TF-100 testing FC, CC, and TC clarification for PoolMath

@Nikilyn Yes, between this site and your help offline, I feel a bit more confident by the day and hopefully will fully understand all the innerworkings of pool ownership in no time!
 
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@mknauss Ran my tests for today and made some additions (logs). I'll be adding more chlorine shortly to get back up to about 6-8.

I'm a bit worried about my CH. It does not really seem to be going up so I added some calcium chloride (the rest of what I had on hand). Am I overreacting and should wait it out a bit more? What is an "acceptable" level for my CH? I know PoolMath says I'm within the acceptable 250-600 range but it also says my target should be 450 and I'm not getting to that.
 
Your CH is fine. Just do not buy anymore. If your CSI is above -0.3 -- there are no worries.
I'll be adding more chlorine shortly to get back up to about 6-8.
So add chlorine to get to 10 ppm FC
The 6-8 FC is your target at the time you need to add chlorine. You are dropping down to minimum FC. It is best not to do that.
 
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Do test your CYA again this weekend. If not up to 50 ppm, add another 10 ppm worth. That will help lessen the FC loss each day.
 
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Sounds good, I was able to finally find and buy 2 5lb bags of CYA at Home Depot yesterday (even though I had to drive about 45 minutes to get it, all the HDs, or other stores for that matter, around me didn't have any in stock) so I should be prepared for that. Thank you.
 
@mknauss So after the weekend, things are looking pretty balanced (logs). I am, basically, going through a one gallon jug of liquid chlorine (10%) each day, however. It's not a huge deal, I can get one gallon for roughly $5 at HD, but does this seem right? Is this basically my normal until I install the SWG in 3 weeks? I should note that my pool is basically in the sun all day long, from roughly 6am until 5pm (when it finally gets shade). Its cloudy today so I'm curious to see when I run my tests later as to what the FC will be.

Side note: PoolMath Logs online show the incorrect time (at least when I look at them, I'm not sure if its the case for everyone). For instance, my latest addition of bleach happened on 8/8 at 7:46pm (which is shown correctly in the PoolMath app), but the online log shows it at 8/9 at 2:46am. That's a 7 hour difference, and as a software engineer i'm pretty sure that the app is showing local time and the online logs are showing UTC, but I can't find anywhere to make an adjustment to the time zone to show it correctly online. Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing?
 
One gallon of 10% a day is 7 ppm FC. That is a bit high, but your CYA level, to a point, has bearing on that. Your last test showed 50 ppm CYA. You can raise that another 10 ppm to see what it does. Your daily FC loss though will not go much below 5 ppm in your climate with that much sun on the water. And hopefully some swimming going on.

EDIT - how accurate do you believe your pool volume is? That may have some bearing on things.

The time on the app is UTC. I am not sure if the developer is looking at that or not for the next upgrade. You cannot modify the settings on time.
 
There has been swimming going on daily, the kids love the pool and want to be in it constantly, so money well spent so far. As for the pool volume, it was automatically calculated by the architect who drew up our plans in what I can only assume is a software he used to create the plans. It has a whole stat sheet on the left hand side with volume included. I don't have any reason to believe that its incorrect, but I can calculate it again manually just to make sure.

Your daily FC loss though will not go much below 5 ppm in your climate with that much sun on the water.
I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean that I shouldn't be going below 5ppm based on my climate? Or that I should not be dropping over 5ppm in total per day? Right now, when I try to get the FC back up to roughly 8-10ppm, usually around 10-11am when I do my first set of testing, I am getting 4-5ppm in total of FC (and before the weekend it was dipping down to 2 or so which you had advised me not to let happen). When I pour in the chlorine I try to get back to about 8-10ppm, and then by the evening when I am testing again, I'm back down to the lower level so I am putting the second half of the gallon to get back up to the upper range.
 

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Do you mean that I shouldn't be going below 5ppm based on my climate?
No, that your loss each day will not be much less than 5 ppm FC. Everyone here on the forum says 2-4 ppm FC loss during summer, but in our climate, you will lose a bit more. So not to worry.
If you have 4-5 ppm FC when you test and add, that is great.
 
Ah ok, so sounds like I just have to bite the bullet and keep buying the gallon jugs and adding when around 4-5ppm until the SWG comes into play and can handle this for me automatically. That's totally fine, I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing something I shouldn't.

There is so much to learn about owning and maintaining a pool. I spent a good chunk of yesterday watching YouTube videos around random stuff like cleaning filters, how the whole pump system works, etc.
 
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Be careful of random YT videos. Some of them are scary in how mis-informed they are on safety and proper water chemistry.
 
Yes, definitely, I'm staying away from just generic videos of people who claim to be pool experts and more-so trying to understand my system and how it works and how to maintain it (kind of like the filter cleaning, or how a pump works, etc). Remember, this is all new for me so I'm basically starting from scratch and have very little knowledge of anything pool related, so back to basics it is. For anything water chemistry related, I'm sticking to TFP.
 
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