Which comes first, the chicken or the Chlorine?

Jul 24, 2015
21
Woodstock, Georgia
Seriously though,
I just read that Total Alkalinity needs to be settled before changing PH, so now I'm chasing my tail after adding a couple boxes of Borax and the PH is still 7.0
I tried to find the SLAM article I read years ago, but I cannot find it.
I'm slamming the pool. It is at my rental house that I am moving back into now that the renters have left.
The pool was horrible.
Right now Chlorine is reading at 12
CYA is 90
PH is 7.0
TA is 30

Do I need to mess with TA and ph when slamming? I seem to remember that having a chlorine of 10+ can cause the other chemicals to not be as effective, or maybe it was the testing method to not be accurate...
I've come to this old memory because I have now added 2 boxes of borax and the ph has gone from barely below 7 (taylor kit only reads 7 as lowest), to right at 7. This made me wonder if I need to back off of PH and TA and just wait for the pool to clear...

Thoughts?
 
You don’t need to worry about TA, just get your PH down to 7.2-ish before raising FC to SLAM level. Let your FC drop a bit and when it is below 10, test PH again. If you are still at 7, start your SLAM.
 
The pH test is invalid with FC levels above 10 ppm. The test will show a false high result.

Can you confirm your current levels for CYA (90) and TA (30).

What are you using to raise your FC level?
 
My bad, I reversed the TA and CYA in my mind! Is that real, or did you switch the numbers?
 
No, its real... I'm going to have to dump some water to get the CYA down...
Testing is done with a Taylor FAS-DPD
Come to think of it, I'm not sure how my CYA got so high so easily. I only added about 1/3 of the recommended stabilizer and the CYA shot up from 0 to 90.
used this: Amazon.com
The pool math calculator said to add 28# to get to a CYA of 75 and I only added about 10-12#

I am using a Salt Water Generator in "turbo mode" to get the FC levels. I have it turned down to the minimum of chlorine production now that FC is about 12, but with a CYA that high, it's going to take a while.

Thanks for the link to the SLAM article. I'll do my best to get it all in order.
Now that I know that the PH isn't going to test correctly until the FC goes down, I'll be ready with some PH down. LOL, all that Borax might have kicked the PH up to 11...
 

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Its possible. I used a pool volume calculator a few years ago.
It is rectangular 20x40 with 4' in the shallow end and 10' in the deep end.
The calculator I just used says 42000, so something changed in the calculations...
I'll measure tomorrow and verify the shallow end - might be 3.5?
 
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