chlorine disapearing

[vinper]

My water is not green , I only would get some green spots on the wall & rocks each day . we keep it off by brushing

[Watermom]

If you keep your chlorine a bit higher, you won't get green spots. Once you get a good CYA reading post it and we'll make further recommendations.

[vinper]

Well test strips dont work . My CYA tester came .Tested it this morning , it says 100 so now I am over......

[Watermom]

That is what we suspected -- high CYA from using pucks so long. You are right, test strips don't work.

The bad news is that since CYA testers cannot differentiate over 100, your CYA level could actually be much higher than 100.

You basically have two options:
1. Do a partial drain and refill to try and lower that CYA level. (Do not totally drain however.) I think you said that you are in a drought, so this may not be a viable option for you.

OR

2. Live with the high CYA and just run higher than normal chlorine levels to compensate. Take a look at the Best Guess table in my signature below for more info about this.

Let us know which option you want to go with and then somebody will help you. Also, when you repost, please give us a new set of current testing results for everything. (You don't need to run the CYA test again, however. No reason to waste the CYA reagent.)

[vinper]

The best guess chart , am I reading that right FC a 5 ppm or higher ? I think my tester only goes to 4ppm.....

[vinper]

Remember I added 1 lb of conditioner Sunday ,Also if I had CYA why was I having to add so much chlorine to keep it at 1.0... So If I go home today FC is at 1.0 I need to add 1.5 gallon of bleach to get it up around a 7.0

[Watermom]

If you decide not to do a partial drain and refill but just live with the high CYA, you'll have to maintain your chlorine level between 8-15 ALL the time or risk an algae bloom. You'll have to get a kit that can test high cl. (The kit we recommend can -- Taylor K-2006 or 2006C.)

Since your CYA is so high, letting the cl get low was letting things start to grow in the pool. Sometimes even before you start to see green, things are brewing. That may be why you were having trouble keeping cl in your pool; it was getting used up fighting something in the water. The other possibility is that yours is just one of the pools that opens to a high chlorine demand in the spring. You can read about that here:

http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/spri...-problems.html

Until you can hold a chlorine reading overnight, you'll need to shock the pool every day up to 25ppm. In a 18K pool, every gallon of bleach adds 3.3ppm of cl. Use that as a reference to figure out how much bleach to add to get back to 25. When you can go from sundown to sunup without losing more than 1ppm of chlorine and your CC is no higher than 0.5 (your Taylor kit will be able to measure this) then that will be a sign that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

By the way, how did you add the stabilizer? If you added it through the skimmer so it could dissolve in the filter, backwash the filter to throw out any that is still undissolved.

[vinper]

Yes added through skimmer,will backwash tonight.. Shock to 25ppm that's like 7 or 8 gallons of bleach?

[aylad]

In 18K gallons, each 1.5 gallons of 6% bleach will raise your FC by 5 ppm, so if you're starting at zero chlorine, then 8 gallons should get you over the 25 ppm mark with a little bit to spare.

Make sure you have some extra bleach on hand, though, because once you get it up to 25 ppm, you need to hold it there by testing and adding as many times a day as you can to keep it at or over the 25 ppm mark.

Janet

[vinper]

wow think I will be scared to swim in that much ,If i do better wear somthing white