Mimi's delimma..

[Watermom]

You can add muriatic acid a half hour or so after the bleach with no problem, and a half hour after adding it, you can swim. Just need to give it time to mix in so swimmers won't run into a hot pocket of acid or bleach.

You want to wait to turn the SWCG back on until you can go overnight without losing more than 1ppm or chlorine and the water is clear. Have you ordered a good kit yet? Test strips are not a very reliable way to test your pool's chemistry. You also really need to post a full set of numbers here for us to look at.

[mimidjets]

I'm sorry, I'm new at this. I just want to make sure I understand this. Since it's raining right now and my chlorine and ph numbers are not up yet, should I just put a bag of shock it in tomorrow or go ahead and keep doing the bleach thing until they come up?

[PoolDoc]

I'd prefer bleach, just because I don't know what's in your shock. When we know little about a particular pool's chemistry, we always recommend bleach, because it has the fewest OTHER effects on the pool.

Once you have a good test kit, and have reported accurate values, and exactly what sort of 'shock' you have, we may have other recommendations.

[mimidjets]

After putting bleach in for two days, and adding 1 pint of muriatic acid, according to package directions for my size pool, my numbers with my 6-way strips were all in the normal range for this test kit. (haven't gotten my good test kit yet) These WERE the readings at the end of that day of adding the bleach and acid:TH 200/FC 2-4/PH 7.5/TA 120/CYA 30-50... Yesterday and this mornings readings are:TH 100/ FG 5-10/PH 8.4/TA 120/CYA30-50. My ph just won't cooperate! Is it safe to add more muriatic acid? My pool water is beautifully clear and feels great! It smells great not like strong chlorine but clean and soft! You wouldn't think there was a problem with numbers at all! I just want to relax and not worry about that ph level!

[Watermom]

Your pH may or may not be 8.4. When you test pH while the chlorine levels are that high (unless you have a K-2006 kit), then you will typically get falsely high pH readings. Wait until the chlorine is below 5 and then test pH again.

[mimidjets]

Ok great! WHEN I do get ready to turn my SWG back on to maintain, should I run during the day or at night? I had been running at night for 8 hours. I have heard different stories about that. Like you are wasting time running during the day because of the sun and heat. OR you need to run during the day because of the sun and heat. What is the right thing to do?

[aylad]

I'll let one of the SWCG folks chime in with a definitive answer, but if it were my pool I would run it during the day--I would want the chlorine production happening when it's needed most, which is when the sun is out burning up what chlorine is in the water. If you run it at night, you will have to make sure that there's enough residual chlorine in the pool ALL DAY so that you don't fall below your minimum level by night time. Makes more sense to me to run it during the day...but that's just me thinkin'

Janet