Newbie to pools

[PoolDoc]

There's nothing magic about liquid chlorine or bleach -- it's just one of the two forms of chlorine available to you that has no stabilizer. The other is cal hypo (calcium hypochlorite) and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find.

You could also use an SWCG (Salt Water Chlorine Generator), but that's significant expense upfront, and there's ANOTHER learning curve you have to climb with those units.

Here's an option: with your CYA that high, once you get your K2006, you can do this:
1. Dose 1x per week to 12 - 15 ppm chlorine using bleach. (We'll help you figure the dose, if you can give us pool gallons AND pool dimensions (so we can make sure the gallons figure is in range - often, it's not.).
2. Adjust your TC feeder / floater / what to trickle feed, so that your chlorine doesn't go below 3 - 5 ppm, before your next bleach dose.

That way, you can 'sneak' in, dump the bleach, trash the bottles, and then bask in the appreciation for the crystal clear pool (assuming, your filter is working OK). Over time -- depending on how you clean your filter -- your CYA will drop. The more pool water you dump (backwash) each time, the sooner it will drop. If you've got a cartridge filter, and don't loose any water, you may have to see how things run this way and whether the CYA keeps climbing.

[mthandt]

I like the slow TC release idea and adding bleach. That way I don't use so much liquid. I estimated the pool to be around 10,000 gallons by measuring the sides and depths at certain points. Wasn't too straight forward becasue the pool is a funny shape. Here is an attached drawing:

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/h...Dimensions.png

The depths are in the middle of those sections and I should also note that it gets around 6' deep around the drain.

I have a 36 sqaure foot DE filter that I just replaced the screens in a couple weeks ago and added DE to. I'll have to backwash eventually it but I don't know how often yet as I just started taking care of it. I can't imagine it needing to be backwashed very often because the pool is screened in. Figure I'll do it every few months and just watch the pressure

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Thank you everyone for the help!

[PoolDoc]

Hmm-mh. I started to calculate gallons, and then quit. Some of your dimensions don't work out.

For example, you've drawn the dimensions of the angled perimeter line in the lower right corner as the hypotenuse of a right triangle with a rise of 7.5' and a run of 6'. But . . . that the hypotenuse of THAT right triangle would be about 9 1/2', and not the 11' you measured. I never enjoyed it, when I had to measure a pool like that for a custom LoopLoc cover -- too many chances to screw up, and if I did, I got to eat the cover. I'd always end up measuring it 2 or 3 times, and then drawing it on CAD, to make sure the point to point diagonals I'd measured were very close to what the CAD program calculated.

However, your pool appears to be on the same order as a pool 15' x 22' with an avg. depth of 4.5'. That would be about 11,000 gallons. So, 10,000 is a reasonable guess. If you REALLY want to know, read your water meter before and after you fill it, and subtract average daily use over the fill interval. That should give you the correct value, +/- 5%.

[mthandt]

That spot in the pool has a weird zig zag in it so that is why the measurments don't make sense. There are stairs there so the number of gallons lost by the bad measurment are gonna be small so that's why I didn't worry too much. I just turned the entire pool into two rectangles one for the deep end and one for the shallow, found the areas and then subtracted the two big triangles empty spots from them. Multiplied the areas by what I considered the average depth over that section and then converted to gallons. I figrued the little pieces on the edge and whatnot wouldn't really matter to significantly overall. I thought about drawing it up in Autocad but I had just deleted it from my computer as it was killing it. I'm an engineering student so I'm pretty good at math but was kinda curious what others would come up with. Never hurts to double check with someone else. I apprecite the time you spent helping me out though. You ever have any questions about cars or engines I can for sure help you out there. I'm a member of quite a few car and truck forums, this pool stuff is just new to me.

[PoolDoc]

I'm a member of quite a few car and truck forums, this pool stuff is just new to me.

Yeah, it's been a matter of some interest to me how many new members here share that involvement.

[mthandt]

Yeah, it's been a matter of some interest to me how many new members here share that involvement.

You talking about Involvement with other forums?

Do you know what a ballpark dose would be for getting the pool to 12-15ppm?

[PoolDoc]

Yes, involvement with other AUTO forums.

On a 11,000 gallon pool, a gallon of plain 6% bleach adds about 5 ppm. So a 15ppm dose would be ~3 gallons.

[mthandt]

Well at least one now, lol. But I'm sure there are more. I take care of all the friends and families vehicles and I know what a great asset forums can be. Learn the majority of my stuff from them.

And thank you for the info. Just found out that the chlorine from the pool store is quite cheap after the initial purchase of the container. Aboout $2/gal for 11.5% chlorine.

[PoolDoc]

Yeah, that's a good price for bleach. I think it's cheaper in Florida, than in most other parts of the country.

A couple of cautions:

1. Bleach is corrosive, but commercial bleach (above 10%) is very, very corrosive. Make sure you do not get ANY on what ever you carry the bleach in. You can lose a truck bed to a drop of bleach here, and a drop there.

2. Bleach doesn't store well in warm weather. At 90 degrees (when the BLEACH is 90), it can lose a LOT of its strength in just a week. If the bleach has a little iron in it (it often does), you can turn 12% bleach into 6% bleach very quickly.

3. For the same reason, try to buy bleach within a few days (1 - 2) of your supplier's delivery and then -- ideally -- add it to the pool immediately.

4. If you need to store bleach, it will last much, much longer in a air conditioned room than it will in a hot garage or pump room. It doesn't fume (well, it gives off oxygen, when it deteriorates), so there's no odor and no chlorine gases. It's just the drips that are a problem.

[mthandt]

I've noticed that a lot of pool trucks have the beds completely rusting out on them. So it looks like I am gonna have to buy 2 1/2 gallons at a time and store half of it for a week.

But just thought of something. If I'm keeping the pool at about 3-5 ppm with the TC won't I only have to raise the chlorine about 10-12 ppm using liquid chlorine? So then I would only need a little more then a gallon of the of the 11.5% chlorine weekly? You think it would be ok to assume that I can use a little over a gallon for the first week and then just the rest of the chlorine the second week because it has degraded. I mean i would test it afterwards but I'm thinking it should be close, might not be enough though.