New house, new pool, and an uphill battle

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No, CYA isn’t going to do much to ph. So you’ll want to use the MA to lower ph. The reason you do that before SLAM is that ph test isn’t accurate when FC is high.
 
kmerkel said:
Maybe I read too much into funandsun's comment, but my interpretation was that once I got the greenery under control, the pH would come down naturally. I think I have some muriatic acid or the like somewhere, left behind by the previous owner.
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I think I was replying or thinking that I was replying to FC will come down naturally post SLAM as it burns off and is used up.


I am not aware of CYA lowering pH but no worries, good to experiment. It's your test kit, try things out.

You need to lower that pH with Muriatic Acid (I was told) high pH inhibits the effectiveness of the Chlorine at high pH levels, that is why we target 7.2, the lowest safe reading we can maintain.

The CYA protects the chlorine from the Sun, that is why you may read that some folks with a pool in direct sunlight all day will run a CYA of 50 or 60 vs me I can run 30-40 and be just fine.

So CYA protects the chlorine and lower pH gets the most out of the chlorine to fight the algae. Once you are in SLAM, your test of pH will be useless, so we get it set at 7.2 and forget it until we are done with the SLAM. Post SLAM you will address TA and CH if needed.
 
Thank you. That all makes sense, it just wasn't spelled out so succinctly elsewhere.

As of last check after adding some acid, the pH was down to about 7.5. I'm going to let it sit and recheck probably Saturday since tomorrow is supposed to bring terrible weather for May to the area - 40s and raining. That will also help me make sure I didn't over-compensate since I may have rushed the last pH test.
 
Excellent! You are on the right track!

Don’t hate me when I tell you we are expecting 90 degrees on Saturday...
 
Finally got the pH down to about 7.3-7.4. It took more acid than expected, probably due to old chemicals. I'm tempted to call it Good Enough and start the process. CYA is right on target at about 50. Thoughts?
 
kmerkel said:
According to the chart FC target is 20ppm, which running through Pool Math is 2 gallons of 12.5%.
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Got your picture already? The Before for this journey? Post it up. You are gonna wanna see it, trust me.

I say you are ready to go, I really would like just one more vote of confidence on that. I can't tell how picky they really are about the 7.2 vs .7.3-7.4.
 

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Yes... awesome!! Yep that sort of flat green, I had that too.

6_4_2017 Pool.jpg

I love this confidence "Might have gone over a bit with the chlorine (tested at 26ppm shortly after adding), but I figure it will be consumed quickly anyway so I'm not concerned."

You are right, you won't be that high for long, don't want to do it all the time obviously but YOU know why and that it isn't permanent!

Good stuff!
 
Week 1 progress. The pool is getting less green (and the background more green!), but not as quickly as I expected/hoped. Still checking and adjusting FC levels at least twice a day, and brushing at least once a day. Also adjusted the return jet for better circulation last week sometime.
 
When starting with a swamp - it will go much faster if you can test FC/dose LC every couple hours at the start. Eventually you can get down to 3 or 4 times per day.

Good luck.
 
kmerkel said:
Week 1 progress. The pool is getting less green (and the background more green!), but not as quickly as I expected/hoped. Still checking and adjusting FC levels at least twice a day, and brushing at least once a day. Also adjusted the return jet for better circulation last week sometime.
Click to expand...

The FC will drop VERY quickly when you're trying to clean up a swamp. Honestly I would recommend that you do a SLAM when you can babysit the pool pretty often, preferably overnight.

It will go much faster if you keep the FC levels at shock level constantly. This means checking the chlorine levels often.

The first time I ever ran a SLAM I made sure I had time to test the chlorine almost every hour for the first few hours, at the beginning. Mine didn't start out nearly as swampy as yours, so check these numbers out and see how fast the chlorine level dropped, then imagine how fast they're probably dropping on your pool. Before I started actually measuring FC levels, I poured in (3) gallons of 10% and (2) gallons of 8.25% chlorine one morning (which probably brought my FC levels to about 26), and by the evening it was back down to 0.5. So then I poured in another (4) gallons of 10% the next morning , and by that evening it was back down to 0.5 again. Then I actually started measuring...


  • 9:30PM, start by adding (4) gallons of 10% bleach, shooting for FC of 16.
  • 9:45PM: FC of 22 (overshot it a bit)
  • 10:50PM: FC of 10 (so it dropped by 50% in one hour)
  • Skipping a few tests and chlorine additions...
  • 7:45AM: FC of 17.5
  • 7PM: FC of 2.5 (dropping by almost 90% in 12 hours)


Moral of the story: the more often you can test the FC levels and make sure they're still in the shock zone, the faster it will go (especially in the beginning since the chlorine is consumed fastest then!) Your FC levels are probably dropping out of the shock zone within 1-2 hours of adding the chlorine, at which point your SLAM 'stops' until you add more chlorine.
 

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