Chemical Help

[PoolDoc]

Cleaning up ammonia is not a nice, and well defined process. It's a messy, keep-adding-chlorine-till-the-ammonia is gone process.

We don't know how much ammonia is in your pool - some, most, or all of the CYA could have been converted. We don't whether it's just ammonia (which reacts quickly) or other things that can form, and which react slowly. There's no time line on this -- just that you'll probably be done by next week sometime.

The primary ingredient needed, besides chlorine, is P.O.P. -- Pool Owner Patience. What happens, where there's not enough POP, is the pool owners get desperate and in a hurry, and go to the pool store for a quick fix. The pool stores will almost ALWAYS sell you a quick fix, even though they don't have one. Well, in a way they do: the products they sell are a quick fix for the store owner's thin wallet, but not for your pool.

Sorry, but once the bacteria has filled your pool with ammonia 'pool' (or metabolic by-products, if you prefer) you're in for a lengthy and not entirely predictable recovery.