CYA, hot water, and South Florida

[freeclear]

Thank you for the replies. It sounds like I'll hopefully not have issues running with a bit higher CYA.

In an effort to keep my first post short, I put the 'meat' of my question in there. Now I'll add a little more to the story. I built my in ground, exposed aggregate pool in the summer of 2003. I went to Pinch a Penny (local pool store, I believer it's a chain) for testing and supplies afterward. My pool builder, as part of the warranty, wanted at least monthly chemical tests by a pool store to verify I was properly balancing the pool, and Pinchapenny had anice computer that could pull the reports when needed and I wouldn't have to keep papaer lying around. Anyway, very soon after the pool opened, I found this website, bought a kit, and took care of my own pool with my new knowledge (I balanced the pool and got the "professional" test, just so my numbers would look good).

My pool was beautiful, all the time. Then we got hit by Frances and Jeanne, I lost power to the pool for 2 weeks. I cleaned it the best I could, I even added bleach and acid as needed and agitated the pool by hand. Unfortunately, by that winter, I was getting yellow algae with all my pool stats in the 'normal' places. All winter I fought it. I even spent a full month with the bleach levels at shock levels, diligently adding bleach every day (not much loss in the winter), brushing, and cleaning the filter. The algae still crept in again once I tried to let the bleach levels return to normal. We had hurricane redux with Wilma and again I spent last winter trying to free the pool of algae.

Basically, if I don't keep higher levels of FC (8+ with CYA around 40-60), the algae starts showing up again in small spots. Unfortunately, I have Wednesday and the weekend to to take care of the pool, and I sometimes dip down in that period, and get a small outbreak. I'm going to try to raise the CYA a bit and see if I can hold on to the bleach level while still being effective at preventing the algae. I'm also going to start adding to polyquat weekly to see if that can help. I know I'm messing up the 'science' of my experiment by changin 2 variables, but I'll spend some extra $ on algaecide if it 'may' help prevent the extra trips for bleach and extra time for cleaning.

If you've read this far into the post, thanks for hanging in there. I hope I make some sense, but this is like therapy. I NEEDED TO VENT!!

If anyone had similar experiences after the hurricanes (most of the respondents seem to be from 'hurricane' areas), and have been able to control this, please let me know!

Thanks for reading,

Mike