Hello from a new pool owner

Hi all, just moved to Missouri last fall and bought a home with a pool.

IG Vinyl 20x40 ~ 37500 gal.
Sand Filter: Sta-Rite Cristal-Flo T-240BP-1
Pump: Centurion (Not sure about the HP as the faceplate on the motor is all corroded off.)
Hayward 220 Chlorinator

Ordered a Taylor K-6000
been testing daily with OTO kit from wal-mart but had the pool store run a test too.

Here are the results from the pool store

Free Chlorine: 4.0
Total Chlorine: 4.0
pH 7.4
Alkalinity: 110
Stabalizer: 80
TDS: 1000

I've never owned a pool before so am a total newbie and I'm just now learning about pool chemistry and what's needed to take care of my pool thanks to this site.

I'm thinking I should stop using my chlorinator and stick with bleach or cal-hypo? My chlorine gets down to the lowest reading on my test kit by the end of the day and I've been putting a large bottle of concentrated bleach in each night. In the AM its backup up to the highest reading on my test kit.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

I think you mean that you ordered a Taylor K-2006 kit, right? I hope it gets to you quickly. With a CYA of 80, you are going to have to run higher than normal chlorine levels and thus will need the ability to measure higher than an OTO kit can. If you have not done so already, take a look at the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in my signature below for information about the connection between CYA levels and needed chlorine levels.

You are right that you should stop using the chlorinator and just use an unstabilized form of chlorine. With such a large volume pool, it is going to be pretty inconvenient for you to have to deal with the number of bleach bottles you are going to have to buy. You might see if there is a pool store that sells liquid chlorine. It, too, is sodium hypochlorite but just is more concentrated like maybe 12%.

But, for now ------- in a 37,500 gallon pool, each gallon of 8.25% bleach will add only 2.2ppm of chlorine. Use that as a reference to help you figure out doses of bleach to add. With a CYA of 80, your chlorine must stay between 5-10 all the time. So, adding only one bottle per day is not keeping your chlorine high enough and is putting you at risk of an algae bloom.

Until your test kit arrives, you can force your OTO kit to read higher than 5 by using dilution. This is not super accurate but will be better than nothing until your K-2006 is there. If you go to our sister website, www.poolsolutions.com and click on 'guides,' you will find one about 'Testing without a good kit" that will help you.

Each evening, test your water using the dilution method and add enough bleach to take your chlorine level back up to 10.

Hope this helps. Welcome to the Pool Forum!

Hey watermom, yes, I did order the Taylor K-2006 :) typo. So I just got it and ran the CYA test. I was surprised to have it read 30-40ppm when my pool store reading was 80 ppm. I'm thinking I should run another test but before I do, what is your experience with the rate of Chlorine depletion/vs the level of CYA? I'm losing about 4-5ppm of chlorine daily but nothing over night. Does that give any indication as to which CYA reading makes more sense?

You might try bumping your chlorine up a little --- maybe try 50 --- and see how that works for you. I would definitely trust your own CYA test reading over one from the pool store.