New guy LOST !!!!

[Area Man]

Doug,

Wait for others to reply, because I'm learning too. But I think you should add an initial dose of CYA rather than relying on the pucks. Michael's BleachCalc calculator suggests 10 lbs or so to get your CYA up in the 30's.

Did the pool store really report your total alkalinity at 50 today, and 110 yesterday? Something seems wrong there. Using Ben's test kit gives me very consistent TA results.

It also seems odd that they reported lower calcium hardness today, after you added the "Hardness Plus" they recommended yesterday. My general recommendation is: test it yourself! I value my pool store, but am having better results from my own testing and adjustment using information from this forum.

Rick

[AE340B]

Rick,
I agree that I need to get a test kit. The stores around here (I tried the 4 that I know of) all sell the small kits that don't test for CYA. I know Ben sells them, but I think I should get one fairly soon, and other posts from people who have already ordered tham seem to suggest that they take quite a while to arrive after the order. I'll probably just order from Ben and test at the stores until it arrives. Ben put this whole sits together so ordering from him seems to be the right thing to do to support him and his efforts. I agree with you that the test results are all over th board. I think the results I got yesterday were wrong. My small home test kit agrees with the numbers I got today. My kit only does FC, pH and Alkalinity, but those numbers match. Thanks for the response.
Doug

[fullhouse]

this should be the correct link to get you to the bleach calculator. mwsmith wrote it and it is in the signature of all of his posts. there are add'l calculators in the top corner. http://www.hal-pc.org/~mwsmith2/BleachCalc262.exe

[Sherra]

http://www.hal-pc.org/~mwsmith2/BleachCalc262.exe
One of our regulars on this board wrote the program. When you download it, save it to your desktop. It's a very small program. You can customize all the settings once you open it. First thing I'd do is in the upper left corner click on "more calcs" and then "settings" and change the units to "imperial" (U.S. units instead of Metric...unless you're more comfortable using metric), then enter your pool volume in gallons. From that point you'll be able to easily figure out how much bleach, etc you need to add to bring your levels up to where you need them. With having practially no chlorine in your water right now and not CYA, you need to bring your chlorine up to about 3 (assuming your water is clear).

Then, my suggestion is to bring your CYA up to about 20 or 30 since you plan on continuing to use pucks. That will get some CYA in your pool and still give you a little wiggle room for using the pucks.

[Sherra]

Sorry, I was typing my reply at work and got interrupted by my boss and actually had to do some work and didn't get to hit the "post" button for almost an hour. Darn work!