Pollen and chlorine usage

[mikefamig]

I'm in Connecticut and have been adding 1 - 1.5 gallons per day of 12.5% chlorine to my 18k gallon pool. I completed a slam and had it down to 2ppm oclt and I'm still using 1 - 1.5 gallons/day. In addition to the pollen it has been raining almost every other day. What should I expect to be using when in full pollen season? I'd love to hear from some of you in Connecticut as to your chlorine demand this past month. It seems to me that it would be very difficult if not impossible to get a perfect slam with so much junk going into the water so I'm waiting for the pollen and rain to let up before doing another slam.

So how are you guys doing? Any better than me?

TIA, Mike.

I should have mentioned CYA is around 30. Everything else is in balance and water is crystal clear. I'll increase CYA a little when I get it cleaned up.

 

[ajw22]

1 to 1.5 gallons of 12.5% says you are using 7 to 10 ppm of chlorine a day. That is excessive.

Are you sure it is 12.5%?

2 ppm loss on the Overnight Chlorine Loss Test is not good. It should be 0 to .5 loss. Everything says you still have algae and need to follow the SLAM Process process step by step with no shortcuts until you meet the three exit criteria.

 

[mikefamig]

1 to 1.5 gallons of 12.5% says you are using 7 to 10 ppm of chlorine a day. That is excessive.

Are you sure it is 12.5%?

2 ppm loss on the Overnight Chlorine Loss Test is not good. It should be 0 to .5 loss. Everything says you still have algae and need to follow the SLAM Process process step by step with no shortcuts until you meet the three exit criteria.

Even with the pollen and rain? It seems to me that it may take a gallon a day to keep up with it all. Can I get a 0.0 - 0.5 oclt if stuff is falling into the water overnight? Is pollen in the air at night?

 

[ajw22]

Rain does not cause FC loss. Pollen will consume little if any FC. You are trying to rationalize away your algae problem.

 

[mikefamig]

I raided my FC to shock level again (>12ppm) and kept it there all day. It took over a gallon of chlorine to maiantain shock level for the day. Then I did an OCLT and it was perfecct with 0 loss.

Being that there was a lot of loss in the sunlight and none overnight I figured that my CYA was too low and a test proved that to be true. I'm thinking that the CYA test that I did was not accurate. I did add some stabilizer and was confident that the test showed 30ppm CYA but it is definitely low now.

I'm off to the pool store this morning to get some stabilizer.

Mike.

 

[jimbowrench]

Rain does not cause FC loss. Pollen will consume little if any FC. You are trying to rationalize away your algae problem.

The pollen from the ponderosa pines in my yard absolutely devours chlorine in my pool.

 

[mikefamig]

There is a row of large white pines near my pool and I get needles in the water from them. The wind blows a lot of stuff into the pool that effects chlorine along with the rain. Rain water is dirty in addition to and diluting all of the chemicals in the water.

Early spring in my back yard is very hard on chlorine every year and I've been caring for this pool since 1996. My chlorine usage is definitely higher in June than in July.

Mike.