Recovering from runoff in pool - need help interpreting this

[maynard001]

We had over 8" of rain in a few hours the weekend of 6/8. It turned my lovely crystal clear pool into this:


My treatment plan was to run the pool pump 24x7, and dump about 10 gallons of bleach into the pool to kill everything. My FC levels are slowly coming down and the water is clearing up, but i need help interpreting some of these readings. I got a Taylor K-2006 test kit for the first time and have moved away from the strips.

This is what it looks like now:


So while the water "looks" good, i'm concerned about some of my readings:

pH - 8.0
FC - 28 (i expected this to be high due to the SLAM i started 10 days ago)
TA - ? (My sample turns from green to clear after around 7 drops using the high alkalinity sample size. I added drops all the way to 50 and the sample never turned red...it just got the color of apple cider vinegar, see below). Does this mean that my alkalinity is truly off the charts? Or should I count the drops from when it goes from green to the color in the pic?

Calcium Hardness - 150

CYA - I don't know how this can be right. I've owned this pool for 6 years and have never added CYA until last week when I began the SLAM process. I added
12lbs. of CYA to my 24,000g pool according to what Pool Math told me. Is 12lbs enough to take my pool from effectively zero to off the charts?






Sorry for the long-winded post. The pool has essentially been "hands-off" for me over the past 6 years. This is the first time i've had to deal with something of this magnitude.

-Jason

 

[Richard320]

The pH test is going to read falsely high at your FC level. That's a given. A known fact. When FC dips below 10 it will be accurate again.

The TA test can shift from green> pink to blue> yellow at high FC. Sounds like your TA is 70 ish. Which is fine.

The CYA.... you probably have been adding it. Your CH is too low for you to have been chlorinating with Cal-hypo, and you'd have gotten tired of the bleach loss if you used bleach with no CYA, so I suspect you've been using trichlor pucks to chlorinate and they add a lot of CYA. Dichlor "shock"does too.

And guess what? The way to remove CYA is by water replacement. Run the dilution test, Step 8 here: CYA - Cyanuric Acid Test - Trouble Free Pool It'll get you closer to reality than what you have now.

 

[maynard001]

Thanks Richard. I feel better about the pH and TA tests now. I have an IC40 Intellichlor SWG. The only things I've added to my pool over the years have been bags of salt and muriatic acid. I've adjusted the output on my SWG from 20% - 60% from time to time depending on my FC levels. I've never bought CYA until last week.

Is there another reason that my test would be showing over 100 for CYA?

 

[mknauss]

You ran with 0 CYA in the past? That is not really possible as the FC your SWCG would be making would be burned off by the sun immediately.

 

[maynard001]

So, I ran the dilution test as instructed and get about 120 (60 x 2) CYA. I guess it really is high. I forgot to mention earlier that I used to add 2lbs of Clorox shock once a week as well. I think that may have dichlor in it...which Richard alluded to in his response. So I guess my CYA may have been low, but wasn't zero as I had thought.

So i'll drain some water and add fresh to get my CYA down. The other measurement that looks way out of whack is my Calcium Hardness. Is Pool Math is telling me I need 50lbs of it to go from 150 to 450. Is there a cheaper alternative than the stuff at the pool store?

 

[Teald024]

The other measurement that looks way out of whack is my Calcium Hardness. Is Pool Math is telling me I need 50lbs of it to go from 150 to 450. Is there a cheaper alternative than the stuff at the pool store?

What is the CH of your tap water?
to raise CH, you can use common calcium chloride (snow melt pellets) available at many hardware stores. May be a bit more difficult to find this time of year. You may need to ask for it as it may be in the back. Look for 100% calcium chlorine, with no special adders or fillers. Read the bag.
Hardware store example

 

[mknauss]

You have a SWCG. Why complicate your chemistry with dichlor??

I suspect your pool had 80+ CYA before your flood event.