I'm an idiot, please help me! :(

[Linchpin]

A few days ago my wife picked up on of those 13'x36" easy set pools for my little boy. I set it up, got some water in it, and let him play for the day. Then decided to get some chemicals for the pool I spoke to some kid at a pool supply store and he told me to add this package of "Shock" to the pool and then to test the chlorine levels every day and add more chlorine as needed. So I dumped the package in last night.

Today I tested and the chlorine and Ph are through the roof! Instead of yellow it's more like reddish/orange. What can I do? My son (almost 5 years old now) will be having some friends over later and I know they are wanting to go into the pool.

The reason I'm an idiot is that I didn't read the package of the shock stuff I got from the store, I just "dumped it in" as the guy said. This morning I grabbed the package and read it, it says to add 1lb of this stuff (1 package) to 12,000 gallons of water. I put the whole 1lb package in his little 2,000 gallon pool. The chemical makeup of this stuff is:
Sodium dichloro-s-triazinetirone 58.2%
Other ingredients 41.8%

So I'm an idiot and I need to know what to do in order to get his little pool ready for him to play in later this evening short of draining it and filling it again.

Thanks

[Watermom]

First off, welcome to the forum! There is good news and bad news. The good news is that since this is a fresh fill and you don't really have any cya (stabilizer) in there yet, the chlorine isn't gonna last long and will be lost to the sun pretty quick. Can't say that it will be by this evening but if it is a hot, sunny day, you will lose a lot of it.

The bad news is that there isn't really anything to do other than wait for the sun to deplete the excess chlorine other than drain and refill.

More good news is that i have a feeling that by evening the chlorine level will have come down dramatically. Even more good news is that even if the chlorine is still SOMEWHAT HIGH, it is ok to swim (with an old suit that it isn't gonna matter if it fades). Of course, if it is EXTREMELY HIGH you won't want to do this. We'll wait til this evening to see what the level is to call this one.

I assume that your test kit will only register to 5. Right? To get a better idea of what your chlorine level actually is, use our "dilution method." It is not super accurate but will at least get a ballpark figure for you.

Take one part pool water and one part DISTILLED water and mix them. Use this to fill your test vial and then test as usual and multiply the results by 2. If this doesn't take the scale high enough to help, take one part pool water and two parts distilled and multiply by 3, etc.

After you have done this, repost with numbers. Actually, a complete set of current water testing results would be a good idea for us to look at.

What time are you expecting little swimmers today?

Hope this helps.

By the way -- I edited your thread title a bit. Hope that won't be a problem for you. Again -- welcome. Glad you found us!

[Linchpin]

Assuming I did everything correctly, I am guessing my chlorine is about 20ppm (or thereabouts).
I'm going to add more fresh water to the pool in hopes of diluting it more. I'd just hate to have to get more chemicals in there to kill off some of the chlorine, but if I have to... I have to I reckon.

The kids are already here and bummed because I messed up the pool. :(

[aylad]

The only real way to lower the chlorine is to either let the sun eat it up (Watermom's right, it will come down substantially by this evening), or to partially drain the pool and refill with fresh water.

Janet

[Linchpin]

Thanks folks, but after talking to the wife we just drained and refilled, the kids are playing in it right now. :)

[aylad]

Glad it worked out for you, and now that's a lesson learned the hard way that you can file in your mental file for next time. (Don't ya just hate those?? ;) )

Janet