Stains and test results..........

First of all, thanks Ben for this educational site. We've had our pool three years and thanks to your test results, it's been easy to keep up with. However, this year when we opened the pool, we had a stain problem. Some stains were from oak leaves (thanks to the neighbor's trees!), but the worst is a "track line" in the deep end of the pool where Kreepy didn't kreep.

Here's the history.
Upon opening, I purchased many gallons of bleach, probably 30+ and shocked the devil out of the pool, keeping my CL levels above 20. We had an algea problem and I couldn't get my water to completely clear. After reading this forum, I added polyquat. Now the algea is gone and the water's clear. :)

I'm using a combination of bleach and tri-chlor pucks to keep my chlorine levels up. I know the tri-chlor adds CYA, but we're out-of-town a lot and can't add the bleach when we're not home. When we're home, I'm pouring in bleach, but using the pucks when we're gone so I don't come home to zero chlorine and yucky water.

But the Kreepy tracks are still on the bottom of the pool and there's a nice scum line around the waterline. We've brushed, scrubbed, etc, but it won't go away.

The pool's gunite and about 24,000 gallons.

Here are my numbers from this morning...........

7.0 FC
0 CC
3.0 TC (correction TC is 7.0 not 3.0!)
7.5 PH
90 TA
150 CAL
100 CYA

Base on my forum research, my CYA is too high and preventing the CL from getting rid of the stains. (FYI, some of the oak leaf stains did brush off in the beginning.) Am I correct? Do I need to do a partial drain and get my CYA back to 30-50. Then shock with bleach to eliminate the stains?

What'd y'all think?

Thanks,
Marla

Marla,
I think there may be a problem with your test results. The TC (total Chlorine) should always equal FC (free CL) + CC (combined CL). According to the results the FC is 7, TC is 3 and CC is 0 which is not possible. I would double-check these because if the FC is 3 and TC is 7 you have a TON of CC in that pool that needs to be shocked out. Also, I would drain and re-fill to get the CYA below 50. Since you mention wanting to use pucks throughout the summer you might want to get the CYA down to 30.

You're right Bleach=Chlorine.......the TC is 7.0 not 3.0! (My typo!)

Marla

Marla,
Ok that sounds a lot better! I have a decent amount of staining from leaves, etc in the bottom of my plaster pool and I am not sure how effective treatments are. I think you have to drain and acid wash to clean real bad stains -- Was told by my pool man that helped with inspection(not store). I have not used any stain products so I can not comment on the effectiveness.