CYA level and chlorine level and pool store recomendation

[Watermom]

You can add a little baking soda to raise your alk. I'd add a couple pounds at a time slowly to the skimmer while the pump is running. After a couple hours, retest and redose until you get it somewhere between 80-125. Your pH is ok at 7.2 but you don't want it lower. We use 20 Mule Team Borax (laundry aisle at Walmart) to raise pH. You add it in the same way as the baking soda. Actually, you can add them one right after the other. I'd start with a half a box and see what that does for you. You want pH somewhere between 7.2-7.8. I usually keep mine around 7.4-7.6.

If you are going to use the trichlor pucks, you'll need to keep an eye on your pH and your CYA. They are stabilized which means they add CYA. If yours is already at 35, you can use the pucks for awhile, but when your CYA gets to around 50, you'll want to quit using them and only use bleach. You don't want your CYA too high. The trichlor pucks are also quite acidic and will push your pH down.

As far as calcium hardness is concerned, vinyl pools don't need calcium so don't worry about it.

Like Jan said, do yourself a favor and get a good kit. Test your chlorine daily, pH a couple times per week (unless you are tweaking it), alk every couple of weeks (again, unless you are tweaking it), CYA every couple of weeks until you hit 50 and then your CYA should stay pretty stable for the rest of the summer.

Hope this helps!

[CarlD]

OK, I'm going to take my stab at it: I think you should not use the tabs at all. They lower pH, and yours is low, and they raise CYA, and yours is a bit high. Stick with regular unscented bleach. 1 gallon of 6% raises 10,000 gallons of water 6ppm of FC, so figure accordingly. Save them for next year when CYA is low.

With both a low Alk and pH, another alternative is Arm&Hammer Washing Soda, in the yellow box. It will raise both and at $.80/lb, is far cheaper than the pool stores sell it for, though it's the same stuff (sodium carbonate) as their "pH Up!" and similar products.

But baking soda and Borax will work just as well.

Carl

[aylad]

Personally, I wouldn't adjust the levels in the pool based on test strip results. When you spoke about the "newly acquired kit" in your above post, was that just for CYA? Or do you have drop-based testing for evrything else too? If you're depending on the strips, I would not dose the pool based on those results. You'd do better to go with pool store results if they're using drops.

In the post above where I spoke of test kits, if you don't have drop-based testing for TA, CH, pH, Cl, etc...then the K-2006 is the one we recommend. I was under the assumption that the "newly acquired test kit" was drop-based for everything else but chlorine. In that case, then the K-1515 is what you want.

Janet

[Fishcrazy]

Janet Sorry for the confusion and I think I will take your advice and wait for the kit to arrive. I have been using test strips for my personal testing except that I did just get a CYA test kit because the test strips did not have that test included and I therefore had no way to check it other than the pool store. The results I get with the test strips are quite different from the pool store results which im sure are good quality tests. I therefore am not going to act on the test strip results and am going to get a test kit to do my own testing with. I am suspect of the pool store test results as well due to our difference in the CYA results that we show. I will post the test results as soon as I get the kit.

Carl thanks for the input. I will get some washing soda if the test numbers reveal that they are the same as posted above with a real kit. Im only confidant of the CYA number though at this point. I was relieved that my CYA tested at 35 as opposed to the 60 that the pool store told me that it was. Im somewhat surprised to hear that you feel 35 is high for CYA. What would your target level be for CYA?

[aylad]

I believe that Carl was referring to the reported CYA at 60 ppm as high--we generally recommend that people start out around 40 ppm in their pools, and only raise it from there if there is a continuing problem with chlorine consumption that is due to the sun, all other causes ruled out.

Janet

[CarlD]

Thanks, Janet. Yes I was referring to CYA=60 as high. It's not bad, you simply must compensate for it.

Carl

[Fishcrazy]

Well I recieved my test kit today and ran the following test on the pool. FC=7.5, CC=0.5, pH=6.8, TA=40.

I did not recheck the CYA and assume it to be unchanged from 35 yesterday. pH is low and Alkalinity low. Washing soda? How much? My pool is 27 round 52 inch. I have initally added algecide to the water and am wondering if I should do a periodic maintenance dose of that. If so how much and how often? Thanks