Absentee pool owner

[aylad]

When I super shocked my pool with HTH Cal/Hypo @ 6 one pound packages in my 12,600 gallon pool the water went from dark green to a medium Light blue color. I assumed the algae had been killed , although physically it still remained (dead) in the water. And this dead organic matter was what was making the water cloudy.

You're right that the cloudiness was dead algae, which will be removed by the filter--however, it's still possible that it isn't all dead yet. We usually recommend that the shock level be maintained until the water clears, the CC is less than 0.5, and you don't lose any chlorine when testing at night and again in the morning before the sun hits the pool. THEN you know it's all dead!

I need a little more help in understanding what amount of CYA I need to have in my pool. From reading threads in this forum it seems like the more CYA you have the higher amount of free chlorine you need to have also. If the amount of Free chlorine you need to have goes up does not your cost of the chemicals being put in the pool also increase? I understand that the CYA stabilizes the chlorine so its not destroyed as rapidly by the UV rays, but where does the break point come in?

I am one of those people that find that much higher CYA levels actually cuts my chlorine cost instead of raising it, as I alluded to in my post above. Even though it initially takes more bleach to get to the "normal" chlorine levels, once you're there, it costs no more to keep it there than it does to maintain the proportionally lower levels in a lower CYA pool. For example, with a CYA of 30, and a target chlorine level of 3-6 ppm, I was losing 3-4 ppm chlorine daily, so I had to add about a gallon of bleach daily to compensate. With my CYA at 80, and a target chlorine level of 5-10, I'm only losing 1-2 ppm per day, so I can add the larger jug (196 oz) of bleach every 2 or 3 days and still maintain the minimum 5 ppm required--and I don't have to make daily additions!! Then when I need to shock, it takes no more bleach to get from 10 to 20 ppm than it does to get from 5 to 15 ppm.

I am only about 3 1/2 hours from you, so my climate is nearly identical to yours. Each pool is different, and you'll find through experience what works best for your pool, but the regimen I described above works VERY well for me!

Janet

Edit: If it were my pool, I'd go ahead and use up the trichlor that you have. Even if you go up to 50 or so and don't like it that high, it's very easily reduced by backwashing and splashout back down to the 30s. The Cal-hypo tabs are not good at all--they used to make one in a capsule that dissolved just like the trichlor tabs, but these newer ones just go to mush no matter where you put them. Yuk.