A few water questions

[CarlD]

Not to worry. My pool now is 40' long and 20k gallons, but we ran a 15' Intex donut for 3 years and loved it--it doesn't owe us a dime. I learned ALL about pool care on it--made my mistakes, too. All on 3,500 gallons. And I discovered this site and learned from it and stopped making pool-store mistakes. Never had a serious water problem again. (minor ones, due to my being lazy--my signature is from experience!)

Stabilizer (CYA) works by slowing down chlorine's breakdown. This is good because it won't disappear in 15 minutes in sunshine. This is bad because it cannot fight contaminants fast enough. So CYA is a 2 edged sword. As CYA goes up, you need more and more chlorine to keep your pool sanitary. If your CYA hits 100, you need to keep at least 8ppm of free chlorine in it. But you NEED CYA to keep chlorine from dropping to 0. Stabilizer doesn't go away except by water replacement or by letting your pool turn into a living swamp (Yech!!!!!).

You can let your Total Alk go as high as 180 and never give it another thought--vinyl pools aren't as sensitive as concrete pools to Tot Alk being high.

I'd rather see a well-run economy pool than a badly run architectural wonder. Remember: A pool's main function is to get you wet and cool! And I GUARANTEE that on a hot day, if you get in a floating armchair, with a cool drink, shades, and the ball game on the radio, you will be JUST as happy floating around in your Intex as a guy in the fanciest in-ground pool! And kids playing in a pool don't give a patoot if it's an Intex 18' or an IG wonder.

[rjc311]

Thanks for the replies! For $269 at Sam's Club, this pool was a steal and I am really enjoying it so far!

Luckily my pool isn't huge so I can afford to keep a high chlorine level to complement my high CYA level with no problem. I'm going to stop using my floater with the stabilized pucks to avoid an even higher stabilizer level. I guess I will just test the water everyday and shock once a week and see if that works out. I live in Florida and the sun is ALWAYS out so I've got to b diligent in checking the water. Anyway, thanks for the info. You've all been very helpful!

Robert

[Sherra]

You keep talking about shocking once a week. If you keep your chlorine levels where they should be and your water is clear, you don't NEED to shock. Just another pool store myth to sell you more pool store stuff!

[rjc311]

Thanks Sherra...I appreciate the input. I was kinda wondering why I would have to shock since I have all that stabilizer in there. I'll just test often and add only as necessary. Thanks again!

[LostboyinVA]

Since your pool is small you may want to consider a partial drain and refill. A 50% drain would get your CYA level down to a more reasonable 40ppm.

[rjc311]

Will the chlorine and chemicals in the water kill grass/plants?

[LostboyinVA]

Chlorine kills algea, algae is just a plant that grows in water. I'd say it isn't the best in the world for your grass, but if you could run your drain line into some woods or a drainage ditch you should be ok. I'm luck enough to have a drainage stream and woods right near my filter so I just drain out there as needed.