New pool owner and have MANY questions. Need help!

[Txboynjgirl]

I have a vinyl-lined pool. I guess I wasted $33.00 on calcium hardness flakes. That won't happened again. I bought my pool salt at Wal-Mart. I'm pretty sure that I'm safe on that.
I will be going to the pool store tomorrow to see what they have to say. Trust me, I will not buy anything. Thanks, Carl.



I know how to backwash. My pressure gauge on my filter does not work. A pool man who kinda helped me said that pressure gauges on these (salt) systems usually breaks and that it wasn't necessary to replace it. He said to backwash once a week.

Is it safe to add bleach and/ borax to a salt water pool? I heard you can do that to chlorine pools. I guess the bleach is the Pool "shock". When I add the bleach...should I have the control on recirculate or filter? I always get two different answers on this. Also, if it is recirculate...for how long than switch to filter?

I haven't vaccum yet. I really need too. Is there a difference on vacuum and vacumm to waste?

I will try the things you mention and I really appreciate all the help and making this less stressful. Thanks, Ben.

Steve

[aylad]

I would replace the pressure gauge. They're not that expensive, and pools rarely needto be backwashed weekly. Eventually you'll learn how your pool "acts", and it may not be as necessary, but for now you really need to get a new gauge.

You can safely add bleach and borax to a salt pool. Salt pools are chlorine pools, the only difference is thatthe chlorine is generated from the salt instead of added in the form of bleach. Many people with SWCGs use bleach for their shocking and the SWCG for regular chlorination.

Backwashing to waste means what you vacuum out goes straight out of your waste line, bypassing the filster. "regular" vacuuming directs the stuff into your filter.

Janet

[CarlD]

What Jan is saying is whoever told you that you "must" have your filter set to "recirculate" rather than "filter" when you add bleach is full of it. It has NO negative effect. However, having it set to "Waste" or "Backwash" will dump your new chlorine down the drain.

If you remember your HS chemistry, the formula for salt is NaCl, or Sodium Chloride. Salt-water generators break the salt down for the chlorine ions. BTW, bleach is made from brine.

Carl

[chem geek]

In other words, a "salt water" pool IS a chlorine pool. It uses a saltwater chlorine generator (SWCG) to generate chlorine from the chloride ions from the salt that was dissolved in the pool. When the chlorine gets used by killing a pathogen or oxidizing an organic or getting broken down by sunlight, it gets reverted back to chloride ion. So the SWCG can be thought of as using electricity to boost the energy of chloride to chlorine which then goes on to kill the nasties or oxidize bather waste or interact with sunlight in which cases its energy is given up and it reverts back to chloride salt.

[CarlD]

Thought i said that!

[Txboynjgirl]

I came back from the pool store and their test results were:

FAC 3
TAC 3
pH 7.6
TA 80
CYA 40
CH 200
Salt 3300 (my aqua rite reads 2900)

My own simple test results:

pH 7.5
CL 2 (close but mot quite 3)

Should I still add the 5 gallons of bleach? Would that raise my chlorine too much? Isn't 1.5 gallons of bleach equal to 5 ppm? (22000 gallon pool)

Do you buy your CYA (chlorine stabilizer) at the pool store?

For future references...what are the measurments for the Borax? 1lb of Borax equals how much pH?

Thanks, I will run more filter 24/7 to help clear it up.

Steve

[aylad]

Thought i said that!

Thought I said it too!!

Anyway, back to the questions.... 1.5 gallons of bleach in a 22000 gallon pool actually should raise your chlorine by about 4, and you don't even achieve shock level with a CYA of 60 until you get it up to 20 ppm, so if you're still trying to kill an algae bloom, you definitely need to go ahead and add the bleach per Pooldoc's instructions, and try to maintain the 20 ppm by adding chlorine as often as you can during the day in order to kill off the bloom. The filter running 24/7 will remove the dead algae from the water, but the chlorine is what will actually kill it.

You can get CYA at WalMart, in the pool/spa section, or at the pool store.

How much Borax it takes to raise pH by a certain amount depends on your TA level.. The higher the TA, the more Borax it will take to make the pH move. Somewhere around here there's a calculation for it, but I'll have to search for it and come back to edit this post...



Janet

[Txboynjgirl]

Thanks Janet. I have learned more on this site the last couple of days than talking to a pool person or searching other internet sites. Hopefully, my blueish cloudy pool will be ready for this weekend.