new construction

[kenny6269]

Thank you for the reply. I'm going Walmart after work tonight to get a test kit and bleach. The pool company just used strips to test, so I didn't put much weight on what there readings were anyway. They left them lay on the pool deck so they all got ruined by a shower of rain. I let the pump run all night and through a solar blanket on as well. Tonight I'll check what kind of chlorine tabs they put in. They put a half can of dichlor to shock the pool when they fired the pump up. I thought I remembered reading that you shouldn't use dichlor. The pool is 16000 gallons, how much bleach would one use approximately to shock?

[BigDave]

Nothing wrong with dichlor. It adds CYA and lowers pH but you need CYA in a new fill and pH can be raised with Borax. I'd say that dichlor is a great way to start a new fill as it dissolves very quickly compared to granular CYA and the sun will consume copious amounts of chlorine until the CYA comes up.
Test chlorine and pH as often as you can until you know how much the pool consumes. Adjust chlorine and pH as necessary (if necessary) after each test. In your pool, a quart of 6% bleach should raise the FC by 1ppm.
You won't know the shock level until you can test for CYA. Once you have a reliable CYA test, you can find target chlorine levels in Ben's Best Guess Chart.

[kenny6269]

Ok, the tabs they put in the chlorinator are Durachlor tabs. I picked a HTH 6 way drop kit from Walmart and here are the first test results:
Chlorine was 5+, over their scale.
Ph was 7.3-7.4
Hardness test did not turn red after adding hardness indicator, it turned yellow so I didn't continue.
Alkalinity was 380 ppm.
With the Cyanuric acid test the black dot did not disappear.
The hardness test is somewhat confusing, I filled the pool with well water, so I went and tried it on the faucet that I filled the pool from and the water turned red after five drops. The only chems the pool company added were the tabs and half a can of dichlor shock. Is the HTH test kit nit real accurate, or is my pool this far out of whack?

[waste]

Kenny, welcome to The Forum!

Congrats on the new pool.

It sounds like you've got a decent grip on what to do and will have a pristine pool for you and your family and friends to enjoy this season.

If you have ANY issues with the pool, come here and the great mods and members will help you.



HAPPY SWIMMING!!

[kenny6269]

Ok: got the k2006 test kit in tonight, here are the results:

PH: 7.6
ALK: 350
Free chlorine 9ppm
Combined chlorine 0 (did not turn pink after adding drops so i assume that means 0)
CA: black dot did not disappear

Any suggestions as to what to add? I haven't put anything in the pool yet, I'm waiting on some of your all's expert advice! I believe I have all chemicals on hand to add. Thank you all again for your input and any advice you can give!

[Charlie_R]

Your Durachlor tabs are Trichloroisocyanuric acid 99%. It will take several days with these in the skimmer to bring your CYA to a readable level. I don't know how many it will take, maybe someone else here will. While they are dissolving, you will need to keep an eye on your FC levels with morning and evening testing. Expect your evening test to show a marked decline in your FC, especially on bright sunny days, until your CYA level starts to climb. You will notice that you lose less and less FC through the day when you are close to a good CYA level.

Retest your CYA level about a week into using the Durachlor (trichlor) tabs, you should then see that the solution is cloudy, but it may still not be enough to read in the tube with the volume of water in your pool. Question: are you mixing the water and reagent for 30 seconds? That can have a large impact on the test results.

Don't worry too much if your FC goes into the 10-20 range, you are likely to lose a good part of that to sunshine during the day.

Something else, with your K-2006 kit, when testing for FC, use the 10mL sample. It will be close enough, and save on your DPD and R-0871.

You are correct in that no color change with adding the R-0003 means 0 CC.

As Waste said, you are doing fine!

Charlie

[kenny6269]

Thank you Charlie for putting my mind at rest. So the ALK level is nothing to be alarmed about at this point ? That's the one reading that has me concerned. Its hard for me having an arsenal of chemicals at my disposal and not using them! I am trying to be more disciplined with the pool than the hottub. On a side note, I have been keeping the pool covered with a solar blanket in an attempt to be able to swim by Memorial day, I've read that it can affect chlorine levels but I don't know about anything else. The pool water looks crisp and clean still at this point.

[Charlie_R]

Oops! sorry I didn't catch that one. I'm not an expert at pool care yet!

If you are concerned with the ALK level, here are a couple of links you should check out:

http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/total-alkalinity-in-swimming-pools.html

and

http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/lowering-swimming-pool-alkalinity-step-by-step.html

Both are from the Pool guides section at the sister site to these forums. Actually, if you haven't gone there, why not take an hour or three and do some reading? I can assure you, it will help you out in caring for your pool. I know it helped me! Lots of great info there.

Hope you can get to swim over this weekend!

Charlie

[LuvTheBeach]

Our pool is being built now. How long did yours take? Were having terrible weather here in Oklahoma so ours may take a while!

[kenny6269]

Beach, it took forever! The hole was dug the second last week in March, the pool was operational on 22 May. The pool company estimated about 10 days from start to finish, however the day after the hole was dug the rain started, if seemed like it rained every other day until the pool was complete...as a matter of fact it still is raining a few days a week. We joked when if first started to rain that it wouldn't be open until after Memorial day, it was nearly a reality. We still haven't really enjoyed it because of all the rain and cool weather, the water is still at 74 degrees.