No Chlorine?

[MartyW]

Hi everyone,
I can't seem to get my chlorine level to come up. I tested my water and added a total of 8lbs of stabilizer because I showed none. I have shocked with gallons of pool bleach and pounds of granular shock. I have metal staining, I have cleaned with ascorbic acid and added metal free. The stains return after a week or so. The water is clear and looks great. My ps233 test kit is a few years old, but I have replaced most of the reagents at some point. I'm not sure how old my R0013 is, but probably at least 2 years. The pool store says my cya is over 100 and that's why I can't get it to shock. My test shows in the 50 to 60 range. Could my r0013 be degraded and giving me bad readings? I am using trichlor pucks in my hayward feeder. Should I switch to a non-stabilized tab? Changing the water would be difficult. I am on a well.

18,000 gallon inground vinyl lined, hayward super pump, hayward de filter, hayward chlorine feeder, raypac heater
fc=0.5, cc=1.0, tc=0, ph=7.4, alk=70, cal=120, cya= 50-60

Thanks for your help, Marty

[Watermom]

How is the pool store testing your CYA? I don't know the shelf life of the R-0013. (Maybe go ahead and order some fresh R-0013.)

Either way --- a CYA of 50 or 60 or 100, I would quit using the trichlor pucks. You don't need more CYA. What kind of granular shock is it that you are using?

I wouldn't worry about the stains until you can hold chlorine. Stain clean up can come later.

How big of a dose of bleach are you putting in? in your pool, each gallon (4 quarts) of 6% bleach will add about 3.3ppm of chlorine. For now until we can determine for sure what your CYA is, add enough bleach to get the chlorine up to 20ppm. If you can, add the bleach this evening when the sun is off the pool. Then, an hour later, retest the chlorine and see what reading you get. Then, again in the morning within 2 hours of sunrise, test again and report how much chlorine you lost overnight. You are fighting something in the water as is evidenced by your CC reading.

(By the way -- what does your FAS-DPD powder look like? How old is it?)

[MartyW]

Thanks for the reply Watermom,
I don't how the pool store test for cya. I think they use R-0013 also. I do plan to get some fresh. I put in 2 or 3 gallons of 12% pool bleach at a time. I used 15 or 20 gallons over about a week. Then I put in 2lbs of nonchlorine shock(as per the pool store recommendation). Lastly I added 2 lbs. of hth super shock & swim 49% chlorine and then last night I put in 4 lbs. The results posted came after that. My fas-dpd is old also, but stored inside. I get the same results from the oto test.

[Watermom]

Stick with just using bleach for now. Some of the pool chemical companies are making blends with unwanted ingredients in their products. We call them voodoo mystery mixes. Post your overnight results in the morning.

[MartyW]

Retested with fresh R0013 - same results. Will add 5 gallons of 12% pool bleach tonight. May not be able to post results until tommorow evening.

[Watermom]

5 gallons of 12% with a CYA of 50-60 in an 18K gallon pool would add about 33ppm of chlorine. Too much. Only add 3 of the gallons. That should add about 20ppm which is high enough. Test about an hour after you add it this evening and then test again within two hours of sunrise in the morning. What you need to find out is if you are losing more than 1ppm overnight. That information is an important piece of the puzzle.

[MartyW]

I had already put 5 gallons in around 9:30 pm before I saw your last post. At 10:30 pm I read FC @ 17ppm and CC @ 4ppm. At 6:30 am I read FC @ 1ppm and CC @ 1ppm. This evening was FC @ 0 and CC @ 0.5ppm. I'm baffled! Thanks for your help. Marty

[aylad]

Those test results say that there is something in the water that is consuming your chlorine, so the next step is to take it to shock level (chlorine 20 ppm) and hold it there until you can go overnight, testing just like you did, but not losing more than 1 ppm of chlorine in that time.

If you used trichlor pucks last year, what was your CYA when you closed? I'm betting it was high, and the fact that you had none on opening means it degraded over the winter. One of the possible byproducts that it sometimes will degrade to is ammonia, which creates a very high chlorine demand, but one that must be overcome with lots of chlorine before you'll be able to hold a chlorine level overnight. We've seen a lot of that happening this year, unfortunately.

Janet

[Watermom]

Jan,
I started replying and was pretty much writing the same thing you wrote above but deleted mine. The puzzling thing about this one is that even if she did have CYA bio-degradation over the winter, why doesn't she have a high CC reading? I've asked Ben to take a look at this thread.

[PoolDoc]

The puzzling thing about this one is that even if she did have CYA bio-degradation over the winter, why doesn't she have a high CC reading?

She *has* had transient high CC levels. The thing you have to remember is that breakpoint chlorination -- so long taught in the pool industry -- actually WORKS, when the chloramines come from simple ammonia chlorine mixes. So, 'shocking' to eliminate chloramines can potentially do just that.