New pool owner here. I am completely lost in how to test or what I am doing wrong. I am trying to recover a green pool. Removed a ton of debris and am trying to test the CYA. I have the K-2006 test kit and followed the directions for CYA and the black dot never disappeared. The sample never got cloudy. I pulled water from elbow deep away from any return jet. I'm lost and wondered if anyone can give any insight. I've spent the last hour or so searching the site and haven't found anything about a dot that doesn't disappear.
Totally lost in testing
- Thread starter barrca
- Start date
- Sep 23, 2015
- 1,597
- Pool Size
- 20000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Astral Viron V25
If you've added 7ml of CYA reagent to 7ml of pool water, shaken for 30 seconds and the mix hasn't turned cloudy then there's a good chance you have no CYA.
If the dot never disappears then there is no CYA present. Finish clearing the pool with a SLAM before adding CYA. stabilized chlorine requires higher levels for SLAM so you will use less chlorine to maintain proper levels. Unless the pool is never shaded than add CYA because you will lose too much chlorine to sunlight during the day and won't be able to keep up lol, It's kind of a catch 22.
There's no shade on the pool at all so I understand that the sun is absorbing the chlorine. We have added a lot of chlorine, at night, and still no CYA. I haven't ever done CYA so now I'm trying to figure that out. My understanding is that I can't do a full SLAM with no CYA, right? because then the chlorine isn't staying with no CYA present. I may have that confused.
Welcome to TFP!
Correct, DO NOT start your SLAM with a CYA of 0. Get your CYA up to 30, pH to 7.2 and then you start the SLAM. If you have no CYA sunlight will burn off your FC! DO NOT start your SLAM with a ZERO CYA and most certainly don't finish with a ZERO CYA. Please post a full battery of test: FC, CC, pH, CYA, TA, CH.
No CYA... Is this a new to you pool or newly built pool? I assume the former. Was there CYA in the pool previously and now the test is coming back at 0 CYA? If you had CYA previously and not now, that could be a case of ammonia. Don't add CYA until you have ruled that out.
yeah full sunlight you will fight loss due to sun more than loss due to chlorine doing it's job during a SLAM.us pool math calculator to tell you how much CYA to add or use the charts on the back of the stabilizer bottle. wait 3 days I believe between adding cya and testing because it is way slow to show up on tests. If your using liquid chlorine/bleach the CYA will not rise with adding chlorine. You could use trichlor pucks until you get desired CYA levels, but conventional TFP method wisdom states add chemicals one at a time not combination such as trichlor
It's more precise and sticks to the chemistry of the pool better adding single chems based on levels. The results of sticking to the TFP method is a crystal clear pool that everyone will envy, and in my experience the clearest water I've ever seen with absolutely zero chlorine smell or irritation. Turns you into a pool snob after a single season of the correct TFP
This has not been my experience with ammonia (really the bacteria). I have opened to 0 CYA and had 4 ppm of ammonia. I added CYA to 30 ppm and dump jug after jug of bleach until I hold chlorine (4 hours of dumping chlorine), check the CYA the next day it is 30 ppm and stays that way until the SLAM is over. However, if you try to correct the ammonia problem over several days, you are correct, the bacteria will start converting the CYA to ammonia. I agree that if you open a pool that is green, as in this case, checking for ammonia prior to doing anything is a good idea. You will know that you are gonna need a bunch of bleach just to neutralize all that ammonia.
This is the first cya test I did. It's an old pool new to me. Previous owner said to just dump bleach and that's it. I've been learning that's not it so I got a testing kit and did a cya test and it was clear as can be. I'm going to get somebstabilizer and add it today.
Can you post a full battery of test before adding the CYA? Previous owner was wrong!
First time I've done testing so hopefully I did it right. I followed all the instructions.
FC 3.2 ppm
CC 0.8 ppm
pH 7.2
TA 90 ppm
CA 130 ppm
CYA tested last night as zero. Was not cloudy and the black dot never disappeared.
Very good! You have no CYA, don't worry about ammonia you have FC...Get you CYA up to 30 using Stabilizer (cyanuric acid). Place the required amount in a sock and hang in front of your return. According to my calculations you will need 86 0z. Assume a CYA of 30 and get your FC up to 12 using bleach. Use pool math to calculate amount to put in the pool. Retest the FC as often as possible, the more the better, and bring your FC back up to 12 every time you test. Only test FC/CC from here on out! You are now performing a SLAM. Keep this up until you pool is clear.
To save reagents start using a 10 ml sample and divide number of drops by 2 to get your FC.
To save reagents start using a 10 ml sample and divide number of drops by 2 to get your FC.
Well, as if things with this pool couldn't get worse... after testing, I decided to vacuum a little and rake up whatever I could. There's not much but a little. The multi port valve literally blew off of the filter, snapping the pipe and the collar to the filter.
What could possibly cause that to happen? A faulty multi port valve or something I did while vacuuming? We have a new valve we can use but if it's not that, I'd like to return it. I ordered it when I thought it was bad but it ended up we needed new pipes which we replaced.
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Have you been backwashing when your pressure goes up? Could be that the pressure got too high and the multiport blew off...
No, we haven't backwashed at all. I read somewhere it's not a good idea to backwash very often. I don't know if the pressure went up. Our gauge is rusted out and I didn't know to even look to be honest.