What is the benefit of using bleach vs pucks?

[setsailsoon]

Setsailsoon
I didthe OCLT last night. MY FC at 8:30 p.m. was 7 and this morning at 6:30a.m. it was 7. (Great relief!) CC is 0. I thought CYA of 40 was asafe spot since 50 is the max for the ideal range (and I want to keep mychlorine requirements as low as I can and still be safe and covered) butperhaps I do need to raise it to 50 and see how it goes. I will try for a higher concentration ofbleach as well. (Although, I thought Iread that higher concentrations tend to burn off faster – I’ll have to researchthat again.)
I store the bleach in thehouse and am mindful of purchasing from places that store it outside or haveslow turnover. I buy as much as I haveroom for so that I’m not running to the store a couple times a week. (My life is not conducive to being such aslave to our pool so I am stressing!) Iam terrified of using pucks because of the CYA build-up issue. I don’t understand why companies don’t also makechlorine pucks without a stabilizer - for those of us who don’t want to runinto problems when our CYA gets too high (and for those of us who have beenliving in a drought for so many years we don’t want to be draining our pools,or our water is expensive…). I also don’t understand why Shock has a stabilizerin it. It doesn’t need it as far as Ican tell!
My husband keeps saying “Itold you we should have taken the pool out”. By the way, he added a nice fountain on Friday… I think, as a result, my TA dropped from 90 to70, and so of course my pH shot up to 8.0. (Four hours prior to sunset testing I had added Muriatic Acid, which Ihave been having to do regularly due to the curing new plaster – so I wasshocked to see the pH go up instead of down!) Also, Calcium hardness has increased from 300 to 310. We had about a fifteen minute downpour a fewdays ago and we are constantly adding water to the pool. So this makes no sense to me either. More research for me to do!
Thanks for everything inyour post. It’s all extremely helpful tome and I so am grateful for it.

(P.S. It takes me so long to compose a post I get logged out. So I have to write it in Word first and paste it here. That is why words are sometimes pushed together and the font changes.)

Cowgirl,

First I hope you will realize soon there's nothing to stress about. You definitely have this under control. Having a pool is wonderful and it does take a little effort plus $ to maintain. I was very stressed when I took ours over from the pool company. My wife was opposed and I was stressed because if it ever turned green I'd have been in big trouble... similar to your situation. Now 3 years later she loves the savings and brags to neighbors that our pool looks better than theirs and costs nothing compared to their pool services!

Great on your OCLT! You've passed another step of pool bliss with flying colors. On CYA you are correct but TFP does allow some flexibility to go higher, please see the chart here. You can let it climb a little and see if there's a net benefit but based on your chemistry I think you are very well-balanced.

Aerating raises pH so not surprising that pH went up. CA increase by 10 ppm isn't significant but keep an eye on it. You appear to still be in the new pool phase where chemistry is moving toward an equilibrium that will be very specific to your pool... no reason to panic about anything. I know that easy for me to say but I watched everything like a hawk first couple of months 'till I got used to my pool. Now I only run FC/ph sever times per week and do the full tests quarterly. Soon I bet you'll be doing the same I think Marty answered your other questions so I won't duplicate his astute advice.

I hope this helps.

Chris

 

[DeanP66]

Higher percentage chlorine or (10 or 12.5%) does not burn off any faster than the 6%. It just degrades faster when stored for long periods of time. It's generally not an issue until you get to around 6 months, or if you store the chlorine in a hot place outside.

 

[Lilypad]

Don't fear pucks! The mantra here is to know exactly what you're putting into your pool and it's impact. Pucks work well when you are on vacation. Monitor your CYA and either let it decrease a bit prior to leaving, or plan on a draining a bit when you return. As mentioned, another reason for adding a SWG. Relax and enjoy your pool, you're doing great!

 

[CaliforniaGirl]

Thank you again to all the posts. I have copied a lot of the information youall have provided and pasted it into a Word document so that I can reference itquickly and easily. It’s a lot to takein! Great stuff here and I appreciate getting the "why" along with the "how".