Hello, and thank you in advance for your help. I just had a pool installed and I'm trying to figure things out with the water chemistry.
Test results (K-2006 Kit):
pH: 7.3
Total Alk: 60
Calcium Hardness: 50
SI: -1.2
FC: 1.4
CC: 0.2
CYA: No reading (I asked a pool place to calculate stabilizer required to reach 30 and I'm adding it right now with the sock method)
Pool is 8600 gallons 18' diameter with a sand filter. There seems to be plenty (maybe excessive) power in the pump/filter as the return is extremely strong and the water circulates very well.
We filled it last Wednesday and the pH was low according to the cheap test kit so I web surfed and added 2 pounds of baking soda. (I see that wasn't correct now that I found this site.)
Water was clear, but when we turned the pump on for the first time it blew tons of cloudy sediment into the pool. I assume that might be common for a brand new sand filter? It doesn't seem to be blowing anything out now. (It lasted a couple of minutes like that, enough to make the pool very cloudy.)
Anyway, I've been running the filter and the cloudiness has only cleared up slightly. I've shocked it twice just to get chlorine in it until my kit arrived. I also have a floating chlorine tab thing bobbing around with one tablet it in. (I will stop this once I get going on liquid chlorine because I don't want to keep adding CYA.)
Today I added 1 cup of DE through the skimmer as per instructions on this site hoping it would help.
A few questions:
1) Any suggestions to help clear the water?
2) Do the test numbers look ok?
3) The SI suggests the water is out of balance, but I'm not sure what to do to fix it.
4) The FC is in the "ok" zone on the cheap tests kits and per the pool store, but per the chart I found in pool school once the CYA is at 30 my target FC should be 4-6 - which is above the "safe" zones according to other web searches. Am I reading something wrong?
Test results (K-2006 Kit):
pH: 7.3
Total Alk: 60
Calcium Hardness: 50
SI: -1.2
FC: 1.4
CC: 0.2
CYA: No reading (I asked a pool place to calculate stabilizer required to reach 30 and I'm adding it right now with the sock method)
Pool is 8600 gallons 18' diameter with a sand filter. There seems to be plenty (maybe excessive) power in the pump/filter as the return is extremely strong and the water circulates very well.
We filled it last Wednesday and the pH was low according to the cheap test kit so I web surfed and added 2 pounds of baking soda. (I see that wasn't correct now that I found this site.)
Water was clear, but when we turned the pump on for the first time it blew tons of cloudy sediment into the pool. I assume that might be common for a brand new sand filter? It doesn't seem to be blowing anything out now. (It lasted a couple of minutes like that, enough to make the pool very cloudy.)
Anyway, I've been running the filter and the cloudiness has only cleared up slightly. I've shocked it twice just to get chlorine in it until my kit arrived. I also have a floating chlorine tab thing bobbing around with one tablet it in. (I will stop this once I get going on liquid chlorine because I don't want to keep adding CYA.)
Today I added 1 cup of DE through the skimmer as per instructions on this site hoping it would help.
A few questions:
1) Any suggestions to help clear the water?
2) Do the test numbers look ok?
3) The SI suggests the water is out of balance, but I'm not sure what to do to fix it.
4) The FC is in the "ok" zone on the cheap tests kits and per the pool store, but per the chart I found in pool school once the CYA is at 30 my target FC should be 4-6 - which is above the "safe" zones according to other web searches. Am I reading something wrong?