Hello

[carsport]

I knew the trichlor was a no-no, it does have about 5% copper such and such. I really only got it in order to add CYA while I was waiting on the dichlor to arrive so I don't really use it.

After the additions of dichlor and stuff last night I finally got my first CYA reading this morning.

This morning I am at:

FC: 16.0 (down from 18.5)
pH: 7.5
CYA: 60 (oops--in my desire to finally show some it looks like I overshot the target a little)

From the 'best-guess' chart I guess I will hold my chlorine at 20 for another day or two until I quit losing more than 1ppm. My only fear is that since I now have CYA at a decent level and I don't get much sunlight that I won't be able to get my chlorine down within about a week...

[aylad]

That won't be a problem, if you can leave it uncovered. I am near Shreveport, and have to keep my stabilizer around 90- 100 ppm to slow my chlorine loss to a reasonable amount. If you can leave it uncovered for a day or so, it'll come down.

Janet

[PoolDoc]

I'm impressed. You've jumped right in and pretty much worked it all out!

By the way, post 1 or 2 more times, and you'll automatically move to the no-longer-moderated category. I can do it manually, but it screws up some things, so I'd rather not.

Welcome!

[carsport]

Thanks.

For some reason it wasn't letting me reply in this thread but I figured it was a 5 post limit.

I wasn't home all day Tuesday so I wasn't able to test or anything.

After about 36 hours with no interaction my FC was at 17.5, down by about 4ppm. CC was less than 0.5, I didn't really want to use up all my chemicals by using the 0.2 steps.

Today, after about 18 hours I was down 1ppm FC from the 17.5 and still less than 0.5ppm CC so I decided to pull the cover and let it come down to normal. I swapped the filter to a brand new one to get a fresh start.

I may still have a slight thing going on but I wanted to float a little this weekend so I'll just watch it really closely and make sure the FC stays around 5 at the minimum.

I will probably shock it back to 20 or so next week when I know nobody will be in the pool.

Thanks for the plethora of good information all across this board. I read a lot before actually joining, but at some point I had to stop and start trying some of it out.

Hopefully one day I can talk the wife into a permanent pool.

[PoolDoc]

Dunno about your budget, but Walmart and other big box stores have Intex pools on clearance currently. You might want to look at something a little bigger. A 10' is actually harder than a larger one, because the dilution factor (diluting people goo) is NOT in your favor.

But, I can say a LOT of people here have started with, and enjoyed an Intex pool for several years before moving up.

Good luck!

[carsport]

Thanks, I'll have to look into that. I suspected a smaller pool would be more difficult to keep stable but already talked the wife up to the 10'. Now that we have had it for several weeks I could probably talk her into a larger one.

For some reason my nearest Walmart doesn't have a selection of more than the most basic of pool gear even though it's a brand new super center.

I'll start checking the other stores and sam's club.

[PoolDoc]

Walmart's clear out pool gear ASAP after July 4th.

Check Kmart, Target, other big box stores for clearance deals on Intex pools. But you may have to purchase bits and pieces from Amazon.

[carsport]

Quick question or two or three, (should I start a new thread somewhere?)

I'm pretty stable now and have come down to chlorine levels more appropriate for swimming/floating.

(1) What do I do when I go out of town? I have the filters that allow for me to stick a 1" tab in there to disperse, but the only tabs that I have are trichlor+copper-such-and-such...Should I just "shock" the pool up to around 20Cl and then cover it?

(2) When I test for CCs, which isn't every time I test the water since I've become fairly stable IMO, I get a very slight pink hue which always takes 1 drop of reagent to clear up. I have been calling this CC <0.5 but is that in any way accurate? To be more clear, it is not dark pink, but very VERY light pink.

(3) If the above really does indicate I have a small amount of CCs then should I shock to 20 and wait until there is absolutely no presence of CC? I feel like there will always be a very tiny bit of CCs in a pool.

(4) Thanks for the heads-up on the Intex deals, but my wife shot the idea down. Possibly next summer for a bigger pool. Is there a "best" size for Intex? I guess by that I mean is there a pool that provides the best mix of included pump/filter/volume. I think the most yard we're willing to sacrifice would be for a 16' pool at the most.

I've attached two screenshots of my excel spreadsheet so far: Screen Shot 2012-07-24 at 1.53.09 PM.pngScreen Shot 2012-07-24 at 1.52.59 PM.png