New pool owner, need some guidance please

[Watermom]

rwhitsel,
Hi and welcome to the forum. It will be best if you start a new thread about your situation instead of tacking onto the middle of this one. We'll look for your new thread and will help you there!

Thanks.

[SteveInFLA]

Watermom and PoolDoc, thank you very much for your helpful replies, and I apologize for my delayed response. As for what else I used last year, I used the liquid chlorine from pinch-a-penny, I think it's 65% chlorine and their chlorine pucks with stabilizer and I think they are 90% chlorine. Also, I think I used s little bit of clarifier and an algaecide. The latter didn't really seem to do anything.

The test kit I've been using is the "basic 4" also from P-A-P. I have the strips but didn't trust them. No I don't have a way to test for CYA, in fact, I didn't even know about CYA unti reading here.

PoolDoc, I'll get the water tested for the CYA and post back as you said. Thanks for posting the steps, I will follow them. I do try to remove the algae from the surfaces, I had vacuumed it but now I took the wide pool brush and "swept" it off and get it into "solution" and let the filter take care of it then I wash and backwash the filter.

It will be a bit tough on us right now to purchase a K2006 or 2006C so maybe having it tested will get me by for a little while (???).

Thanks very much again, I really appreciate the help. Please post anything else that you think of that I can and/or should do, I'll report back as soon as I have some result on the CYA result.

Steve

[SteveInFLA]

Okay, I went to P-A-P and they tested for CYA and said it was "low around 20" and advised me to buy a 6lb. bag of Coastal stabilizer at $30. I did not buy it as I wanted to see what you experts thought first. I have vacuumed the pool and rinsed the filter cartridge several times. also added 10 Gallons of their chlorine. Maybe I'm wrong, but thier (P-A-P) chlorine seems to be much cheaper than buying bleach, or am I looking at it all wrong ?

Please let me know what you recommend re the stabilizer, etc.

Thanks very much,

Steve

[BigDave]

Does the P-A-P chlorine list it's concentration? Adjust for concentration and size (of bottle) and then compare price.
I would think it would be better to wait until you've cleared your algae to set up your CYA (stabilizer) as stabilizer inhibits chlorine's abillity to eradicate algae.
Turn off the chlorinator for now and battle the algae with Bleach / Liquid Chlorine whicever you can get cheapest (concentration * size) / price - they're both sodium hypochlorite solution.
When you can hold your Free Chlorine at shock level overnight (no feeder) + one more day at shock, then, if you have tabs left, you can use the tabs in your chlorinator until you get your CYA where you want it. Maybe someone here can tell you how many tabs you might need to raise your CYA level. Why buy CYA if you already have a bucket of tabs that contain CYA. Be cautious, too much CYA is a BAD thing (so is too little) and may give you an algae problem that is much harder to fight. Read the stickies on this forum to guide you regarding proper CYA level.

Good luck, Be well.

[Watermom]

i agree with what BigDave told you. Clear up the pool first, then use your trichlor until you get the CYA level to around 40-50. At that point, you'll want to just use bleach so your CYA level won't get too high. (For every 10ppm of chlorine that trichlor pucks add, they also add 6ppm of CYA.)

[madwil]

the pucks will also drive your pH down, so you may need to adjust it up over time- but clear the algae first!

[SteveInFLA]

All the green is completely gone now, yesterday the FC reading was over 3.0 (my test kit only goes to 3.0), I would guess it was around 3.5 or 4.0 as the color was darker than the 3.0. Today it reads maybe 3.2, the water is blue but cloudy, I assume that is dead algae causing the cloudy water (?)

I have been out of pucks for a few days which is why I added the liquid chlorine but I'll get more tomorrow. Thanks Watermom for the info re the amount of CYA in the pucks (and all your info). I'm running the pump 24/7 as advised.

BigDave, the P-A-P concentration is listed as 10.5% on the 2.5 gallon jugs. Thanks for the warning re too much CYA, I think I did read that too much keeps the chlorine from working, I'll continue reading, I'm very good at many things but chemistry has never been one of them, I'm trying to learn this though !

Is it recommended to use a floater for the pucks or continue using the CL200 feeder ?

Thanks for the help,

Steve