Recommended Levels?- Trouble Free vs Pentair

[davedive]

Hi just trying to get things good before I take my first dive in. Water is already 68F here in the Northeast! Was checking the chemicals, looking at recommended levels and found a pretty big difference between the levels recommended by Trouble Free (TF) and those from my Pentair Intellichlor manual (PA). Any guidance regarding which to follow?
TA: TF recommends avg. 70, PA recommends avg. 100
CH: TF recommends avg. 450, PA recommends avg. 300
CYA: TF recommends avg. 75, PA recommends avg. 40
Thanks!

 

[ajw22]

Guidance is to follow TF recommended levels which is based on actual experience of hundreds of thousands of members.

Pentair recommendations have not changed since last century.

 

[davedive]

Guidance is to follow TF recommended levels which is based on actual experience of hundreds of thousands of members.

Excellent! Thank you! In that case my chemistry is looking pretty good. I'm low on my TA but much closer than if I followed Pentair.

 

[ajw22]

What is your TA and pH?

TA is rarely too low.

 

[davedive]

Here is what I measured this AM with the pool water @ 68F and having been opened about 8 days ago
FC- 5 (waiting for it to go down)
CC- ?
pH- 7.0 (expecting this to climb)
TA- 50
CH- 450 (but my regents are a bit old- getting fresh ones)
CYA- 70
Salt- 2840 (will be slowly dumping in more salt to reach 3600 but taking it slow)
Water temperature- 68F

 

[ajw22]

Leave your pH and TA alone. Let it be nice and stable and don’t poke it with any chemicals. Your pH should rise slowly over time.

FC of 5 is the bottom of the range for CYA 70. I would run it more around 8.

The Free Chlorine and Cyanuric Acid Relationship

Managing your cyanuric acid and Free Chlorine levels is key to stabilizing your pool. Learn how these two items affect each other.

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[davedive]

ajw22- great! happy not to buy or dump in more chemicals. If I want to get the FC up though I do need to add salt because the SWG will not go on until I get the level up.
Thanks

 

[Jimrahbe]

Dave,

It would not hurt to add more salt, but the cell will work just fine when the salt level is 2800 or above..

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[RLP]

Adjust the level of FC with liquid chlorine.

Use the SWCG to maintain that level.

 

[ajw22]

If I want to get the FC up though I do need to add salt because the SWG will not go on until I get the level up.

How did the FC of 5ppm get into the water?

 

[davedive]

How did the FC of 5ppm get into the water?

When they opened the pool (around 5/8) they must have dumped in some chemicals. It was even higher until 2 days ago they came back and I think dumped more things in and this is where we are now. I can always pour in liquid bleach to get it up a bit and then let the SWG take over.

 

[ajw22]

I can always pour in liquid bleach to get it up a bit and then let the SWG take over.

Do that.