Losing 3 ppm of chlorine a day

Opened pool 12 days ago. It was green as a pond. Held it at shock level till pool was clear. At about 6 days in it was blue but cloudy so I treated it with 20 oz of Polyquat. It cleared up in about 2 days. Since then I let it lower to around 6 pmm. I have had to add 1 gallon of bleach a day to maintain it. I also added salt as I was thinking about getting a SWCG and read on a thread that you could have salt water even if you do not use a generator for the feel of softer water. I added about 150 pounds.

PH 7.2
Alk 75
CYA 55
100 cal

I know my PH and Alk is low. How should I fix that and when? Do I wait till I get my chlorine fixed?


Thanks for any help

First, maintain shock level (from the Best Guess chart) until 1)water is clear (sounds like you're already there) 2) cc is 0.5 or less, and 3) you don't lose more than 1 ppm of FC overnight.

Ph is low but still within range, so focus on chlorine right now. Alk is nothing you need to worry about yet.

Question: was cya higher than 55 when you closed your pool?

I don't remember. I know it was very low when I opened it. We have a mesh cover and a sump pump and had a good amount of precipitation so the water was diluted quite a bit. I used dichloride, as I always do, to open it and get my CYA back up. I did use a little too much as I usually keep it at around 40. Can't test my cc because I ran out and am waiting for it to come, but when I tested it 4 days ago, I had no cc, which is why I'm a little confused. The other thing that confuses me is that it was 7 after I add a gallon last night, 3 when I test it around 11am, and then stayed there all day- 85 and sunny. I would have expected it to drop some. I normally would have added bleach by now but I wanted to see what everyone had to say.

I also ran the filter with some DE. Should I continue?

Bacteria may have eaten your cya from last year causing ammonia in the water. That doesn't change what you need to do. Shock as I mentioned before. If you can't test for FC and cc right now, get a cheap oto test kit and keep it off the chart dark yellow.

I can test for FC. I just got all new regents and got/ordered R-0002 instead of R-0003 (oops) so that's all I'm waiting on. It's a shame I can't buy it at a pool store. I'm at 3 and just added 6 gallons and I will test again in a couple hours to make sure I'm above 20 before I go to bed.

Thx!

I too have had a cloudy or green pool and a CC reading of 0. Not sure how good the CC test is in the Taylor kits, but I still test. However, if your pool LOOKS like it has a problem, it has a problem, despite no or low CC reading.

That's the thing Swimdaddy, my pool looks beautiful! Just eating chlorine. 20 last night, 17 this morning. Added a gallon. 2 hrs later 16. Added 2 gallons. 2 hrs later 16...uggggg!

I would say the chlorine loss could well be down to the polyquats you added which is really junk anyway. Polyquats wont clear an algae attack and increases the work load on the chlorine burning out the polyquats as Ben would have told you, sounds like you are a little to pool store, return to light! ;-)
If you have your free chlorine reagents now and are waiting for the CC reagent then as said previously get an OTO test kit as that only really measures total chlorine anyway.

Oh and your TA isn't too low either for a vinyl liner pool, so long as your pH doesn't climb the TA is fine.

Teapot I'm confused by your post. Polyquat is the only algicide this site recommends and is why I used it. I have been doing this method since 2011 and I'm not "pool store" at all. I read many threads on here that recommended the use of it for the problem I was experiencing -cloudy but blue, which it did clear up. I am also aware that it increases chlorine demand for a little while. In the past, it has only needed it for about 2 days and I added it a week ago.
As for the oto test, maybe I don't understand or am missing something. What would be the point to using it? How does it tell me what my CC is? It will turn bright yellow and tell me I have at least 5 ppm when I already know exactly what it is from the FC test I have been using.