New To Testing My Own Water

Jump to latest Follow Reply
P

pzloo

0
Jun 20, 2017
15
Pittsburgh, PA
Hi All,

I bought my dad's house from him 3 years ago, and with it came an in-ground pool. He never seemed to have trouble with it, but out of the past 3 summers with the pool, I have only had one summer where the water remained crystal clear all year. The other two I seem to have trouble with algae and cloudy water. When I opened the pool this year, the water had a green tint and tons of dirt on the bottom. I made what I believe are two mistakes - 1. i sent in my dolphin auto cleaner and 2. i went to the pool store for testing and chemicals.

Pretty sure the pool store fleeced me, as I dropped roughly $300 in chemicals and did not see any improvement whatsoever. After a week and a half of no improvement, I started reading this forum. I decided to slam my pool w. shock and clean the cartridges at least 2x a day. After about a week, while the water is not perfectly clear, I can finally see the bottom of the deep end.

After reading this forum, I decided to get my own test kit and ordered the Taylor K-2006. I just did my first test today, and here are the results:

Free Chlorine - 2.5ppm
Combined Chlorine: 3ppm
pH - 7.2
Alkalinity - 180ppm
Calcium Hardness - 300ppm
CYA - 50ppm

Free Chlorine:
-Based on the CYA chart, I need to keep my free chlorine around the 5 ppm range and/or drain roughly 20% of the pool and refill. I used to use the 3" tablets, but have read that switching to liquid chlorine is better for a cartridge filter and keeping hte CYA down, so I went and bought 128oz jugs of 10% bleach

Combined Chlorine:
-This seems abnormally high. Per the booklet, this should be .2ppm. Also according to the book, I need to hit it with approx. 80oz of 10% bleach solution to hit the breakpoint to reduce the combined chlorine to around .2ppm.

pH:
-It looks like I need to add about 80oz of soda ash to get the pH up to level.

Alkalinity:
-Not sure what to do to get this down in range. The pool calculator web page says to aerate pH to raise pH. Not sure what this means....

Calcium Hardness:
-Per the booklet, this seems to be in range.

Can anyone provide help on how I proceed next, or let me know if my numbers look completely off and if I should possibly retest? I followed everything to the letter, but like I mentioned above, the CC looks weirdly high to me.

Thank you for all of your help!
 
:wave: Welcome to TFP!!!

Glad you found us ... having your own test kit and trusting the results will save you a lot of $$$ going forward.

Sounds like you need to review the SLAM Process process and make sure you follow it until you pass the 3 criteria to stop.
At this point there is no need to raise the pH or really do anything besides raise the FC up to the shock level for your CYA (according to the [FC/CYA][/FC/CYA]) and maintain it there until you pass the SLAM.

TA is high, but nothing to worry about at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

Just noticed the CC is really high ... was it really 6 drops to clear the pink after adding the R-0003?
If that was right, solution is the same ... follow the SLAM process

- - - Updated - - -

EDIT again ... forget about breakpoint chlorination ... it is not really an accurate thing ... follow the SLAM process ;)
 
jblizzle said:
:wave: Welcome to TFP!!!

Glad you found us ... having your own test kit and trusting the results will save you a lot of $$$ going forward.

Sounds like you need to review the SLAM Process process and make sure you follow it until you pass the 3 criteria to stop.
At this point there is no need to raise the pH or really do anything besides raise the FC up to the shock level for your CYA (according to the [FC/CYA][/FC/CYA]) and maintain it there until you pass the SLAM.

TA is high, but nothing to worry about at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

Just noticed the CC is really high ... was it really 6 drops to clear the pink after adding the R-0003?
If that was right, solution is the same ... follow the SLAM process

- - - Updated - - -

EDIT again ... forget about breakpoint chlorination ... it is not really an accurate thing ... follow the SLAM process ;)
Click to expand...

i plan on retesting the CC tonight, but yes, it took six drops of the R-0003 to clear the pink solution.
 
pzloo said:
thanks for the input. i will SLAM the pool tonight. once i add the liquid chlorine, how long should i wait to test the fc levels?
Click to expand...

I am a novice as well so take this for what it's worth: test it frequently at first. The chlorine will disappear fastest right after you start the SLAM as it sanitizes your water. Here's how my SLAM went a few weeks ago; it took roughly 18 hours total. Thankfully my pool wasn't a disgusting swamp to start with.


  • 4-gallons of 10% chlorine at 9:30 PM. Starting levels: FC was 0.5, CC was 0.5.
  • 9:45 PM, FC 22, CC 2.
  • 10:52PM: FC 10, CC 1. **NOTE** FC 10 was way under my shock level, so in less than 1.5 hours I needed to add more chlorine. I dumped in 172oz of chlorine at this point.
  • 11:55 PM: FC 15, CC 0.5 (added 42oz chlorine)
  • 12:20 AM: FC 15.5, CC 0.5 (added 32oz chlorine)
  • 7:45 AM: FC 17.5, CC 0.5 (added 24oz chlorine and went to work, unable to check chlorine levels during the day)
  • 7:00 PM: FC 2.5, CC 0 (not done with SLAM, added 3 gallons of chlorine to get FC back to shock levels)
  • 9:35 PM: FC 16, CC 0
  • 7:15 AM: FC 16, CC 0.5, SLAM completed after passing OCLT (water was crystal clear, didn't lose any FC overnight, and CC was 0.5 or less).
 
i will start the SLAM process tonight. i am going to be out of town for a few days starting sat morning, so hopefully i can pass all three tests before then. i picked up some liquid chlorine at walmart today so i have 14 gallons worth.

for the four days i will be gone, do you all recommend just putting some tablets in a floating dispenser and letting it do it's thing? i plan on doing a partial drain and refill when i get back in order to get my cya down in the 30-40 range.
 
Does it make sense that i added 4.5 gallons of liq chlorine and my fc went down from 3.5 to 2.5; however, my combined chlorine is down to 1ppm...based on the original numbers w my fc at 3.5 adding 4.5 gallons of 10% lig chlorine should ha e jumped thw fc to 18?
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
jblizzle said:
What you observed is possible ... depends on what is in you water.

Keep adding chlorine until the FC rises and stabilizes for longer than a few minutes.
Click to expand...

Added 3 more gallons and the fc hit 15 but then dropped to 9 in 1.5 hrs. Added 2 more gallons to raise back up. We'll see what happens in the AM when i retest.

On a positive note the CC is not down from 3 to 1.5
 
still looking good. the fc is finally doing what i expect after adding the calculated amounts and testing 30 mins later. left for work with the fc at 19ppm and cc a bit over .5. going to have to pick up some more liq chlorine after work today and keep at it.

thanks again to all who have provided input. this site is great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply