Help...about to pull my hair out or tear down the pool!!!

[butterfly26_78382]

Thank you, Watermom! I will take the sock out . I will have to buy a test kit because our closest pool store that i know of is at least 30-40 miles away. I retested this morning about 11:30am and these are my current readings:
TH:200
FC:5
PH:7.5
TA:180
CYA:30-50
It seems my TA went up a little bit, is that ok? And my chlorine seems to have been cut in half overnight! What do i need to do to keep my chlorine at a safe & constructive level? I don't want to have to keep putting in like 5 gallons of bleach a day, that's getting a bit exspensive! I will retest my levels again this evening when i get home from work & see if I have been able to sustain my chlorine. Thanks again Watermom & any other advice you could spare, I would very much appreciate!

[PoolDoc]

5 gallons of bleach on a 7,000 gallon pool IS a lot -- around 40 ppm. If you've got algae, though, it may take that much.

However if you do have algae, you'd probably be better off adding plain 6% (check the %) household bleach, 2 gallons at time EVERY evening, till you'll all cleared up.

Get a cheap OTO / phenol red test kit from Walmart or whatever, and keep your chlorine in the yellow during the day, maybe 1/4 gallon doses.

You can work on other stuff, later.

[butterfly26_78382]

Thanks PoolDoc...no i don't have algae but my pool is in direct sunlight & I couldn't seem to keep my chlorine in the pool. However, i was using the test strips from Walmart & I'm pretty sure now that they were inaccurate. I went down & bought the $20 6 way test kit & according to it I have had chlorine in it the whole time I guess!! Night before last these were my reading with my new test kit:
TH:250
FC:3
PH:7.5
TA:180
CYA:30
Now this was @ 10pm after being in the direct sunlight all day so I figure my chlorine count isn't too bad considering. Because it in the sun all day I would prefer a FC level of about 6 at least & CYA of 50 at least, that would probably be ok, right?? In order to achieve that I added 47oz of bleach to raise it from a 3 to 6 and then i added 21oz of stabilizer tied in a sock to bring up the CYA to 50. With all this research & help from you guys I think I might be getting it under control! Please just let me know if i'm on the right track...Thanks again fro everyone's help Oh...I was retest my PH & FC when I get home this evening to see how we're doing!

[aylad]

Hi, and welcome to the forum!

In Texas, with the heat we've been having (I'm near Shreveport, LA, similar climate and maybe not even as hot as it is where you are), you'll find that the chlorine will stay in your pool a lot longer if you'll raise your CYA. We normally recommend around 40 ppm in most folk's pools, but in our climate I find that I still use too much chlorine. I personally run my CYa at 80-90 ppm, but that's much higher than most people around here. That does, however, allow me to maintain a Cl level of 8 ppm in my approx. 29K gallon pool using only 4-5 of the 1.4 gallon jugs of bleach weekly.

You're on the right track, a CYA of 50 ppm is a good place to start. See how well you're able to maintain a chlorine level with that, and you can adjust from there. One thing, though--in order to determine whether the water has something in it that is creating chlorine demand, or whether it's all just from the sun, try testing your chlorine at night and then again the next morning before the sun hits the pool. If you've lost more than 1 ppm of chlorine in that time, then there's something other than the sun eating it up, and you need to shock the pool.

Janet

[PoolDoc]

I'm glad you got the kit, but I would encourage you to go ahead and get the Taylor K2006.

One reason I recommend the 2 way OTO/phenol red is that it's so basic, it's hard to screw up. Walmart's pool chemicals have gone, over the past few years, from mediocre to TERRIBLE. I don't know that the kit you have is bad . . . but I don't trust it, either.

[aylad]

Ben, the $20 kit is the old hth drop kit that was $16 last year....but I agree, the Taylor kit is much better, and you can test for all of the things we need to know and be able to trust the result.

Janet

[PoolDoc]

HTH has been re-jiggering their products, and unless you're sure it's unchanged, I'm not. They are trying to out-do BioGuard in the games they play with products -- I don't trust them even a tiny bit. There's no relationship between this HTH and the old one I knew, except trademarks, bankruptcy courts, and lawyers.

Ben