Learning Learning Learning

Thanks in advance to the individual pool owners who tolerate us service guys on this forum. As i stated before I will be starting my own service company this fall and want to do it right. Janice has already helped correct one of my bad practices and I'm sure a few more will go soon. Anyways as taught I currently test with test strips (worthless i now know) add tabs to the feeders, and add 2lbs of di-chlor shock to each pool (non salt pools) regardless of size or incorrect reading from a test strip. I will be using the Taylor dpd test kit and bleach for shock as to not further increase cyunaric acid levels in the pool. Since I will only shock when needed based on reliable testing I am willing to buy and transport plenty of bleach and have secured 4 milk crates to the bed of my truck allowing me to carry 16 gallons safely! Now about those darn pucks and a reasonable work around on them. Since I am only at a pool once a week currently outside of automated liquid dosing is there any way to reliably chlorinate without adding large amounts of cyanuric at the same time? I appreciate all and any advice thanks.


Currently working as a pool service tech Steve

Hi Steve;

I've upgraded your membership.

Regarding your pool chemical process . . . I *STRONGLY* recommend that you not change things all at once. You already -- I presume -- are operating your pools with some success. When you change methods, there tend to be hiccups, even when it's a better method!

For a homeowner, this is no big deal. Nobody will fire him, if he has an oopsy, learning to use the BBB method. But, when you are paid to care for a pool, oopsy's aren't acceptable.

We try to keep it simple, for homeowners. I've been servicing large commercial pools for 25+ years, and I've run pools successfully using gas, trichlor, dichlor, bleach, cal hypo . . . and peroxide + polyquat + UV. (I've also tried ozone and Cu + Ag.)

Here are some facts you, as a service guy, need to know:

1. Test strips aren't useless, they just aren't as accurate as the electronic readers make them appear to be. They work pretty well as a very rough and ready test, EXCEPT for CYA.
2. For fast testing, OTO is best (I think) IF you are sure there are little or no chloramine in the pool. (Non-chlorine shock will also create a false positive with OTO).


Here's what I think you should do:

1. Keep running your pools as you have been, so long as they are doing OK (looking good, passing inspection)
2. Read the Best Guess page and understand it!
3. Get a copy of your health code and find out what the acceptable levels are for Cl, pH, CYA, Alk . . . and which violations are 2 point non-criticals, and which are 4 point critical violation.
4. Get a Taylor kit (service size) and learn to use it. Order a 1 gallon jug of CYA reagent. You can pop the nozzle off the test bottles and refill them.
5. Do NOT try to get into bleach feed systems. It took me 10 years to cobble together a reliable bleach feed system, that did NOT require 2 - 3 unscheduled service calls per season per system. There are all sorts of issues with bleach degradation, oxygen off-gassing, tubing incompatibilities, and injector clogging. To the best of my knowledge, you can NOT purchase the sort of system we developed.
6. Once you've got all this done, and down, THEN start making plans to gradually improve your operation, but without taking a chance of having unexpected pool problems

One little thing I noted: You said you are using a Taylor DPD test kit. I strongly recommend you either upgrade to a Taylor FAS-DPD test kit, K-2006 or K-2006C, or get the single Taylor FAS-DPD test, the K-1515-A or K-1515-C, and use THAT instead of the DPD test. It will measure Free Chlorine and Combined Chloramine levels all the way up to 50ppm and down to the .5 level.

Carl

Good catch, Carl.

I tend to forget that Taylor still sells the color match DPD kit, which can NOT be used effectively to manage high stabilizer pools, including salt pools following the SWCG stabilizer recommendations.

It's a very easy thing to miss...I figured you had everything else covered.

I LIKE the K-1515 because it's a cheap way to upgrade an otherwise adequate kit to perform like the K-2006!