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Tuckerclan said:
Is there a better test for CYA than the tf 100 kit can do?
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No there is not.
When you do the CYA test, try this next time.

Once you have your solution ready, back to the sun, etc. Fill the vial to a line, say 80, lower the vial to your waist level and glance for the dot, you see it, add solution to the 70 line, glance, see it, repeat until you no longer see it with a glance. Then use the CYA value one step above the line you read. So if you stopped at 50, use 60 ppm CYA.

The vial is in logarithmic scale. So it is not viable to interpolate between the lines. Just use the whole numbers, such as 50, 40, 30, ....
 
Thank you and everybody else who is helping me learn this pool stuff. How often do you need to add chlorine? Daily every other day? Obviously I will test it daily just need a heads up on how much chlorine I should have on hand. Should it be added at night so nobody gets any ill effects?
 
Okay, please understand I don't know much about pool ownership. I got my pool late last year I had been using 5 to 6 tablets a week maintaining a 3.5 chlorine level. My water was clear and I had no mold or algae. My CYA levels were high, but the chlorine still seemed to be doing the trick. A 40lb tub of tablets cost me $40. Less than a tub a month. Now I'm using liquid chlorine trying to maintain the recommended chlorine level of 7 - 9. Switched out about 1/3 of my water and I'm going through at least a gallon every 2 days of $4 a bottle chlorine. So far in a half of a month I'm into $30 of chlorine, 2 pairs of pants with bleach stains, a spotted patio (where I spilled some chlorine trying to get that stupid tab out to pour it) and 7 empty plastic bottles to dispose of. Just trying to figure out when the savings start also adding in the $125 TF100 kit with speedstir. Not complaining, just explaining. What am I doing wrong?
 
Well, now your pool is actually sanitized properly when prior it was not, regardless if you got algae or not. You will not have to potentially fight algae later in the season. You will not have to replace water.

I think you are comparing a properly maintained pool to one that might have just scraped by and looked fairly clear, but may not have actually been safe to prevent disease transmission.

You are welcome to use tablets if you can maintain the proper FC / CYA ratio.
 
I think of it like brushing/flossing your teeth daily. It may cost a bit for those supplies like a brush, paste, floss. And then think, how is this better?, this stuff costs money. But what you haven't accounted for is that you are doing preventative maintenance. You won't have to make extra trips to the dentist and get that expensive filling down the road.

For the pool, you are making it as clean and sanitary as possible. In a couple of months, when your friends are dealing with cloudy or green pools, can't swim, buying all sorts of chemicals, they will ask you "wow, your pool looks great, what do you do?, it must be really hard or expensive..." They will complain how much $$$ they dumped at the pool store and you can just chuckle at them....
Also, don't do pool maintenance in your good clothes. Your pool doesn't care what you look like.
Open the bottle seal when the bottle is on a table or in your kitchen sink or in the pool. If in the kitchen, poke the seal with a knife or something. It doesn't need to be fancy or pretty.
 
I laugh at myself because I always seem to find a way to make things harder. That stupid tab (pull here to open) either breaks or you use so much force , as I did, the jug flies off the table and onto the patio. :rolleyes: I have so much confidence in my abilities that I check my oil in a suit, paint a wall in my good clothes and pour bleach in a pool without abandon, bleaching my pants, towels, bathmat, you name it. If you can't tell from my avatar, my pool is surrounded by trees and a plethora of garden plants, that my wife says I need to learn to maintain. Every day leaves, sticks, seeds and bugs must be cleaned out of the pool. Everytime it rains here I'm scooping out 3 to 4 pounds of worms out of the same. The yard is 3 times larger than our old house and has a big hill that I must push the mower up a couple of times each week. I thought retirement was going to be easier than a 40 hour work week. Geez, the problems of living at the top of the mountain, in other words, I shouldn't be complaining about any of it. I will stick with the new routine for now and hope it levels off a little. I do actually enjoy cleaning the pool ... very Zen.
1 new question .... I usually put a filter sock in the pump basket when vacuuming out the worms so they don't go through the filter. Could I just turn the filter to waste discharge and vacuum them right out the discharge hose? Does it bypass the filter entirely? Also should I use a sand filter cleaner liquid? I don't know when the sand was changed last.
 
Tuckerclan - you can vacuum to waste and it would bypass the filter, but it won't bypass the filter basket. And you don't want to do without the filter basket because then you'll have chopped up worms in your impeller....

I did learn to use the leaf rake/skimmer to get the worms off the bottom. Easier than vacuuming in my opinion!

I wouldn't mess with sand filter cleaner liquid. If anything you could deep clean the sand like shown in this thread:

Deep Cleaning a Sand Filter

This post will walk you through the anatomy of a sand filter, and then provide a video at the end for how to deep clean your sand filter. The filter used in the photos and videos is a Hayward S180T top mount sand filter. The images are of a similar filter. Obviously not all filters are...
www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com
 

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I was reading that exact post when your reply came through. I am a little intimidated in trying the deep cleaning because all the pipes are fitted tight and there are no couplers. I could do some real damage real fast.
 
Yeah, you would want to add some unions in so you can take it apart without cutting all of the pipes.

I don't know what's in those filter cleaner liquids and I would be afraid to use them myself.
 
I thought by replacing a third of my water, changing to liquid bleach and with all the rain we have had after 2 months my cya would go down. Guess not. To lower my level halfway I would imagine I will have to rent a pump or something. How do you normally do it?
 
I exchange my water. It takes more time. If you are unconcerned with ground water levels, draining and refill is easier.

You can exchange some water without draining.

If you place a low volume sub pump in the deep end and pull water from there while adding water in the shallow end (through a skimmer or into a bucket on a step so you lessen the water disturbance) you can do a fairly efficient exchange. That is assuming the water you are filling with is the same temperature or warmer than your pool water. If your fill water is much cooler than your pool water, then switch it. Add the water to the deep end (hose on bottom) and pull water from the top step.

The location of the pump and fill hose may change if you have salt water, high calcium, etc.
In my pool, with saltwater and high calcium when I drain, I put the pump in the deep end and hose in shallow end. The water in the pool weighs more per unit volume than the fill water from the hose.

Be sure to balance the water out and water in so the pool level stays the same. Also be sure your pool pump is disabled during this process. Once started do not stop until you have exchanged the amount of water you wish.
 
Read the exchange process. You do not use your pool pump.

For drain, you are better off to rent a high powered pump from Home Depot, etc and do it in a few hours.
 

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