New homeowner, pool owner lots of q's!

[Watermom]

The CYA levels are that high from using the trichlor pucks. They are stabilized which means that they add CYA. For every 10ppm of chlorine that is added from a trichlor puck, 6ppm of cya is also added. If you use those pucks over a long period of time, they cya level continues to rise until it gets really high like yours is. People do not understand that the more cya they have, the higher they have to keep their chlorine levels or else they will get algae. We see it ALL the time. That is why I say no more pucks for your pool. Not in a floater nor in an inline feeder. Also, nor more dichlor powder shock. It adds 9ppm of cya for every 10ppm of chlorine added. You need to switch to liquid chlorine. Either bleach of pool store liquid chlorine.

I suggest reading all the "stickied" threads at the tops of most of the forums. Especially in the chemistry areas of the forum. You will learn a lot about the basics of pool care. Also, the sister site to this forum has lots of good information. I suggest also reading there ---- www.poolsolutions.com

[booztedgt]

Thanks....I was just reading some of your posts on trichlor and CYA (and I just bought a bucket of trichlor, doh!). Since I have the bucket of trichlor already, could I use use it profusely until it's gone, and then switch to liquid chlorine? Any harm in high CYA levels, other than eating chlorine? I'd hate to throw away 60+ pounds of trichlor. But good advice on the liquid chlorine. I assume it's not stabilized though, so wouldn't I have to add CYA at some point to prevent the UV from burning off the chlorine? Or is there a preferable stabilizer to add?

Maybe a stupid question, but do SWGs generate CYA?

[Watermom]

You can use the trichlor, but it will continue to make your cya get higher and higher and higher. Who knows how high your cya is?? A reading of 100 (since the tester cannot differentiate any higher) could really be 200? 300? ????? You can use the pucks but it is going to be hard to manage your pool. You will have to run extremely high chlorine to compensate for the high cya. Take a look at this chart:

Stabilizer . . . . . . Min. FC . . . . Max FC . . . 'Shock' FC
=> 0 ppm . . . . . . . 1 ppm . . . . . 3 ppm . . . . 10 ppm
=> 10 - 20 ppm . . . . 2 ppm . . . . . 5 ppm . . . . 12 ppm
=> 30 - 50 ppm . . . . 3 ppm . . . . . 6 ppm . . . . 15 ppm
=> 60 - 90 ppm . . . . 5 ppm . . . . . 10 ppm . . .. 20 ppm
=> 100 - 200 ppm . . . 8 ppm . . . . . 15 ppm . . .. 25 ppm

Trichlor pucks will not go bad as long as you keep them dry. You can put them away for the summer and save them to use next year if your cya level is low enough to permit it. Your call. I would not suggest continuing to use them but if you decide to, just be aware that your cl levels will need to be really high all the time and you may have a lot of trouble keeping this pool algae-free.

Liquid chlorine is not stabilized. You have so much cya in there already that you would not need to add more. (It does not go away. The only way to get rid of it is to drain and refill.) SWGs do not generate cya.

Hope this helps.