chlorine disapearing

[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

[aylad]

Don't swim in it until the shocking process is over and you've let the chlorine drift back down to the 8-15 mark. At that point, chlorine at 8-15 with CYA over 100 has no more ill effects than chlorine of 1-3 with no CYA.

Janet

[vinper]

I added 8 gallons last night . I think I saw a dillution recipe.. so I can use my test kit that only goes to 5 FC......Until I can get a new one

[CarlD]

Use steam distilled water. I like a shot glass: one glass of distilled to one glass of pool water. Mix and test. Now if it reads "5" it's really 10.
Or use 2 glasses of distilled to one of pool: Now when it reads "5" it's 15.
3 glasses distilled: 20.

But it gets less accurate.

Or, if the water is much, MUCH darker yellow, it's probably well over 10. When it's orange I THINK it's around 20, and brown, around 30-35...but I am not certain.

Carl