Central Valley SWCG w/ Low CL & High PH...

[nomar116]

Well I havn't replied for a while because I had the Taylor 2006 kit on order. I received it the other day and am underway testing the pool. The booklet says to start with balanced water before bringing the chlorine/cya up to par so I began by testing total alkalinity. Total alkalinity was over 250 ppm which I guess I expected. I am in the middle of adding muriatic acid over a few day period, 1 gallon yesterday and another today. The pool is probably around 25,000 gallons, I think I'll take a good measurement tomorrow to be sure.

Anyway, thanks in advance. Any suggestions on getting started using this testing kit would be great. I guess my plan is to bring down total alkalinity and pH and then move back to bringing Chlorine/CYA into check. I am very curious to know why I see basically NO algae formation or any visual indications the pool isn't OK...

[aylad]

Make sure that you are maintaining chlorine in the pool while you're adjusting the TA and pH, though--if you allow an algae bloom, it will just throw off everything you're trying to do.

Janet

[nomar116]

Ok, not alot of success on my pools condition. Frankly I seem to have regressed...

The temps here have been dropping over the past couple of weeks and we've seen our first hour or two of rain this year here in California. Not sure if either of those have to do with my problems but here goes.

On Saturday I noticed a significant amount of algae collecting on the walls of the pool. I used the brush to stir up the pool and ran the pump for the next 24 hours. Turned the sanitizer's output on 24 hr max mode and also added one pack of chlorine shock (only rated for a 10,000lbs pool but it was all I had on hand).

On Sunday I bought some more chemicals and retested the water. Now Chlorine measured over 5 ppm and some of the green seemed to be reduced. However, total alkalinity hasn't really come down. I added two gallons of muriatic acid, one on Thursday and the second on Friday. I've made all my readings using the 10mL Taylor test. On Thursday total alkalinity was 11 drops =~ 275 ppm. On Saturday the pool had come down to 10 drops and after another gallon of acid, today the pool is measuring at 9/10 drops still which is =~ 250 ppm... So that doesn't seem right.

Theres actually some bugs swimming in the pool, too. So that's pretty gross! I bought CYA, some Algaecide/Clarifier and more shock. The clarifier says I need to wait til the Cl drops and today it is still ~ 4-5ppm and hasn't really fallen much. I'm running the pump 6 hours a day at this point and still havn't added any CYA since I'm trying to get the CL level to drop (?).

So what all am I doing wrong? :/

[waterbear]

If you post a full set of test results we can take you step by step to a perfect pool. However, we need to know where we are starting.

[aylad]

Ditto what Waterbear said--and don't add the clarifier--it's going to increase your problems, not help them...

Janet

[nomar116]

Ok, thanks again for the replies. As requested I took a total set of tests and here are the results:

Akalinity 225ppm (I've added a total of about 5 gallons of muriatic acid of the past month!)

Free CL - 1.0 ppm

Combined CL - No color change so zero?

PH - 7.1, doing a Base Demand test took 5 drops R-0006 to bring it to a 7.4.

Calcium Hardness - 50 ppm

CYA - 38 ppm

And from these numbers a SI of about -0.8 - 1.0 (I'm actually measuring water temp right now, my guess is somewhere around 65degF, its awful cold!)

Paul

[nomar116]

And total temp was 67degF. Any suggestions? Thanks a million