New Liner, New Water, how to get Levels where needed

[PTizzle]

Hey Everyone! We had our pool liner replaced since when we bought the house the liner was ready to go. We refilled the pool and I tested the new water with the TF100 kit. Below are my results. What is the correct step for which levels to target correcting first before trying to get the others dialed in since each one interacts the other. The plan is to close the pool once the levels are all set. It doesn't help that we have extremely hard water in the area which I think the CH is so high with new water. Any help is greatly appreciated.

FC-0
PH-8.2
TA-470
CH-350
CYA- 0

 

[Mendy48]

Hello! Let's see . IMO

Pool temp 60 degrees or below.
Bring pH down between 7.4-7.6
Bring CYA up to 30 at least (maybe others do theirs different. It may not matter if you're closing your pool soon though. I'll let an expert chime in here shortly)
FC should be within target level. With a CYA of 30, your target FC should be between 4-6.

I'll let an expert chime in here shortly about your TA and CH because imo, your TA and CH should be within normal range.

It would be interesting to see what others recommend though. Excellent question.

 

[gonfishin]

I suspect your TA reading is high. Test it again and wipe the tip of the bottle (R-0009) between each drop. Static electricity can be present with this reagent causing the drops to be smaller than normal with a new test kit.

Are you getting ready to close or will you attempt to use the pool for a month or so? If closing, add chlorine to 5-10ppm and close. If swimming, you need CYA and chlorine. Reduce pH to 7.2 to 7.8.

You can't impact CH without finding a source of low CH water. My fill water CH is 350 so I try to harvest rain water to use for fill as much as possible.

TA will come down as you use acid to reduce pH. If you have to drain to close your pool, you might want to wait to deal with high TA next year because it'll likely be high again after you fill in the spring.

 

[PTizzle]

We plan to just close the pool. If that’s the case should I not even bother retesting and just put chlorine in? Should I still lower the PH even if just closing?

 

[ajw22]

I would add a bit of chlorine and Polyquat 60 and close the pool. You don’t want to add much chlorine with no CYA and bleach your new liner.

How_To_Use_Polyquat_60_in_Pool_Winterization.3F

You can lower your pH to 7.6.

is your TF-100 new?

 

[PTizzle]

Kit is not new. I used it before when opening the pool.earlier this year. I will try the method that you mentioned and test again. Thanks everyone for the advice.

 

[ajw22]

Kit is not new. I used it before when opening the pool.earlier this year. I will try the method that you mentioned and test again. Thanks everyone for the advice.

The reason I asked are these notes in the TA Test Directions...

Total Alkalinity

A drop-based test used to measure the alkalinity in water. Alkalinity helps serve as a … Read more…

www.troublefreepool.com

• Sometimes a static electric charge can build up on the R-0009 dropper bottle tip, causing the drops to be smaller than usual and making the test read higher than actual. You can prevent this by wipping the tip of the dropper bottle with a damp cloth or tissue before you start and after each drop.
• Hold the dropper bottles vertically and squeeze gently, so that drops come out slowly and seem to hang on the tip of the dropper bottle for a moment before falling.
• If you expect that your TA level is extremely high, you can do the test so that each drop is 25, instead of 10, to speed up the process and save on reagent usage. Use 10 ml of pool water, 1 drop of R-0007, 3 drops of R-0008, and multiply the number of drops of R-0009 by 25 to get your TA level.