Little backstory - I opened my pool last weekend with the plan to replace and redo all of my filter equipment and plumbing directly associated with it with year. I took the cover off (solid cover) and water looked pretty good. With the old equipment still in place I "wasted" a bunch of the nasty stuff out to the street, ran the bot for a bit to get the bad stuff out, and then dumped in a 5-gallon carboy and let the water circulate for a few hours. I wanted to do this so the water wasn't just sitting there while I was re-doing the equipment
Well, the equipment took me way longer than I anticipated and I just got done Friday night (6 days after opening it). So the water sat there almost a week. I let it run overnight with the filter going before bothering to do any more tests. Yesterday, after about 16 hours of running I did my first test. I do have a chlorinator (yea, yea, I know) which I left on full-open the whole time. I did a test at 3pm and then took it to the pool store to see what they said:
I originally thought I needed stabilizer because I measured it at less than 30 (even with the liquid all the way to the top of the vial, I could still barely see the dot). I was deathly afraid to add stablizer because I emptied 70% of my pool water last year to get rid of it. And since I still use a chlorinator for 75%+ of my chrlorination (I supplement with bleach), I really didn't want to have to add it. Since the pool store measured it at 40, I chose not to add any.
Before heading off to the pool store I cleaned out my baskets and backwashed and re-coated my filter (it was already 75% towards the cleaning level because of all the stuff it cleaned out). The pool store told me to dump in two 5-gallon carboys to get rid of the CC. Using pool path to check what my target shock FC should be, it said it should be 12 (at 30 ppm cya, or 16). And pool calculator told me I should need less than a single 5-gallon carboy to get to that. So I chose to just dump in 1 for now and check it later. That was at 4pm. We had a party to go to, so when I got home at 10 pm I checked it:
At 10pm (6 hours after dumping in 5 gallons of 12.5% hypochloride):
Granted, the sun was still out for a majority of that time so some of the FC would have been burned off. And if my CYA readings are right and I really do have < 30, possibly a lot of it?? Anyways, so I dumped in the other 5-gallon carboy and let it run for 2.5 hours before checking it again. Again, this is now 10pm and completely dark out. So at 12:30am I went out and checked it again:
UGH... I'm confused here because that 5-gallon carboy should have almost doubled that FC level. So thinking I wanted to get up to at least 16 FC I dumped all of what I had on hand, which was 4-bottles of 8.25%. Pool calc tells me 2 of them should have been able to achieve it but it seemed to only be half effective so I just dumped it all in. 9 hours later I tested. And ran a second test using the 0.5 method instead of the 0.2 method:
So, I tested CYA again, and again I still feel like it's <30. I'm not sure where I should go from here. It's full sun outside and not sure if I should be trying to maintain SLAM at this point, adding CYA (REALLY concerned with doing that), dumping more in after dark, etc. Please help!
p.s. I'm still not even sure what my pool volume is, which is another story all together: Can anyone help me determine gallons in this irregular pool?
Well, the equipment took me way longer than I anticipated and I just got done Friday night (6 days after opening it). So the water sat there almost a week. I let it run overnight with the filter going before bothering to do any more tests. Yesterday, after about 16 hours of running I did my first test. I do have a chlorinator (yea, yea, I know) which I left on full-open the whole time. I did a test at 3pm and then took it to the pool store to see what they said:
| Saturday 6/3 @ 3pm | ||
| my results | Pool store results | |
| FC | 0.8 | 0.0 |
| CC | 3.2 | 3.0 |
| pH | 7.6 | 7.8 |
| TA | 110.0 | 100.0 |
| CA | 270.0 | 400.0 |
| CYA | < 30 | 40.0 |
I originally thought I needed stabilizer because I measured it at less than 30 (even with the liquid all the way to the top of the vial, I could still barely see the dot). I was deathly afraid to add stablizer because I emptied 70% of my pool water last year to get rid of it. And since I still use a chlorinator for 75%+ of my chrlorination (I supplement with bleach), I really didn't want to have to add it. Since the pool store measured it at 40, I chose not to add any.
Before heading off to the pool store I cleaned out my baskets and backwashed and re-coated my filter (it was already 75% towards the cleaning level because of all the stuff it cleaned out). The pool store told me to dump in two 5-gallon carboys to get rid of the CC. Using pool path to check what my target shock FC should be, it said it should be 12 (at 30 ppm cya, or 16). And pool calculator told me I should need less than a single 5-gallon carboy to get to that. So I chose to just dump in 1 for now and check it later. That was at 4pm. We had a party to go to, so when I got home at 10 pm I checked it:
At 10pm (6 hours after dumping in 5 gallons of 12.5% hypochloride):
| Saturday 6/3 @ 10pm | |
| FC | 0.4 |
| CC | 0.6 |
Granted, the sun was still out for a majority of that time so some of the FC would have been burned off. And if my CYA readings are right and I really do have < 30, possibly a lot of it?? Anyways, so I dumped in the other 5-gallon carboy and let it run for 2.5 hours before checking it again. Again, this is now 10pm and completely dark out. So at 12:30am I went out and checked it again:
| Sunday 6/4 @ 12:30AM | |
| FC | 12.0 |
| CC | 1.0 |
UGH... I'm confused here because that 5-gallon carboy should have almost doubled that FC level. So thinking I wanted to get up to at least 16 FC I dumped all of what I had on hand, which was 4-bottles of 8.25%. Pool calc tells me 2 of them should have been able to achieve it but it seemed to only be half effective so I just dumped it all in. 9 hours later I tested. And ran a second test using the 0.5 method instead of the 0.2 method:
| Sunday 6/4 @ 9am | ||
| test1 | test2 (0.5 method) | |
| FC | 9.6 | 10.5 |
| CC | 0.4 | 0.5 |
| pH | 7.4 | |
| TA | 110.0 | |
| CA | 250.0 | |
| CYA | < 30 |
So, I tested CYA again, and again I still feel like it's <30. I'm not sure where I should go from here. It's full sun outside and not sure if I should be trying to maintain SLAM at this point, adding CYA (REALLY concerned with doing that), dumping more in after dark, etc. Please help!
p.s. I'm still not even sure what my pool volume is, which is another story all together: Can anyone help me determine gallons in this irregular pool?
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