Smells bleachy but...

I've been using my TAylor kit and my ph is avg 7.4-7.5 and cl is slowly dropping to 6 but the water smells bleachy. I do the BBB method. I've tested the ph with distilled water just to make sure it's correct. My cya is always high 85-90. The pool very clear thank goodness it just smells very bleachy and we smell very bleachy after using it for the chlorine to be dropping like that. Is something wrong with the water? I would think it would test higher for the chlorine. Just want to make sure. I use bleach from Meijer Clorox brand and keep a puck floating also.

I don't see an FC or CC number. The bleach smell is NOT. from Free Chlorine, but from Combined Chloramines, and you have to shock your pool to at least 20ppm to clear that out.

Really. I can have my pool at higher FC levels than you with no smell. Then you stick your arm in and as it metabolizes whatever is on your arm, and you'll smell "chlorine"!

How do I shock it with bbb method?

Each gallon of ultra (8.25%) will add 5.9ppm of chlorine to your water (given you have 14k gallons). Since most bleach containers these days are about 121 ounces rather than 128--a full gallon, that would add about 5.6ppm. You want 20ppm at least.

Rule of thumb: 1 gallon of bleach or liquid chlorine will add the same number of ppm to 10,000 gallons of water as its concentration.
So 1 gallon of regular 5.25% bleach adds 5.25ppm of chlorine to 10,000 gallons of water, and 1 gallon of 8.25% adds 8.25ppm
If you double the water, you get half the ppm. Adjust as needed.

But you WILL NEED TO TEST YOUR WATER to be sure it's that strength. If you don't have an FAS-DPD chlorine test, standard in the Taylor K-2006 and K-2006C kits, you can use the distilled water method to approximate it. But that will not be accurate and will only measure TC--Total Chlorine rather than FC and CC. TC= FC + CC, always and forever.

If you are using test strips, or "guess strips" as we call them, don't.

You CAN order a separate FAS-DPD test from Taylor, if you already have the other tests (pH, TA, CH and CYA). Do not confuse FAS-DPD and DPD chlorine tests. They are not the same.

I can't check it now working but I believe I have the Taylor k2006. It's kinda big. My kit came with mininal instructions. How do I get the Tc,fc,cc levels that you are mentioning? Thanks for all your help.

Take the long vial that's about the diameter of a quarter and fill it with pool water to the 10ml line. Invert the vial and stick it down at least 6" to 1' before turning it over so you don't get surface water. You'll have to dump most of it out.

FC:
Add a scoop of the DPD powder (r-0870? --it's the only powder in the kit). Swirl it around. It should turn the water pink or red. If some stays on the bottom of the vial, don't worry about it.
Now add 1 drop at a time of the R-871 liquid, in the brown bottle. Swirl after each drop. Count your drops as each drop represents an FC of .5ppm. So 2 drops is 1ppm, 9 drops is 4.5ppm. Keep adding drops and swirling one at a time until the water goes clear. If it has a slight pinkish tone (put it on a white piece of paper) add drops till that is gone. The number of drips divided by 2 is your FC level.

CC:
USING THE SAME VIAL OF WATER AS ABOVE--Now add exactly 5 drops of R-0003.
If the water does not turn pink at all, your CC is 0 (zero) which is ideal.
If it turns pink, add R-0871 drops as above, counting drops again until the water is clear with no pink tinge. If one drop alone clears it, you have between 0 and .5ppm of CC and that's not a problem.

Other ways to run the test:

25ml line:
If you fill the tube to the 25ml line, then it takes 5 drops of R-0871 to indicate 1ppm of FC and each drop is .2 rather than .5.
There's no reason to use this for your pool unless you want to go forward with the CC test and see if the 0-.5ppm is really only 0-.2ppm.
This test, while more accurate, uses 2.5 times as much precious reagents with only a minor gain. I use it ONLY to test the concentration of my liquid chlorine.

5ml line:
If your FC is high, you can use this line instead. Here, each drop of R-0871 represents 1ppm of FC, so when FC is in the 15-30 range, you'll use half as much reagent, and, at that level, the additional accuracy of .5ppm isn't necessary.

To get TC, remember that TC = FC + CC.

I did the test. My FC is 11 my CC is 0 stayed clear. Just to be clear I need to shock the pool and get it to 20ppm? Thanks again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cdingess

I did the test. My FC is 11 my CC is 0 stayed clear. Just to be clear I need to shock the pool and get it to 20ppm? Thanks again.

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If you have a CC reading of 0, then odds are that you do not need to shock the pool. Let's have you run one more test to be sure.

This evening, after the sun is off of the pool, run the FC and CC tests again. Make note of the readings. Then, in the morning within an hour of sunrise, run the FC and CC tests again. If you have lost more than 1ppm of FC compared to the readings from the evening before or have a CC reading more than 0.5, then shock the pool. Otherwise, it is not necessary to do so.

You do need to always keep your chlorine within the proper ranges based on your CYA readings. Take a look at the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in my signature below for more information about the correlation between CYA and chlorine levels.

I would also suggest that you quit using pucks. They add CYA and yours is already high. (Let the one dissolve that you currently have in the pool and then don't add more.)

Before seeing your last response I put a gallon and half of bleach in the pool. Let run through and tested yesterday mid day. The cl was 8 was still pretty strong smelling. The puck should be gone by today. It's very clean looking! Im going to let it be for a day then recheck like you suggested in first place then recheck everything. Thanks for your help.