Sherra
06-04-2006, 07:23 PM
I've been reading this forum for a couple of years and "participating" for several months now...you'd think I'd know better, BUT...I got lazy.
We just got our IG pool this past March. The water temps had been in the 70s and low 80s for the most part. After several weeks of testing pH & Cl daily at first, then every other day, then every 3 days I noticed my Cl & pH were staying very steady and predictable. With our solar cover on to chlorine loss due to evaporation & sunlight I was able to go a week or more before my Cl would dip below 5 after raising to about 8 (my CYA is around 50-60, so I've been trying to err on the side of caution and use the 60 for calculating my chlorine demand), so I was only needing to add 3 quarts of bleach every 7-10 days.
We've had a run of warm weather (warm for South Carolina) for the past two weeks (air temps above 90 daily). My water temps have also risen and are consistently remaining in the uper 80s to low 90s. I failed to take that into consideration and have only been testing twice a week...(full tests on the weekends and pH/Cl mid week). Well, my husband and daughter wanted to go swimming today, so we rolled off the cover and discovered we had algae. :eek: It was all over the bottom and the water was getting cloudy.:( So, while my idiotic family was swimming (you can't convince my husband it's not alright to swim in the water because he says it no different than swimming in a pond or something) I jumped on the BleacCalc and figured out how much bleach I would need to get up to 20ppm and ran out to Wal-Mart (I only had 6 quarts of bleach here at the house) and bought 10 big jugs of bleach and promptly put the pre-determined amount in the pool and began to brush the sides and bottom. Everything was quickly stirred up to the point to where I could not see the drain on the deep end anymore. That was all about an hour ago. So, now I'm waiting another half hour or so to re-test and add more bleach accordingly.
I feel like such an idiot. :o
Lesson learned...take CarlD's advice!
Stay ahead of your water!
Take 2 to 5 minutes every day for pool maintenance!
We just got our IG pool this past March. The water temps had been in the 70s and low 80s for the most part. After several weeks of testing pH & Cl daily at first, then every other day, then every 3 days I noticed my Cl & pH were staying very steady and predictable. With our solar cover on to chlorine loss due to evaporation & sunlight I was able to go a week or more before my Cl would dip below 5 after raising to about 8 (my CYA is around 50-60, so I've been trying to err on the side of caution and use the 60 for calculating my chlorine demand), so I was only needing to add 3 quarts of bleach every 7-10 days.
We've had a run of warm weather (warm for South Carolina) for the past two weeks (air temps above 90 daily). My water temps have also risen and are consistently remaining in the uper 80s to low 90s. I failed to take that into consideration and have only been testing twice a week...(full tests on the weekends and pH/Cl mid week). Well, my husband and daughter wanted to go swimming today, so we rolled off the cover and discovered we had algae. :eek: It was all over the bottom and the water was getting cloudy.:( So, while my idiotic family was swimming (you can't convince my husband it's not alright to swim in the water because he says it no different than swimming in a pond or something) I jumped on the BleacCalc and figured out how much bleach I would need to get up to 20ppm and ran out to Wal-Mart (I only had 6 quarts of bleach here at the house) and bought 10 big jugs of bleach and promptly put the pre-determined amount in the pool and began to brush the sides and bottom. Everything was quickly stirred up to the point to where I could not see the drain on the deep end anymore. That was all about an hour ago. So, now I'm waiting another half hour or so to re-test and add more bleach accordingly.
I feel like such an idiot. :o
Lesson learned...take CarlD's advice!
Stay ahead of your water!
Take 2 to 5 minutes every day for pool maintenance!