400 cya

[atkinson40]

Added 2 boxes of Borax. Now that I know my pool's not a disaster due to high CYA, what is maintenance chlorine levels? Should I use bleach? How many gallons a week of the %6? Thanks Kevin

[PoolDoc]

There are many ways to do it.

One very easy way is to use trichlor, with a floater or two, to maintain a constant chlorine feed, and bleach to kick it up 1x per week. By using both, your CYA will move upwards pretty slowly.

You know about bleach; here are the other items:

Trichlor tabs: buy at at Sams Club IF you can buy the PoolBrand product in the 40lb bucket OR Kem-Tek 3" Trichlor 35lbs @ Amazon . Do NOT buy from Costco, Walmart or local pool stores - most are selling trichlor blends which can be a real problem. If you find the Kem-Tek brand at Home Depot or Lowes, that's OK. Other brands, you have to learn to read the chemical ingredients section of the labels VERY carefully!

Trichlor floater: This one is typical, and fine - Kem-Tek 879 Pool Floating Tablet Dispenser Pool and Spa Accessories, but if you want to buy that locally, I think most of them are fine. If one DOES spill trichlor tabs in your pool, get them up quickly -- they will often leave a very difficult to remove stain, if left on the pool for hours.

[atkinson40]

Tried the free chl test and after adding 2 spoons of powder the sample now turns pink. But after 30 drops of the R0871 it still doesn't turn back to clear. Over the past 2 weeks I've added about 20 gallons of bleach. No other chl added. I'm waiting for the tabs to come in the mail. Am I doing the test wrong somehow? Thanks kevin

[PoolDoc]

Just means your chlorine is higher than 15 ppm -- assuming you are using the 10 ml sample size (the lowest sample size).

[atkinson40]

OK, I'm a doofus. I went to the pool store today to talk about the differences in their/my cya readings and the clerk pointed out to me that the scale on the sample tube was inverted. Soooo this means they were correct and my cya is over 400. The dot disappears about a third of the way up to 100. Given the logarithmic type scale I can only imagine it is actually over 400.

I'm going to bite the bullet and drain the pool. It was drained once before to have it re-plastered and didn't float so I'm hoping I can do it again. Any precautions?? I've found a way to use the pool pump to drain it. Anything I should be aware of before I start? Thanks kevin

[PoolDoc]

Just make SURE the ground is NOT wet; pools literally float up out of saturated ground.

That's probably not an issue in San Diego, but still . . .

(Embarrassment: it could be worse. I've still never published the story of how I turned a 300,000 pool DARK purple while it was full of swimmers -- testing a new idea that turned out to be a really, really bad one! It's been years, but still is uncomfortable to recall!)

[Watermom]

(Embarrassment: it could be worse. I've still never published the story of how I turned a 300,000 pool DARK purple while it was full of swimmers -- testing a new idea that turned out to be a really, really bad one! It's been years, but still is uncomfortable to recall!)

Ok, Ben, give. You can't give that little blip without telling the story.