Please help with test results, etc.

[famousdavis]

The overnight test you and others are advocating as a debugging test is something I hadn't noticed before when I first starting coming to this forum (I'm sure the advice has always been used, I just didn't pop into any threads where I saw that advice). A few months ago, I saw that suggestion given so I've periodically taken an evening reading an a morning reading just before the filtration starts-up, to see how much chlorine I've lost. The difference has always been 1 or 0.5, so that's given me confidence that all is well with our pool.

You're right that the SWCG keeps the chlorine consistent, but when we had a high bather load recently, I was surprised at how the chlorine level dropped! Usually my SWCG is between 50% and 70% (running 8 hours a day), but I wound up putting it at 90-100% to bump up the FC level back to >= 3; it had fallen to about 1 after a lot kids and swimming. With just my family in the pool (4 of 6 of us who use the pool frequently), I can generally keep it at the lower percentage.

[aylad]

Yeah, "people goo" will use up a lot of chlorine. We don't normally advise folks to shock the pool on a weekly basis "just because", like the pool stores do, but after a few days of especially heavy bather load (especially if the swimmers are under 10 years old), even with my chlorine in the right range, I still will shock it.

Janet

[famousdavis]

Not shocking a pool on a weekly basis was one of the best pieces of advice I learned from this pool. As a new pool owner, I began by using the "shock" setting (100% for 24 hours) on my SWCG, but I'd have to remember to run the pump after the scheduled off time, and then the pool would stay at a high chlorine level for most of the week, only to be shocked all over again the following week. Very shortly after becoming a pool owner, though, I learned here that shocking is used to get rid of high CC, but if CC levels are low (0.5 or less), it's not really necessary. So, I don't ever regularly shock my pool.

Like you, aylad, I do kinda shock my pool now if I know it's going to get a lot of heavy use. But instead of adjusting the SWCG, I just pour in a 1.5 gallon of grocery store bleach before the hordes of kids come over -- I can't say for certain that that's really necessary, but it makes me feel good about re-entering the pool after everyone's left and gone home again. :-)

[aylad]

I'm with ya 100%

Janet