Happy Update

The story of this year's pool opening covers nine pages of posts in this thread. This is a new posting to make a long story short.

All numbers are good – at last! The saga began when I opened the pool to a green swamp in late May with visibility no more than 6 inches.

EARLY JUNE 2011


For the first two weeks, I was on a pool store roller coaster and my water got visibly worse. I discovered and subscribed to this forum on 6/13/11, got the Taylor K-2006 kit and found my numbers were horrid (FC 0.0, CC 4.5, pH 7.2, TA 210, CYA > 100). For the next 3 weeks, I dosed nightly with bleach/liquid chlorine to keep the FC at shock level with a lot of guidance from Ben, Janet, Watermom and other moderators. Gradually the numbers and visibility improved.

A week ago, (7/8/11) the FC began to hold overnight (within 1 ppm) and the CC around 0.5 (varies from 0 to 1ppm). During the day the FC drops to 10 to 11ppm, so I’m adding between 0.5 to 1 gallon of 12.5 liquid chlorine each evening to bring it back to 15ppm (the CYA level is >100, so the target FC is 8 to 15ppm).

With the chlorine levels under control, I've turned my attention to bring the Total Alkalinity down to 120 (it has been as high as 210) by periodic dosing with muriactic acid. This morning the TA was 120! Too early for champaign, so I just smiled. The pH is 7.2 so I will continue aerating a few more days to bring that to 7.4. By the way: the water is gorgeous!

MID-JULY 2011 (55 days after opening pool)


THANK YOU ALL and Happy Swimming!