Chlorine magically disappears!!!!

I have a friend who is a 2nd year pool owner. It's an above ground 24' 52" high round pool. He opened the pool, vacuumed, ran his robot, dumped in 3 gallons of 12% and no change.

I went over with my Taylor kit suspecting his CYA was high, but I got a 30-40ppm reading. His pH was a little low and I advised him to add some Borax and more chlorine since my kit had shown nothing.

He added 6 gallons and the next day, no change in the milky green color. He took a sample to the pool store and they said his levels were good aside from No Chlorine.

He bought 5 more 3 gallon containers (or are they 2 gallon?) He put them in last night and woke up to the same colored pool as he has. He has test strips and they read No Chlorine. Could they be bleaching out?

In any case his Alk, pH, CYA all seem to be okay.

Now he replaced his sand in his filter right after opening the pool. I am starting to suspect he may have done something to the filter that has rendered is useless in filtering. I told him that new sand isn't as efficient as older sand, but he is new to this.

So what could be eating his chlorine. Is his CYA too low to keep the chlorine in the pool? I wouldn't think so and he added the 4-5 containers of liquid chlorine in the evening.

My pool went from brown to clear in 2 days. His seems to be stuck.

I calculate the pool about 13k gallons, so 3 gallons of 12% would give 30 or so chlorine- very easy to bleach out some tests! try a cheap OTO test, or your own FAS-DPD test... the OTO test will turn brown, I think at high FC levels...

We really need complete tests to advise- he could have extreme ammonia build up if a lot of CYA was used before, or other issues...

Perhaps your friend has algae? All the chlorine can be quickly consumed killing algae.
How about testing every hour after bleach goes in - see if you can catch some before it's consumed. If that pool is 15,000 gallons he 3 gallons of 12% should raise the FC well past 20.

No doubt there is algae, but would it consume that much chlorine? I will take my test kit over to his pool.
Every experience I have had is that chlorine in that amount would knock it out fairly quick unless the CYA was way too high. I measured between 30-40ppm with my test.
Very strange.

ABSOLUTELY.

I had a fairly nasty algae outbreak early this spring. It took tens of gallons of bleach and probably 8 pounds of CalHypo to eradicate it.

Well I went over there and he has 4.5ppm of FC. I told him to get some Cal-Hypo at the store. He told me he closed the pool green, which I din't know. He said he was yo-yo-ing all last summer, green, cloudy, clear.
His Alkalinity is 80 and his pH dropped a bit again. I told him to get some more Borax, which I swear by. If he dumps enough in to hit the magic ppm number, he'll be in better shape anyway.

Unless his pH is extremely low, he'd be better off to fix one thing at a time--and he really needs to concentrate on the chlorine demand first. If he needs to add Borax to get the pH above 7.0 then by all means go ahead and add it--but I wouldn't worry about trying to raise the borate level, at least not until he gets the chlorine demand taken care of. If he closed the pool green, there's a really good chance that some or all of his CYA was converted to ammonia during the winter, and that can create a HUGE chlorine demand (and sometimes for a really long time)that must be overcome before he's going to be able to get a clear pool. He's going to need to get the chlorine up to shock level (see the "best guess chart in my sig for proper levels, based on his current CYA number) and keep it there until he's able to hold chlorine in the pool. That can take lots and lots of chlorine and time, but he'll need to accomplish it to have any good swim time this summer.

Janet

You folks are absolutely right.
His pH was very low, 6.8 or so. I figured the Borax wouldn't do any harm.
I am afraid he is going to get frustrated and stop believing me and head for the Pool People and armloads of crap.
I saw pH minus, Alk increaser, conditioner, and so on in his shed. They sold it to him once, they'll do it again.
BUT it is his pool and I cannot be there 24/7 monitoring it, brushing it, vacuuming it and most importantly dosing chlorine and it looks like he will need A LOT from you have told me.

You know how it goes right?

Yup, we know how it goes. He's just going to have to decide to trust you OR the pool people who are draining hiis wallet, because doing both won't work. But after all, it's his pool, and at least you can say you tried. Maybe he'll take your pool as an example??

Janet

Yep, he stopped by and saw our pool and I said "this is what it's supposed to look like" LOL
It's his pool and he has to learn or be fleeced by someone behind a counter that may take advantage of him.

Hopefully he'll come around soon. It's very frustrating to try to help somebody that resists you!

Janet

The resistance is understandable. This pool owner is frustrated, has has a problem he doesn't understand and can't see a way to fix it. He's getting advice from the Pools Store (people who do this for a living) and from you (a friend with a clean pool) - it's very hard for most of us to doubt established authority especially when we're feeling unsure and vulnerable.
Your friend needs a reason to believe that this method (BBB) will get him to his goal. Perhaps suggesting that he read some of this forum (especially here "Dealing with Algae") would help him gain confidence.
I would also avoid attacking the pool store or the "remedies" they sold him as he likely has some personal/emotional investment in the idea that these "remedies" will help. In this case, attacking the Pools Store would be seen as an attack on him and we all defend ourselves when we feel attacked.

This is as grown-up as I get. Good luck and thanks for helping your friend.

I was very careful about not insulting his purchases. I did however walk out of his shed with a couple of buckets for my tomato plants!!! LOL

I myself think he will give up and talked about draining and refilling the pool. It's sad that people don't want to learn or feel they cannot learn. You guys have helped me many a time when things got out of control.

Almost a year has passed since this thread ended. Just an update in where my friend stands. He got his pool crystal clear for the summer last year and kept his chlorine levels up and closed a clear pool, actually pool store did. He opened his pool this spring to crystal clear water. He is using BBB and things are looking good. Converted? I would hope so. Thanks to this forum.

Awesome! I'm smiling on the inside and the outside.

thanks for the update. I just converted my neighbors pool this past month. They had a swamp and were very discouraged when we started dumping bleach and not seeing results as fast as they would have liked. Turned out the pool equipment was a large part of the problem and pool is now crystal clear.

Keep spreading the word. I have turned many of people away from "clarifiers" and other mystery chemicals at walmart and BJ's.