First time poster here! I've knew absolutely NOTHING about pools and pool chemistry until my husband threw his hands up in the air about two months ago, and transferred the responsibility to me. Bought a Taylor K2005 test kit, and got to work testing and educating myself. Everything with our pool chemistry was off. Turns out he was relying solely on test strips that had been stored incorrectly, so it was bad. The pool looked great (crystal clear), but otherwise it was not okay. Here is what I've done in the last couple months:
1. CYA was off the charts high (300+ ppm). We have a 12,000-gallon inground outdoor pool with a vinyl liner. We are on a steep slope and draining was not an option for us unless we want to flood the neighbors below or the apple orchard across the street. So BioActive it was, absent any other remedy I could find. It took 11 bags over seven weeks. It came down very slowly until miraculously last week, it finally dropped from 140 to 40 overnight.
2. In the meantime, I lowered the alkalinity using muriatic acid. That took about a week and was in normal range. The pH followed suit with a minor chemical adjustment.
3. Calcium hardness was next. It was a little low, and was easy to raise.
4. We clearly had a chlorine demand issue, so I researched and started SLAMing the pool once the CYA was low enough. I used the TFP chart along with sodium hypo (varying from 7.5-12% depending on what we could get our hands on in our little town in North Central Washington). We have been scrubbing, vacuuming, skimming, changing and cleaning the cartridge filters, and adding water as needed. The last two days, I've been checking the FC at least every two hours and adding more chlorine to stay at SLAM level. This morning, we had chlorine loss overnight from 14 down to 5 ppm, but TC and FC were identical, so less than 0.5 CC. At that lower level of chlorine, I decided to double-check CYA, and it raised from 30-50. I adjusted the SLAM level accordingly and am going to keep after it today. I'm afraid of stopping too soon and having to start over. The pool is definitely milky, but slowly getting clearer.
Hopefully I'm doing everything right. It definitely is taking a long time, but it seems like my patience is paying off? I'm afraid of stopping the SLAM too soon, so any advice/direction from experienced pool folks would be much appreciated. I'd like to know how long it might take for the FC to drop to an acceptable level and the water to completely clear. I've got a small human coming to swim in the pool this Saturday, but only if everything is healthy, balanced, and safe.
1. CYA was off the charts high (300+ ppm). We have a 12,000-gallon inground outdoor pool with a vinyl liner. We are on a steep slope and draining was not an option for us unless we want to flood the neighbors below or the apple orchard across the street. So BioActive it was, absent any other remedy I could find. It took 11 bags over seven weeks. It came down very slowly until miraculously last week, it finally dropped from 140 to 40 overnight.
2. In the meantime, I lowered the alkalinity using muriatic acid. That took about a week and was in normal range. The pH followed suit with a minor chemical adjustment.
3. Calcium hardness was next. It was a little low, and was easy to raise.
4. We clearly had a chlorine demand issue, so I researched and started SLAMing the pool once the CYA was low enough. I used the TFP chart along with sodium hypo (varying from 7.5-12% depending on what we could get our hands on in our little town in North Central Washington). We have been scrubbing, vacuuming, skimming, changing and cleaning the cartridge filters, and adding water as needed. The last two days, I've been checking the FC at least every two hours and adding more chlorine to stay at SLAM level. This morning, we had chlorine loss overnight from 14 down to 5 ppm, but TC and FC were identical, so less than 0.5 CC. At that lower level of chlorine, I decided to double-check CYA, and it raised from 30-50. I adjusted the SLAM level accordingly and am going to keep after it today. I'm afraid of stopping too soon and having to start over. The pool is definitely milky, but slowly getting clearer.
Hopefully I'm doing everything right. It definitely is taking a long time, but it seems like my patience is paying off? I'm afraid of stopping the SLAM too soon, so any advice/direction from experienced pool folks would be much appreciated. I'd like to know how long it might take for the FC to drop to an acceptable level and the water to completely clear. I've got a small human coming to swim in the pool this Saturday, but only if everything is healthy, balanced, and safe.
