New pool owner, need some guidance please

[SteveInFLA]

I've seen those big Arm and Hammer boxes and I can easily see how that can happen. The HE bleach I was reffering to says "Great Value Rain scent bleach" and that's all, no info on the percentage of chlorine or anything else. I think it came from the grocery store my wife shops at (Publix). I'll check at Walmart and read their bleach. It seems to me that the local pool supply I've been dealing with cycles through their liquid chlorine supply pretty fast, they have it in what I would guess is about a 400 gallon poly tank outside and every time I go there, they are reffilling the containers and have customers lined up swapping their emptys.

I bought 15 gallons on this last Thursday and a new bucket of trichlor tabs. I dumped the 15 gallons in the skimmer Thursday evening and Friday morning the entire pool was sparkling, I checked FC Saturday morning and it was around 3.5 or maybe 4. I then put 3 tabs in the feeder Sat. evening and turned it on full. I just checked the FC again (Monday PM) and it's now about 1.0 and I'm seeing a very small amount of green trying to show only on the white steps in the diamond shaped recesses. So I'm not sure why that is already trying to come back, I'll check it again tomorrow and post the results. And I'll go get the CYA checked again.

Also on Saturday, I vacuumed a little bit that I had missed, no green just a little debri and then the water when from crystal clear to a little cloudy white and it still is. I've been running the pump nonstop and have cleaned the filter but it still very hard to see the bottom drain that's about 9 feet down.

Should I get some clarifier or what else is recommended ?

Thanks very much !

[BigDave]

YIKES!
Is this right?
According to the pool calculator 15 Gallons of 12.5% LC (is it 12.5% LC?) from the pool supply in your 24' round x 4' deep pool (13,500 gallons) woud give you 140 ppm of free chlorine - WAY WAY WAY too much!

Please Please Please
Get some reliable test numbers
You can't trust most tests with FC that high I have no idea if you cl test is even close.
Have you been using the dilution method?
I'll check the above calculation.

Are you sure 15 gallons? Even super cheapo economy bleach (as low as 3%) would have run your FC to 35 - completely unreadable on most tests especially if your test only goes to 3.

Turn off the feeder. Back away from the chemicals.

Don't go in the pool.

Would one of the forum experts please look at this - I'm concerned about this poster's pool.

(I wrote this before I saw how much LC you dumped in)
Also avoid the scented bleach - I made this mistake as well, lavender bleach, I ran out of bleach in the pool shed and robbed it from the laundry room - Doh! it takes a long time for the scent to go away it doesn't really smell much like lavender in pool but just kind of off.

[Watermom]

Big Dave ---- His volume is 20K. There was another poster who started up in the middle of this thread who had the 24ft AG pool.

Even still, Dave is right. You added WAY TOO MUCH chlorine! I hope you didn't totally bleach out your liner! With that kind of chlorine level, I can't imagine how you could have any specks of green left anywhere! What was the percent of the liquid chlorine you added 15 gallons of?

I also have a hard time believing that with chlorine taken that high, your cl level could have dropped so much so fast.

Get that CYA reading. Also, let a reputable pool store test your water and then post all the results here.

You need to get some reliable readings.

[BigDave]

I checked it. - I could be wrong but...
24' (pool Diameter in ft) / 2 = 12' (Pool Radius in ft)
PI * 12' (Pool Radius in ft) ^ 2 = 452.39 (Pool surfdace area in sq ft)
4' (Pool Depth in ft) * 452.39 (Pool surfdace area in sq ft) = 1809.5 (Pool Vulume in cu ft)
809.5 (Pool Vulume in cu ft) * 7.48 (Gallons in a cu ft) = 13,536 (Gallons in Pool)
15 (Gallons of LC) * 12.5% (Concentration of LC) = 1.875 (Gallons of pure LC)
1.875 (Gallons of pure LC) / 13,536 (Gallons in Pool) = 0.0001385 (fraction of LC in pool)
0.0001385 (fraction of LC in pool) * 1,000,000 = 138.5 (parts per million LC in pool)
I know it's supposed to be done by weight but ... DANG that's alot of bleach!

Please check it. Look around this forum for help on reading high cl levels.

If stuff in your pool really consumed that much chlorine and your level really is 1.0, you'll need to bring that up but you really need the advice of somebody here with real experience to help you figure out where you are.

You need to figure out where your FC and CC really are.

[BigDave]

Never mind.

But, really, at 20000 gallons (sorry watermom, my bad) that's still almost 100ppm cl.
Sorry for being alarmist.
I'll bet your pool was really clean.

[SteveInFLA]

Yes it was very clean and clear. The liquid chlorine I used was from Pinch-A-Penny in 2.5 gal. jugs @ 10.5% per jug and I used 6 jugs. Thankfully the liner looks like new. Thanks for the warnings, I thought I was doing good and shocking the water. I will take a sample and have them test it however, I thought I read on this forum that I should not trust most pool stores to test and that the same water taken at the same time from the same pool in different sample bottles were taken to different pool stores and had very different test results, so that's why I haven't done that (except for a CYA test last week).

So I'll post back with test results from the local P-A-P store.

Thanks again and please be patient with me at this point,

Steve

[aylad]

Shocking the water is a good thing to do, and is what needed to be done--you just have to have some control over it. You'd be doing yourself a favor to get a good test kit...barring that, if you can get the 6-way drop kit that they sell at WalMart for about $20, that would do the trick in the meantime and eliminate the need to depend on the pool store.

Janet

[PoolDoc]

Just curious . . . did anyone swim in it at those levels?

Did they notice anything, like getting 'chapped' down under? What about their swim suits?

(Mods, we're going to have to watch out for middle of the thread posters -- re-reading my original post, I think I was taking info from 2 posters and mingling, resulting in a mangled post. But, that was a long pool day (May 31))

[BigDave]

Well at 10% and 20,000 gallons that only brought you 75ppm cl.
Does your kit test for Total Chlorine or Combined Chlorine? That value might be helpful to know.
Your pool consumed alot of chlorine in a sort period of time.
If the bleach burned out all the remaining goo, and the resultant Combined Chlorine, and then was baked off by the sun, great! but, you won't know your done until you're sure your CC is less the 0.5 ppm and you don't lose more than 1 ppm FC overnight at shock level and maintain shock level for one more day.
It is important to get to FC to shock level and keep it there for a while.
You can't know your shock level without a CYA test.

Sounds like it's getting alot better - you'll get there.

[SteveInFLA]

Ben, no one went into the pool until Sunday which was about 3 days after I added the 15 gallons of CL, we didn't notice any problems with what you mention but we could definitely smell CL. Janet, I didn't know Walmart had a 6 test kit, I'll take a look, thanks.

BigDave, happy to see your permit was approved ! Yes, my 4 test kit does test for FC and CC, the color is almost exactly the same from FC to CC. Yeah, I think it's getting there, I have 3 tabs in the CL200 feeder and set it to 6 and there's really no new green but what was there a couple of days ago is mostly still there now.

I just got back from the P-A-P pool store and had my water tested, I'll post the results below. Please let me know what you all think and thanks.



Store Test Results:

Total CL: (no reading, they said it is "insignificant")
FC: 1.5
CC: (no reading, they said it is "insignificant")
pH:7.6
Acid Demand: No result
Total Alk: 55
Calcium Hardness: 200
Stabilizer: 100
TDS: No Result
Salt: No Result

The "analyst" that did the tests said I needed to add 1.8 gallons of LC and 18.9 lbs. of Total Alkalinity increaser and that was all (???)