Fighting Algae for months

[PoolDoc]

-- Signature updated --

+ Shock nightly with 3 gallons of PLAIN 6% bleach (~12 ppm)
+ Dose daily with 1 lb of dichlor (5 ppm FC, 4 ppm CYA)
+ Continue with bleach until FC overnight drop is less than 1 ppm
+ Continue with dichlor until CYA > 30 ppm
+ Use borax as needed to maintain pH > 7.2

Ben

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+ If you need stabilizer, and have access to a Sams Club, buy their 24 pack of 1# bags of dichlor shock. Each bag will add about 7 ppm of chlorine, and about 6 ppm of stabilizer, per 10K gallons of water. Otherwise, order dichlor from Amazon:

Kem-Tek Dichlor 22 lbs

We do NOT recommend buying dichlor locally, otherwise, at least until you are an EXPERT reader of chemical labels. The chlorinating pool chemicals sold at Walmart, Kmart, Costco, and most other local stores are diluted blends, sometimes with copper and other products with bad side-effects.

[rkrgk]

-- Signature updated --

+ Shock nightly with 3 gallons of PLAIN 6% bleach (~12 ppm)
+ Dose daily with 1 lb of dichlor (5 ppm FC, 4 ppm CYA)
+ Continue with bleach until FC overnight drop is less than 1 ppm
+ Continue with dichlor until CYA > 30 ppm
+ Use borax as needed to maintain pH > 7.2

Ben

I dont have sams club membership, and I would like to buy dichlor locally unless its impossible find the good one locally. Amazon orders takes a week to receive. What do you think about the pooltime dichlor sold by home depot? Are they bad as well? I do have some trichlor tabs from Costco, can I use them? That is 94.5% trichlor and nothing on the label (atleast) about Copper or any other fillings.
Or else how about buying some cyanuric acid as it is?

[Watermom]

If you join Amazon Prime for their trial period, you get free 2-day shipping. If you decide you don't want to keep the Amazon Prime, you can cancel before 30 days have passed and owe nothing. Just a thought. (I joined it and sometimes when I order stuff it doesn't even take two days. Several times now I have ordered one day and gotten delivery the next.)

Using trichlor takes awhile to build up a CYA level so is not an ideal way to add CYA initially. You can just use bleach and add CYA outright if you want to. That is what I always do. I'm not familiar with the Home Depot pool products so can't comment on them.

[PoolDoc]

Most of PoolTime dichlor products I've checked are a blended mess, made by BioLab/BioGuard. Not all the blends are equally bad, so try it if you like. If you get lucky, you won't do any damage to your water.

[rkrgk]

So I tested pool before adding bleach tonight and 1 hr after adding.
Before adding bleach
-----------------------
FC - 0.2
CC - 1.8

1 hr after adding 4.26 Gallons of bleach
-------------------------
FC - 9.5
CC - 2.0

But I think the math doesnt add up. 4.26 Gal of 6% bleach for 15K Gallons should add it upto ~24 ppm, correct? I think my pool is bigger than I thought. I think my pool could be 25K Gallons (which would make it approx 10ppm). I never got our pool info when we bought our house, I just assumed that it is just 15K.
I will post the results in the morning after I test again to see the loss of FC.

Thanks for the suggestions watermom and Ben. I have not bought the cya yet.

[PoolDoc]

But I think the math doesn't add up. 4.26 Gal of 6% bleach for 15K Gallons should add it up to ~24 ppm, correct? I think my pool is bigger than I thought. I think my pool could be 25K Gallons (which would make it approx 10ppm). I never got our pool info when we bought our house, I just assumed that it is just 15K.

PF = 8; 6% bleach contains ~0.5 chlorine gas equiv per gallon, so:

8 x 0.5 x 4.26 = 17 ppm

To calculate a kidney with fair accuracy, you need to following dimensions:

+ Maximum length
+ Minimum width
+ Small circle diameter (a kidney is usually laid out with 2 radius dimension)
+ Large circle diameter
+ Shallow end WATER depth
+ Deep end MAXIMUM water depth
+ Distance from extreme shallow end to break, along the max length axis.
+ Shape of deep end (straight down, bowl, angled hopper)
+ Which end is deep (small circle or large circle)

You can also measure it by adding 4 lbs of dichlor 55% available chlorine . . . AFTER your chlorine demand is gone . . . . and then testing both FC and CYA. But for now, you know your pool has a strong chlorine demand, and you don't know is causing the demand, so you can't estimate how fast you'll lose chlorine. It's entirely possible that you DID add 17 ppm of chlorine to your pool, but that 8 ppm was used up before you could test.

[rkrgk]

Ben,

Very good info, Thanks a ton! I think I need to get the measurements sometime when I can.

I did the test this morning
FC - 4.0
CC - 2.0

So my Chlorine is working on something still, I think my brushing was not as good as last week and I can see brownish/greenish residues on the walls and the side of the pool when I brushed yesterday. I have the whole weekend ahead of me, so hoping to have a clear pool by the end of it.