Quote Originally Posted by Watermom View Post
...I don't know where you live but if you find after awhile that with a CYA of 40-50 you continue to have trouble keeping chlorine in your pool, then it may be appropriate to take it a little higher. Aylad (another one of the mods) lives in LA and her pool is in hot full sun all day. She deliberately runs her CYA at 80-90 (or maybe 70-80, I can't remember which) because without doing so, she can't keep a FC reading. This also allows her to only add bleach every second or third day instead of daily. Watch your pool's pattern for a few days and report back and we'll help you decide what is most appropriate for your pool....
Quote Originally Posted by DistantHorizon View Post
The last week or week and a half, I've backed testing off to every other morning, and occasionally in the evening. Both times, I haven't added bleach until the chlorine level was down to the .5-1 range - I think each of those times, I tested two days before and had chlorine around 5 or 6, then a couple days later, dang near nothing.
Watermom hits the nail on the head. I have a CYA range similar to yours. I lose about 2.5 ppm FC per day. Your pool seems to behave the same as mine. With a CYA like yours and mine, we have to stay between 3-6 ppm of FC. We can't go below 3 but it's alright to go a little over 6.

You don't have to test everyday and you don't have to add chlorine everyday. I add chlorine everyday and I'll explain why. Let's say we want to make 4ppm as our lower limit and that's what our test says we have in our pool on Monday evening. To make it to Wednesday evening, I'll have to add at least 5ppm because I lose 2.5 ppm per day. That means there will be 9ppm of FC in the pool Tuesday morning. That's not a real problem with CYA near 50 but I have little guys that like to swim early in the morning. I would have no problem letting them swim with 9ppm but it's no trouble for me to add 2.5ppm every evening. That puts me at 6.5ppm. That's enough wiggle room if the wee ones weedle in the pool.

Right now it looks like you have to add a gallon of 6% Bleach a day or 2 gallon every other day. Don't do like I did last year. Get the FAS/DPD kit to test chlorine. Believe me, it will pay for itself and save you from a lot of headaches. With this kit you'll be able to get your pool patterns down pat. When or if you have to shock, you'll know exactly where your at and exactly when to come out of it.