Slamming for 4 weeks

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S

suep

LifeTime Supporter
Feb 18, 2011
67
Portland, OR
I opened my pool 4 weeks ago and have been slamming ever since. I cleaned out the dirt and worms and the water was crystal clear. I balanced the water and and started slamming but I can't seem to get rid of the combined chlorine. When I opened the pool it showed 0 cya which is unusual. Usually I have 30-40ppm when I open since I keep it at 70-80ppm for the swg. I added enough cya to bring it up 20ppm and then got a reading of 30ppm. When I checked the cya today it showed that I had 0 so I added enough to bring it up 20ppm.

I'm wondering if maybe I have ammonia in the water. Can you have a crystal clear pool and still have ammonia? Does ammonia cause the ph and alk to rise? I haven't turned on my SWG yet and have just been adding bleach.

Test results:
Chlorine - 10ppm (added a couple jugs of bleach to bring it up to about 22ppm)
cc - 2ppm (cc levels have typically been 1.0 - 1.5ppm)
cya - 0 (added 20ppm)
alk - 90 (it was 70 when I started the slam)
ph - 7.8 (it was 7.4 when I started the slam) - I added enough acid to bring it down to 7.4
calcium - 260

This is what my pool has looked like since I opened it 4 weeks ago.
Pool2019.JPG
 
We normally correlate ammonia with a swamp.
But, if you are losing CYA, your CC is elevated, and your pH is rising, those are signs of ammonia. And the CYA is feeding it.

To check and defeat ammonia, if necessary, is to raise your FC in the water using enough liquid chlorine to get to 10 ppm using PoolMath. Circulate the pool for 15 minutes. Test FC and CC. If FC at 5 or below, add LC to get to 10 using LC, circulate for 15 minutes, repeat until your FC is above 5 ppm after the 15 minute circulation.
 
Though if the pool holds any chlorine for more than a few minutes, it is not ammonia. It is algae.

Does your pool have a light? Have you taken it out to clean the niche?
 
It doesn't eat up the chlorine right away. I added enough to get it up pretty high last night and didn't add any during the day and still had 10ppm this evening when I tested. I had the pool light taken out a few years ago and they put a plate over the opening. I wonder if maybe the water is getting behind the plate and there is some nasty stuff growing. Ugh.
 
I think I am going to have to drain a lot of water out of the pool and remove the plate covering the old light niche and see if there is something brewing behind it. Does anyone know what I should use to seal it up so that it won't leak when I put the plate back on? I think they originally used caulk to try to keep it from leaking.

This is what the plate looks like.
plate.jpg
 
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