Need help before draining

Need help
Pool has been clear all year.
I have been using 3” tabs from Sams club.
POOLBRAND - Sodium Dichloro-s-Triazinetrione Hydrated=99% , 90% available chlorine
And
POOLBRAND Quick Dissolving Shock- Sodium Dichloro-s-Triazinetrione Hydrated=99% with 55.5% available chlorine.

Always clear and tested fine with about 1 tab a week in a floating chorlrnator
and then 1lb. shock every 2 weeks.
Vinyl pool 7500 gallons.

Anyway out of town weather got very hot and water got a cloudy. Tested and no chlorine.
Added 2 tablets and a ½ gallon of bleach
Added one pound package of shock twice after a couple of days.

Tested water and chlorine was good and started to clear just a little after a week.

Then tested again chlorine was low so add to more tablets.
After two days it is now very cloudy.

Took sample to pool store.
Free available chlorine = 5.77
Total Chlorine= 5.77
Combined= 0
Total A = 112
Calcuium Hardness = 54
CYA = 156


They say I need to drain pool and buy their chemicals. That the stuff from Sams has too much cya in it and that’s what caused my problem. They said mostly the Shock has too much CYA.

Neighbor uses same Tablets but uses Bleach for shock treatment. Should I do the same after I drain?

Thanks for any help

I see no reason to drain the pool--it is very easy to run a high CYA pool, you just have to increase your chlorine levels to compensate. See the "best guess chlorine chart" linked in my sig for more of an explanation, and the chart, but basically the dichlor powder and trichlor pucks you've been using do contain CYA, and it has gotten high enough that your chlorine levels need to be higher to keep algae away. With a CYA of 156, you just need to shock the pool to 25 ppm (I would use bleach for this) and hold it there until the water clears, and until you're not losing more than 1 ppm chlorine when measuring at night and again the next morning before the sun hits the pool. After you get to that point, let your chlorine drift back down to the 8-15 ppm range, but never below 8 ppm..or you risk another algae bloom. In 7500 gallons of water, each cup of 6% bleach you add will raise your FC by 1 ppm, so you can use that as a guide to know how much to add.

Got home today and my son had drained and replaced 75% of the water with new.
Still cloudy but much better. Do I need to test first. Or could you make a guess on how much bleach I could put in tonight to get started.
Plan on taking a sample to pool store tomorrow. And ordering a better test kit.

Thanks for the help.

Do you have a test kit of any kind now? If so, tell us what kind it is and then post results and then order a good kit!

New readings but its still cloudy. Drained 75% and added 1 gallon of 6% bleach.
Should I just keep pump running and just wait? Lower PH some?

Thanks again

Free available chlorine = 7.6
Total Chlorine= 7.6
Combined= 0
Total A = 91
Calcuium Hardness = 45
CYA = 50

You don't list a pH reading, so I don't know whether it needs to come down or not. Since you've been using so much stabilized chlorine, though, I doubt it needs to be lowered. Chances are it needs to be raised. Can you test for that and list your result?

The next thing I would do is to test your chlorine level tonight, after the sun is off the pool, and test it again in the morning, before the sun hits the pool. Compare those readings, and if there's more than 1 ppm difference, then you need to shock the pool, which for a CYA =50 means you need to raise the chlorine to 15-18 ppm and hold it there until the water clears up and until you can run that test overnight again without losing any chlorine. If there is less than 1 ppm difference, then you need to keep your filter running and be a little patient to allow the filter to remove any junk from the water.

Do yourself a favor and get your own test kit and test your water yourself. Pool store test results are sometimes reliable and sometimes not, but there's no real way to know until you have water problems. We highly recommend the K-2006 linked in my sig, but for now, at least go to WalMart and get either the hth 6-way drop kit or the cheapie OTO kit (uses yellow and red drops for chlorine and pH) and use that. To determine chlorine demand overnight, you have to be able to get accurate testing done at specific times, and the pool store just won't be able to do that for you.


Janet

Sorry forgot to list
PH is 7.9

You can lower it if you want, using muriatic (please read the link in my sig before handling it) or dry acid. However, if your fill water is high in pH, then it's going to rise again anytime you top off the pool, so you may or may not decide it's worth it. I would test your fill water and see. My fill water is pH 7.8, and no matter what I do to try to lower it, my pool settles at that level, so I finally just quit trying to chase the number and let it be. You might find yourself in the same predicament.

Janet

Ordered a test kit. The one I have only goes up to 5.0
Could run another sample to the pool store but think it will be about the same.
Been about 2 1/2 days now. And pool is back to being just as cloudy as when I started and before draining 75%.
I guess the mistake was not draining the rest of the way.
Added a gallon of bleach today to try and shock it more.
How long should I wait, before biting the bullet and re - draining the pool but 100% this time?
Hate to waste the water again but the weather is suppose to be overcast the next couple of day and maybe my best time so liner does not dry out. Can drain in 2 hours but take about 12 hours to refill.

Thanks

Adding a gallon of bleach is only raising your FC by 8 ppm. If you look at my post #6 in this thread, your shock level with CYA of 50 is 15-18 ppm, sustained until you can go overnight without losing any chlorine overnight. This requires testing in the evening and again in the morning. If you let the chlorine levels come back down before then, you're not going to clear up the algae that I'm sure is trying to grow, and will have a cloudy pool all summer. You say you added a gallon of bleach to "shock it more"--what chlorine level did you start with before adding the bleach? If you're not testing the water, and maintaining the high chlorine level, it's not going to clear. Fixing water problems isn't an overnight project--it takes awhile for the water to get in the shape it's in, and it usually won't fix overnight.

You can drain/refill water if you want to, but if you continue to improperly chlorinate it, you're going to end up with cloudy water again. Do you have a working gauge on your filter? Does it rise as the pump is running? When is the last time you cleaned the filter?

Janet

You can use a dilution method to force your kit to read higher. Not super accurate, but better than nothing while you wait on your good kit to arrive.

Testing Without a Good Kit

Test the chlorine this evening (when the sun is off the pool) using the dilution method. Then, add enough bleach to get back to a chlorine level of 15-18 as Janet mentioned above. An hour later, retest your chlorine again using dilution. Tomorrow morning within 2 hours of sunrise, test it again. Report back with how much chlorine you lost overnight. Try and keep the chlorine level at 15-18. The more consistently you can do this, the quicker you can clear up the pool.

Run the pump 24/7 and clean the filter as needed.

All your other readings look fine. I don't think you need to drain. If you can keep the chlorine level high enough and be consistent in doing so, you should be able to clear it.

EDIT --- looks like Janet was posting while I was typing but as you can see, our advice is similar.