TA problem

[momspool]

good morning, i'm using a drop base kit (cheap, K-Mart) with oto. Readings this morning:

TC= WAY over 5
pH= 7.8
TA= 240
hardness= 0
CYA= 35

I redirected my return this morning to get aeration. Should help, right?

[momspool]

Oh, I shocked again last night, noticed still a slight green, but mostly just cloudy.

[waterbear]

ok, couple of things going on here. First, I ask again, what is the finish of your pool...plaster, fiberglass or vinyl? This will determine if you need to add calciuim or not.

second, don't try and adjust the TA until your chlorine had cleared the pool and all the cloudidness is gone. High chlorine levels can give you inaccurate pH results and you NEED accurate pH results for adjusting TA!! Chances are that your pH is acutally below 7.8 but you are seeing the interferance from the high chlorine level.

Get your chlorine levels up to 15 ppm or slightly higher and keep them there with pump and filter running until pool clears then let them drop to about 5 ppm. Then adjust your TA.

To measure higher chlorine levels with your kit you can dilute a sample of pool water with an equal part of distilled water and then mulitply the test results by 2. If you need to go higher (and you will) you can dilite 1 part pool water and t2 parts distilled water and multiply by 3. You can use a 1:3 dilution and multiply by 4 or a 1:4 dilution and multiply by 5 but that is really about the limit.

The best thing to use to shock is bleach....download mwsmiths2's BleachCalc program...most of us on the forum use it....to see how much you need to add for your pool to maintain these levels....here is the link
Get BleachCalc 2.6.2 here: http://www.hal-pc.org/~mwsmith2/BleachCalc262.exe

[aylad]

Waterbear, She has already posted that her pool is a vinyl, ag pool.

Momspool, raise your Cl to 10-12 ppm, and keep it there until the green is gone. Also,run your pump and filter 24/7. You need to kill the algae, then give your filter a chance to get it out of the pool. With AG pools, this can take several days..just be patient. After you get the pool cleared up, then you can deal with the alk issue.

Janet

[waterbear]

Waterbear, She has already posted that her pool is a vinyl, ag pool.

Whoops! Missed that! Thanks for point it out out!

Momspool, ignore the first part of my post. the second and third still stand (Just as aylad said also!)

[momspool]

I guess im just in to big of a rush. I started on the pool last weekend and it was a brown-green mess. I was excited to get it to just cloudy that quickly. I'll just concentrate on keeping the chlorine high for a few days and see what happens before I bother with the pH and Alk again.
Thanks