PB Startup Phase - High FC

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HolliG

HolliG

0
Gold Supporter
Sep 4, 2017
45
Temecula, CA
We have had our new pool filled up for 22 days. We are still under the maintenance of our PB as we are in the “startup phase”. They have already added salt to our pool (which I fear is too high) but we are not able to use the SWCG due to a faulty sensor. They have contacted warranty to fix the SWCG - not sure with the pool temp in low 50’s it will even work in the first place. So right now our PB has been coming out to test and add appropriate MA and liquid chlorine. We had clearance to use the pool/spa as the levels were being monitored and we had no more dust when brushing the pool. We decided to use the spa over the holiday and didn’t have any irritation issues (maybe due to the CYA level and salt in the pool) but we now learned we should have checked the levels ourselves before entering. Checked levels tonight to play with my new TF-100 kit and couldn’t believe how high our FC levels were (FC: 23 and CC: 0.5) Why would they have added that much chlorine? Our SWCG hasn’t been on that we know of so assuming it was manually added in excess. I checked the CYA/Chlorine chart and saw it was still okay for us to use the spa bc we were lower than shock levels but still. Will the FC go down on its own and how long will that take? Can it hurt our new PebbleSheen being that high? Also our salt is above 4000. Is that a problem? Strip said 4,000 so I used the Taylor K-1766 NaCl testing kit to get a more specific reading (4,200 ppm).

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Holli,

To get a reading of 23 you would have had to use 46 drops of R-0871... Is that correct? The test uses a 10 ml sample, but if you used a 25 ml sample by mistake then the reading would only be 9.2 (.2 per drop)... I only ask, because high FC will mess up the pH test which appears to be normal.

Do you know how your pool builder is adding chlorine to your pool during this start up stage? Was he running the SWCG? If so at what % of output and how many hours a day?

The FC will come down on over time. In the summer it would only be a couple of days... this time a year it may take a week or more, maybe longer.

Most salt systems shut off once the water gets in the low 50's.. I find it best for me to just shut off the cell once the weather gets cold otherwise, the cell will intermittently run depending on how warm it gets each day. I just dose with Liquid Chlorine during the winter months. Does not take a lot as the pool does not use much FC when cold.

I also would not worry about high salt until next year when it is time to fire up the salt system.. I suspect by then it will have come down some.

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
Thanks Jim,

Yep! I added 46 drops to 10mL. Then I did the Taylor test one too (with the yellow colors - ours was not yellow it was a dark orange). Made my husband go out and get another sample and follow instructions on all of the tests (I’m a pharmacist and he’s a civil engineer so we have an okay level of intelligence to follow directions lol) so we could compare our readings. The pH was hard to decide bc my husband did his but he said his pink was more around 7.6 to 7.8 my sample was more around 7.5 to 7.6 range. Yes both normal readings.

PB as far as we know is using liquid chlorine. They just installed SWCG a week ago but it has a faulty sensor so it has been in off mode according to our app. There was a 1/2 day that my husband and I saw it was activated on our Jandy app and turned it off again. It had said 20% then 100%. It couldn’t have been on for more than 5 hrs and pool temp is 54 degrees.



Jimrahbe said:
Holli,

To get a reading of 23 you would have had to use 46 drops of R-0871... Is that correct? The test uses a 10 ml sample, but if you used a 25 ml sample by mistake then the reading would only be 9.2 (.2 per drop)... I only ask, because high FC will mess up the pH test which appears to be normal.

Do you know how your pool builder is adding chlorine to your pool during this start up stage? Was he running the SWCG? If so at what % of output and how many hours a day?

The FC will come down on over time. In the summer it would only be a couple of days... this time a year it may take a week or more, maybe longer.

Most salt systems shut off once the water gets in the low 50's.. I find it best for me to just shut off the cell once the weather gets cold otherwise, the cell will intermittently run depending on how warm it gets each day. I just dose with Liquid Chlorine during the winter months. Does not take a lot as the pool does not use much FC when cold.

I also would not worry about high salt until next year when it is time to fire up the salt system.. I suspect by then it will have come down some.

Thanks,

Jim R.
Click to expand...
 
Holli,

I was just making sure... not doubting your intelligence... :p

I'm really surprised that your pool builder added that much chlorine. :confused:

I also read your construction post.. Great looking pool and good job on upgrading to the 40K SWCG.

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
Oh I know, I was just teasing. ;) I questioned it myself too so that’s why I did the less drops color test to see what it revealed then had my husband get another sample and do the test himself too. It was the deepest color orange when that one test says it should be in the yellow range.

Have no clue why they added so much liquid chlorine or either our SWCG has been working and not showing it on in our aqualink app. Who knows. We texted the PB pool maintenance guy today to let him know our testing results. Hopefully he can shed some light as to how our levels got so darn high.

Glad to know the high chlorine and extra salt isn’t too big of a deal and we don’t have to drain water. Thank you so much for your help!! :)



Jimrahbe said:
Holli,

I was just making sure... not doubting your intelligence... :p

I'm really surprised that your pool builder added that much chlorine. :confused:

I also read your construction post.. Great looking pool and good job on upgrading to the 40K SWCG.

Thanks,

Jim R.
Click to expand...
 
Holli for the PH test do this for me:

-White something-I use a white plastic plate-to hold up behind the test tube.
-bight light to hold it under-I use my stove hood light as it is 60W and low enough to really shine good

Hold the PH tube and white something up about shoulder height. The ph tube should be held with a slight bend in the elbow. Move the plate back and forth until you see a good match. Let hubby do it this way and see what he sees. IF you still have some problems finding a good match you can try using one less drop of the red dye and see if that helps.

Are there any pucks/tablets in the tube for them? I can't remember if you have one or not.

Kim:kim:
 
It's still under the PB's control so it's still on them to fix anything. Personally speaking, I'd be ticked off with that much chlorine in the pool and the pool getting salt already. The National Plasterers Council (NPC) technical startup bulletin CLEARLY states that NO SALT is to be added prior to 28 days post plaster. There are very good technical/scientific reasons for this even though most old school PBs think their old wive's tales suffice for best practices...

Well, neither here nor there since there's no way to go back. Simply monitor the pool surface and make sure it is to your desired outcome then pay the PB his final cut and be done with them. Take care of your own pool and your own pool chemistry and you'll never have to rely on these supposed "professionals" again.

Good luck with your new pool and enjoy!
 
Oh we have had so many issues during this build that this just tops off the annoyance. Good thing I decided to go test out my kit even though we are under their chemistry control. They think the faukty sensor somehow started up the SWCG at times and it was set to 100%. I work 12 hr+ shifts so I don’t always log on to our app to see whats going on with the pool. I assumed the PB was maintaining it properly. We didn’t even know they were going to add in the salt that early. We saw them add it on our outdoor surveillance cameras. :( I was thinking it would be 30 days. It’s all just very frustrating at this point. I can’t want to be free from the PB. Hopefully tomorrow they come out and repair the sensor. Not sure why brand new equipment has these problems. :(


JoyfulNoise said:
It's still under the PB's control so it's still on them to fix anything. Personally speaking, I'd be ticked off with that much chlorine in the pool and the pool getting salt already. The National Plasterers Council (NPC) technical startup bulletin CLEARLY states that NO SALT is to be added prior to 28 days post plaster. There are very good technical/scientific reasons for this even though most old school PBs think their old wive's tales suffice for best practices...

Well, neither here nor there since there's no way to go back. Simply monitor the pool surface and make sure it is to your desired outcome then pay the PB his final cut and be done with them. Take care of your own pool and your own pool chemistry and you'll never have to rely on these supposed "professionals" again.

Good luck with your new pool and enjoy!
Click to expand...
 
731046EE-136F-452D-B087-68C6E0E0CACA.jpg

24 hours later! How did it go down in FC so fast? My husband went out to the same spot and got another arm length water sample to test tonight and we saw the dark orange wasn’t as dark as last night. So we decided to do the R-0870/R-0871 test again to get a specific value and only needed 31 drops in 10mL this time - so level of 15.5. Does it make sense to drop this fast? It was a sunny day today but cool and pool/spa not used. This is all confusing. We redid the test 3 times last night so 100% sure it was accurate. Tonight both tests show FC dramatically dropped which is good because 23 was really high.

We decided to test for CYA again - 70 and pH was 7.8.

Kim - no chlorine puck/tube feeder in our system.

Tried your recommendation and had an easier time reading the pH tonight. Thanks.
 

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Will do that tonight and first thing in the morning just out of curiosity. I can’t imagine alge or much stuff would have grown in 23 days with water in the low 50s and high levels of chlorine but no explanation as to how it went down so fast. The pool filter pump runs each day on a schedule so the samples should have been uniform throughout the pool.

I’m going to go out there right now and do another test just for the heck of it since last night we did it around 11:45pm.


kimkats said:
Holli lets do a OCLT as seen here:

Pool School - Perform the Overnight FC Loss Test (OCLT)

BUT the SWG has to be OFF. I don't have one so I will leave it up to you and hubby to figure out a way to keep it from coming on.

This may be a waste of time but better safe than sorry in my book :hug:


Kim:kim:
Click to expand...
 
The decrease is FC is not linear with time. The loss rate is proportional to its concentration (1st order reaction kinetics) and so the higher the concentration, the faster the loss. So if your FC is high it will degrade quickly.

You can certainly do the OCLT but it may just be fine to wait until the PB is out of the equation and you can take care of all this on your own. In 50F water, nothing is going to grow at any appreciable rate so you have plenty of time to deal with these issues.
 
As long as you are running your pump a few hours each day and brushing the dead areas of the pool every few days to a week, the water should be well distributed. A variable that occurs at higher FC testing is having put enough of the powder reagent in to the vial. One scoop is normally enough for 10 ppm or less, but above that it can take a bit more. There should be some undissolved grains of that reagent in your test mix before you start titrating with the liquid reagent.

Take care.
 
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