New pool owner needs help.

[shoogles]

Also, I forgot to mention that I didn't get to put in the bleach last night... the sun went down and then a storm moved in. Our pump is a little tempermental right now, so I didn't want to run it when there were leaves and other fun stuff like that blowing into the pool.

[aylad]

Have you put any CYA into the pool? It would have had to be in the form of CYA granules, or using dichlor powder or trichlor pucks to chlorinate. If you haven't added any of that, then shock based on 0 CYA, which is what you have. CYA has to be added in order to be present in your pool water. If you haven't added any CYA, then you need to shock based on a 0 level. Bring your water up to 10 (bringing it up to 12-15 actually wouldn't hurt) by putting the 2 1/2 gallons of bleach in (or 3 1/2 gallons if you want to go up to 15) . Test the water as often as possible and add more bleach to get back up to the 10-15 range as often as possible, as I described in the above thread. If you haven't added any CYA up to now, you can go ahead and add it either via skimmer, where it will sit and dissolve on your filter (but you can't clean your filter until it dissolves, probably 3-4 days) or put it in an old sock and hang it in front of a return to help it dissolve. You want to target around 30-40 ppm of CYA, but only put in about 2/3 of what you think you'll need at first, because it's easier to add more later than it is to add too much and overshoot, requiring higher chlorine levels or drain/refill to compensate.

And as for your other question, I would trust my drop-based test results over any pool store, any time!!!

Janet

[shoogles]

We do have those tablet things that have CYA in them that we were attempting to chlorinate with, so there's why we have a little bit of CYA in there because of those.

So I guess I'll base my chlorine amount on the CYA level from the pool store to shock.

I will not, however, add acid to my pool if I don't need it. Is 7.8 too high? Should I shock first and worry about the pH later?

[Watermom]

Your pH is ok at 7.8. Anywhere between 7.2-7.8 is fine.

[shoogles]

Thanks Janet and Watermom. Husband is out brushing and adding bleach as we speak.

[shoogles]

So, we attempted the CarlD Shotglass method of testing our water, but it didn't seem to work. No matter how much we diluted (1 to 2, 1 to 3, 1 to 4, etc.) it always read at .2. Can't figure out why.

So now we have no idea if we have enough bleach in the pool to have reached shock level or not... and I'm not exactly sure what we'll do tomorrow when we need to test the water again and add more bleach. Yikes.

[CarlD]

The CarlD shot glass method is only useful when the chlorine level in the pool exceeds your OTO test kit's limit (Usually 3ppm but the better ones go to 5ppm). If it's .2 with undiluted pool water, there's no point in diluting it. Only if the drop test comes up darker than the max on the OTO kit should you consider my shot glass method.

[waterbear]

So, we attempted the CarlD Shotglass method of testing our water, but it didn't seem to work. No matter how much we diluted (1 to 2, 1 to 3, 1 to 4, etc.) it always read at .2. Can't figure out why.
The only tests I know of that will measure as low as .2 ppm are an FAS-DPD titration kit and some of the electronic testers and strip readers. How are you testing?
So now we have no idea if we have enough bleach in the pool to have reached shock level or not... and I'm not exactly sure what we'll do tomorrow when we need to test the water again and add more bleach. Yikes.

If you are testing low chlorine then you do NOT have enough bleach in the pool.