What is 3EC?

[lightmaster]

I was under the impression that the first chemical introduced would be chlorine.
Reading what you wrote, it sounds like I am going to add stabilizer in a sock to the pool first. If this correct I don't understand adding a chlorine stabilizer to a pool that has just been filled and has no chlorine to stabilize. I am missing something, thanks for your patience
I have not yet been to collect the items on the list. Tomorrow I think, Lowes is the only place around here to get muratic acid it's a half hour away. Only thing around here is walmart and ace hardware. I use to use muratic acid in my work washing brick after laying, this is very caustic in this form. I guess the Clorox is a good source but not the best value wise. I will make a list tonight and get back with what I have purchased.
is it not advisable to mix the chlorine stabilizer, with warm water to dilute then add to stream?

You add CYA first for 2 reasons. One, it takes much longer to dissolve, so get it started sooner. Also, without any CYA in the pool, on a hot summer day, chlorine will last literally just a few minutes. The sun breaks down chlorine so fast without any protection. Think of CYA as sunscreen, would you go out and get in a pool on a really sunny day without first putting on some sunscreen?

Really though, you'll more or less add them at the same time. Put CYA in a sock and hang in front of return, then go measure out your first dose of bleach and put into pool.

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I just had a great idea about adding CYA to a fresh pool. Fill your sock with CYA, place the garden hose inside the sock, and use one of those metal clamps that you tighten with a screwdriver to secure the sock to the house. This way as the water is first entering your pool, is already mixing with the CYA and could possibly be done dissolving before your pool is full. Would greatly speed up adding CYA to a fresh pool though.

 

[lightmaster]

The only two chemicals you should not add at the same time is chlorine and muriatic acid (used to lower your pH IF you need to). They do not play well together (causes toxic fumes).

Before you ask Hayseed, you only need to be careful when adding those 2. It is perfectly safe for them to be in your pool together as long as you give the first one 30 mins to mix before adding the second one. Highly concentrated MA and chlorine/bleach don't play well together, but once they've mixed with thousands of gallons of water, they are safe.

 

[Hayseed]

I only asked about the chlorine because it was not mentioned as something to be added to the fresh filled pool, just the CYA was mentioned. Now I have the CYA going in first, I guess because it does not need the pump to be operating to add. And too to protect the chlorine as it goes in. So I have to wait until the water is high enough to flow through the pump in order to add chlorine to the return stream. I guess mixing the CYA to warm water in a bucket to dilute it faster is a no go, since the question did not receive a response, I read somewhere that you could do this but don't know where, it is not necessary I do this at this point. I was just wondering about the practice. I asked this question before. When adding chemicals to the pool stream I would guess the pump should be on its highest setting? And the most important item I have is how much chlorine is to be added after the pool is filled. I thought it was 45 oz, but this sounds like the amount of CYA. I tried the pool math calculator and came up with 33 or 31 oz of 12% chlorine, to add to pool. Do s this song be correct or am I missing some information to make that assumption?

 

[kimkats]

We don't care for the bucket method for dissolving CYA as we have found there always seems to be some that is not dissolved all of the way and it ends up on the bottom of the pool. Undissolved CYA can "stain" your plaster or liner.

If your fill water is at 0 then you are correct with your math work on the Pool Math. I put in your size pool (10200), 0 in the Now and 4 as the Target using 12% chlorine. That puts me at 43oz of chlorine to be added.

Kim

 

[Hayseed]

Okay then!!! It looks like the pH regents are working! We will not worry about the rest until you have a pool full of water.

Oh you can also test your CH in the fill water. That is good to know even with a vinyl pool. You will not really need it but it will give you practice testing.

So lets do some pretending testing. We are going to say your pool is 11,400 gals like you say in your siggy. I am going to post some pretend numbers and what I want them to be. You will put both sets of numbers in Pool Math and we will see if we match. Remember we are just pretending so help you get used to Pool Math. I had quite a time really wrapping my head around it at first so know where you are coming from.

Now Target
FC 3 5
pH 7.0 7.8
TA 60 70
CH 100 200
CYA 0 30

For each of these look at what pool math tells you to do.

Oh I forgot something...............go down to the bottom of Pool Math and change it to "using TFP" or something like that.

We will use a bleach 6% for the FC or if you already know where you are getting your chlorine/bleach from tell me what % is it and we will use that.

Kim

with some reading, in the right places I was able to come up with this for the test sample given,
add: 42 oz. 6% liquid bleach........add 45 oz. of dry borax.....add 24oz. dry baking soda.....add 151 oz. calcium chloride, by weight....add 43 oz. of stabilizer, dry...............when you said to go down to the bottom and change it to TFP, was is it?
and too.....what is calcium chloride..or calcium chloride dihydrate?

 

[lightmaster]

With a vinyl Above Ground pool, it doesn't matter how low your CH is. So don't add any Calcium to it.

If your starting pH is 7.0, I wouldn't add any Borax to it. Splashing around as you swim will quickly raise it.

At the bottom of the colored section of PoolMath, there are there boxes in the yellow Suggested Goals Levels. Set the first to troublefreepool.com, second to bleach, and 3rd to vinyl.

 

[kimkats]

with some reading, in the right places I was able to come up with this for the test sample given,
add: 42 oz. 6% liquid bleach........add 45 oz. of dry borax.....add 24oz. dry baking soda.....add 151 oz. calcium chloride, by weight....add 43 oz. of stabilizer, dry...............when you said to go down to the bottom and change it to TFP, was is it?
and too.....what is calcium chloride..or calcium chloride dihydrate?

WELL done!!! You are getting it!

So here is the most important part of this:

-once you get the CYA added you will not have to worry about it for a while. I test for it about once a month unless I get a lot of rain which equals having to dump some water.

-Daily you will want to test the FC (Free chlorine) and add chlorine as needed.

-Until you get a good handle on the pH aka know what it is going to do over time you will want to test it once a day. I find I don't have to mess with pH much at all. I do test after a big swim day or a very heavy rain as both of those can push the pH up.

calcium chloride..or calcium chloride dihydrate is used to raise the CH. Like LIght said you do not need to worry about that part. We are lucky like that!!!

 

[Hayseed]

I wish to sincerely thank everyone here, if it weren't for you, I would not be the big star I am. Wait, wait wait that's another story. I could have figured this out lot earlier, of course only with your help, if I just stopped and took the time to read the literature, but I was to busy trying to over complicate everything, I guess because secretly I figured if I could not understand it, it must be hard. I have many more hurdles, but it is nice to be half over the first one. Went to Lowes and got the muratic acid, the bleach, and wanted to get the pool filter sand, but clerk said they had none, even though it's on their web site, said they could not order it in, to pick up, and could not order it for shipping to the house. Going up to Wally World, to get measuring cups and CYA. The pool chlorine I got was 10% hydrochloride, and 90% percent other ingredients. That's funny. Again thanks for staying with me while my brain was stuck in neutral

 

[lightmaster]

Again thanks for staying with me while my brain was stuck in neutral

No problem man. That's literally why everyone stays on the forum after their problems are fixed, to make sure no one else has to go it alone.

 

[Hayseed]

I have run new numbers through the calculator for my different chlorine percentage number. I got the 10% content chloride. I am going to try to post it here. I hope to be able to refer to it, and ask a few more questions based on its information. Hope it works.

 

[lightmaster]

I View attachment 81796 have run new numbers through the calculator for my different chlorine percentage number. I got the 10% content chloride. I am going to try to post it here. I hope to be able to refer to it, and ask a few more questions based on its information. Hope it works.

10% liquid shock/chlorine is usually in 128oz bottles I think, so check your jug and update that in the FC section

 

[lightmaster]

Also, does the original screenshot look that pixelated on your computer? Not sure how you captured the screenshot, but a simple yet effect method is to click anywhere in your web browser, then hold down Alt and tap Print Screen button. Now open the start menu and click run. In that box, type in paint. In the program that opens up, press Ctrl+V to paste the screenshot you just took. Now you can click save and it'll save it as a jpeg image file. When you post that image, hopefully it won't be so pixelated.

 

[Hayseed]

I am on my iPad, this picture is not messed up and I used the same method for the calculator. With the pool calculation I brought the screen up and increased its size to nclude only important data to try to gain clarity buy it did not work. Thanks for the heads up on the total oz. in the bottle, I did not even no this applied to the application. No sense being dumb unlessyou show it I guess, I have made the correction and am trying to get a listing of the chart.

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[Hayseed]

View attachment 81810Don't know why one image is coming through clear and not the one about the chart.

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I was just going to ask if was suppose to add the borax it mentioned and I bought muratic acid but don't see its numbers showing up , just the borax. Am I to add baking soda as it is stated to do? When and in what order are they to be added. I know the CYA sock is first, then the chlorine after pool is high enough that the pump can pick up the water. Do I immediately add the other chemicals one after the other in to the stream, and they have to be added slowly. Just when I thought I had a handle on things. I also now have more pictures than I wanted to be posted, and even managed to insert an attachment, something I could never be able to do if I had wanted to do, but it's there somehow twice. To bad this forum is not set up as well as a lot of other forums I have navigated through. More donations I guess

 

[Hayseed]

This is what I have come up with when the time comes; 41oz. CYA.......52 oz. of 10% bleach 128 oz. bottle.....34 oz. borax...24 oz. baking soda. I know how to put the CYA, and chlorine in and when, but the rest I am not sure.

 

[kimkats]

You only add what the water needs. Remember these were really "pretend" numbers as you don't have the water in the pool yet. By having the chlorine, muriatic acid, and CYA you have all you NEED to get started. We use the other ONLY if needed.

I am going to share a link that shows what is used and what it does: Pool School - Recommended Pool Chemicals BUT you will only use this IF it is needed. I still have my first bag of baking soda that is unopened I bought it just because but have never needed since this pool was put up in 2012!

Kim

 

[Hayseed]

I remember the fictitious numbers, but the latest calculations were based on my tap water i.e., tap water. FC not in tap water it's a zero, target is four. My pH was 7.1, target is 7.5. TA my water tested at 60, tatget is 70. CYA in tap water is zero, target is 30. With this information entered into calculator the numbers I sited earlier were the numbers it came up with. Is this not correct? If not what do I know except to put the water in the pool?

 

[kimkats]

You have some awesome water to fill a pool with!!!!! The pH and TA are spot on for a pool. Of course the action of adding the water could push the pH up some but that is easy to deal with.

TA-I want to talk to you about this one just a little. TA gets adjusted last. Notice there is a range in the numbers on this chart: Pool School - Recommended Levels (You will want to print this chart out for easy reference) We have found each pool is very different. We will help you find your purrfect TA number once it is done and filled. Some pools like it at 80, some at 50. We will know your pool is happy with the TP when your pH is stable.

SO the only things you will add at the very beginning is the CYA during the fill and chlorine once you can run the pump.

Don't bother buying anything else until we see if you need it.

Kim

 

[Hayseed]

Thanks Kim, I will not add anything until water is in the pool along with CYA, and chlorine has been added and circulated. You my not remember but you had me test my water before, and I posted the numbers, the pH was 7.0. You had me then to agitate water and test again, to see if this did raise the pH level. This done to check and see if my test kit would react correctly. The TA level was 60. Aren't these the two numbers from my tap water, we used to determine the CYA amount, and the chlorine amount, to be added to the fresh fill pol water? And if they were not, then I guess the determination simply was made by knowing the gallons and that water had no CYA, and very, very little chlorine. My pool is finally going to be delivered tomorrow, but alas, the pool site is still not ready. Oh well!

 

[Hayseed]

So I am adding 52 oz. of 10% bleach, and 54 oz. of CYA. I am posting this again because, I am wanting to double check myself. To afraid of messing things up and having to dump a lot of water. Another thing I am confused on, in the pool math chart, I believe it is in the chemical listing of how much to add for CYA. It maybe be chlorine, but it is one or the other.
It states; ounces by weight, ounces by volume, and ounces by liquid form. From what I googled, ounces by volume was considered to be the liquid measure, ounces by weight would be the dry weight, what am I not understanding.