now have the big Taylor test kit and since I started SLAMming I'm running low on a lot of the agents.

I'll go out and test after this thunderstorm moves through, but I've posted here about my difficulty in ascertaining the CYA. Using the Taylor kit, I can't really tell if it's 60 or 70, and using the strips (which I know are inaccurate) it seems to be in the color range denoted by "30-50". I was SLAMming the pool for two weeks with the assumption that my CYA was 60, and it really didn't clear up until I brought the FC up to 28, the amount corresponding to a CYA of 70. Now whether that's because it was just at the end of its clean-up or because it actually needed to be 28, I don't know.

I really had no idea the tabs raised the CYA but my whole reason for coming here initially is that the water wouldn't hold chlorine. That hadn't happened in all the time I've lived here and if I can avoid the "spiraling" again then it's probably worth going full liquid chlorine. I remember from SLAMming that 1 gallon of bleach raises the FC in a 30,000 gallon pool by 2 ppm, so my rough estimate is that the pool would need between 1 and 2 gallons of bleach a day, or between 0.5 and 1 liquid chlorine. That's a lot of hauling, not to mention like close to $4/day in chlorine.

 

[mknauss]

Once you successfully complete the SLAM, your pool will consume 2-4 ppm of FC per day, typically. High bather use, large organic loads, etc can change that.

You will need to add to the pool what is necessary to maintain it sanitary and algae free. Once your CYA hits 50 or so, your only real choices are liquid chlorine or a SWCG.