Taking control of my pool this year

I'll check. This forum has been a wonderful learning experience so far. I appreciate the knowledge I have gained! I already have a friend emailing me to come test his pool!

So I'm getting down to basics now as most of my tougher issues seem to be getting resolved.
-Is there a rule of thumb on how many hours to run the pump? A friend in Texas that has a pool said 1 hour per 10 degrees of pool water is pretty close.
-For a "true shock" I should use liquid chlorine bleach, so how many ppm should I try to raise it by for it to be effective? Also, is it best to "pre prepare" the pool (set the SWCG to 100%) say before a party when you know 15-20 people are going to be in the pool?
-Regarding shocking the pool, should it be on a regular proactive schedule or reactive to things like heavy rainfall?

Think I am getting close to knowing just about everything I wanted to know about my pool!

-stephen

Reduced my SWCG output to 20% this evening because the OTO kit has been showing about 5 ppm (maybe more its pretty dark yellow) for the past 2 days in the evening. Also put my pump back on a 9 hour run time from 9am to 6pm. So my pump is finally getting a break tonight!

For reference, last year when there were still other chems in the pool from being pool store'd, I was able to run the SWCG at 20% all season so I'm guessing there was some CYA still in the pool back then. Once a week I would hit the superchlorinate button back then.

What I do is run my pump enough to adequately filter the water, and then adjust my swcg output to a suitable percentage given the runtime I'm using. Currently at 40% output with a pump runtime of 6 hours/day. I've only got 12k gallons of water and a 2hp pump, though. I think to "calculate" the proper runtime for your pump you need to know the actual flow rate you've got; which from what I can tell is difficult to determine unless you buy and install a flow meter. I'm pretty sure the filter size plays into this as well, but I don't fully understand how that would affect the calculation. I think there's a "rule of thumb" that you want to be able to filter 100% of your water x time's /day but I can't remember what that x is (2 or 4 or something I think I read).

I started with 4h runtime and bumped it up to 6 recently because I could see particles in the water when the light was on in my pool. I also just bumped my swcg up to 40% from 10% because I tested yesterday and found 0 FC in the water around noon. My CYA level is lower than it should be at around 45; and FC levels are a little higher than the 2ppm I was shooting for as well (I still don't fully understand why I'm supposed to target a lower fc level given my cya than the best guess chart shows). Based on the 4PPM fc level I just measured I think I'm going to back the swcg down to 30 tonight.

I think in general, from a chlorine generating perspective you want longer runtime and lower swcg output so you have a more consistent chlorine level. My cl gets a little higher by the end of my daily run, and gradually drops until the next run. I think I've seen pooldoc recommend multiple shorter runs over running once a day like I do. I run the pump when I do because I like to see the waterfalls and stuff and 4p-10p is when I'm most likely to be out there.

Just checking in. My pool has been doing great. I've been checking the FC and pH pretty often and my last CYA check was around 50ppm. My FC has been running around 3ppm. I'm still running the unit at 20% output and the pump runs for 9 hours. I ordered a salt test strip kit so I can validate if the reading on the SWCG is accurate. Going to give it a shot this evening.

I still have to make a decision on a vac though... my polaris works one day and not the next or works for an hour then moves slow for a while then moves fast again.

Looks like running at 20% for 9 hours is pretty much a slow downward slope.

I thought of something else that I didn't cover regarding shocking the pool. Is there a preemptive schedule I should follow? How many PPM rise should I shoot for when shocking? I should be using liquid bleach for this right?

Thanks!
-stephen

You shock whenever you have cloudy or green water, a CC reading greater than 0.5ppm or if you lose more than 1ppm of chlorine overnight. Shock levels are based on CYA levels. Take a look at the Best Guess Chlorine chart in my signature. Yes to using liquid chlorine for shocking purposes.