My levels, are they okay?

[Digger]

Thanks again everyone on here for the all the help. I apologize for posting incorrectly as I have been learning. I do know you are all unpaid volunteers, and I truly appreciate your time! I know it is a struggle for me to even get time to get on here for myself. Hopefully sometime I can give back to others in turn. Anyhow, we finally changed the sand after the baq. conversion. I tested all of my levels this morning and this is what they are: Chlorine:FC-3.5, CC-0, PH- 7.6 ( I have been adding some Muriatic Acid to decrease) Alkalinity- 125 ( this is when the color turned to light pink, not bright red), Calcium Hardness- 100, and CYA is 35 (this has dropped since sand change, but seems to be where it should be?) Our pool is crystal clear and it is holding the chlorine better since sand change. How do my perimeters look? Thanks in advance for all your help, I TRULY appreciate it! I am rec. this site to many others, so they too can take over the control of their own pools, also and not be at the mercy of a pool store!

[aylad]

Congratulations, it looks like you did a great job!! Your numbers look pretty good, just don't let that chlorine drop below 3 ppm--if you do, you're inviting algae. With a CYA of 35, you need to keep the chlorine between 3 and 6 ppm.

When you do the alk test, you keep adding drops until the last drop you added makes no color change. If that's what you did, and 125 is the number, then that's actually pretty good. If you stopped before the sample stopped changing colors with additional drops, then you need to do the test again, this time adding drops until you get no color change at all. The alk could stand to come down a little bit, but it's not really bad where it is. If you keep adding acid to drop your pH, the alk will come down slowly anyway.

Good job!!

Janet

[Watermom]

I agree with Jan. Numbers look good. I wouldn't even bother with dropping the pH any. 7.6 is fine as is everything else. Good job, Digger! Now, time to enjoy that pool with those grandbabies!

[Digger]

Thanks everyone for the input. I am so HAPPY with our pool this year, thanks to everyone on here!! I don't remember the last time I could say that, honestly!! I hestitate to brag anymore, lest something bad happen, LOL! I will have to recheck the Alka. I didn't really stop as far as color changes? Will redo that later today! I want to recheck the CYA too, second guessing myself. I, just for the fun of it took a water sample in yesterday to one of my pool places ( who should have a special steel plate on their door with our name on it, for all of our donations, !), anyhow the CYA showed for her that it was between 20-25. I would trust my testing first, because she just used a strip, but I want to make sure, maybe it does need more stablizer! I just want to make sure as it is not easy to undo that mix! I had been letting some of my levels go down with the cholrine prior to sand change, than bringing back up to a 3. Today it is 6.5., the highest it has been for awhile. I am wondering if I should do a good shock for safety with all the dabbling before? There were even times it read .5-1, being the lowest readings. I will have to get on here and read what to do when I go on vacation in a week also. I will be leaving for about a week on the 1st of August.

[aylad]

Since you're testing with a drop-based kit, go with YOUR numbers and not the pool store's!! Just redo your alk test, and keep adding drops until the last drop you added produces no color change--then count all the drops except that one and multiply by 10 for your alk reading.

As far as shocking your pool goes, you can always shock it, it will never hurt it, but it's really unnecessary unless 1)you have a sustained CC level higher than 0.5, 2) your water is getting cloudy, or 3) you're losing more than 1 ppm of chlorine overnight from sundown to sunup. (I also shock mine sometimes if I've had a few days of really heavy kid bather loads, just 'cuz ).

When you get ready to go on vacation, post back here with a complete set of test numbers, and we can go from there!

Janet