New to BBB

[TexasGolfer]

Hi gang! I just discovered the BBB method a little over a week ago. I had mostly ignored my pool over the winter to save on chemicals and all the hard work of the pool store method. As soon as the weather warmed up a bit - BAM! Green Pool! After a nine day battle, and about 25 or so jugs of bleach, and 14 cleanings of my filter cartridges, pool is mostly clear of algae. So my opening question is, how quickly do I allow the chlorine level to drop from shock level to maintenance level? It's now clear enough to see the bottom, and color has changed from green to aqua blue, but it's still a bit cloudy.

As soon as I have access to my profile, I will add a signature with all my pool details. Not sure how much you need to answer this question, but my pool is inground, gunite, and about 12,300 gallons as best as I can estimate.

Thanks!

[Watermom]

You want to keep your chlorine at shock level until you can pass the 'overnight test.' Test your chlorine in the evening after the sun is off the pool. Then, test it again in the morning within an hour or so of sunup. If you have lost more than 1ppm of chlorine, then you are still fighting something in the water and need to continue to keep your chlorine high. Continue to do so until you don't lose more than 1ppm overnight and also have no greater than 0.5ppm of CC. While you are trying to clear the cloudiness, you'll want to run your pump 24/7 and clean your filter as needed.

After I wrote this, I realized I should have asked you what kind of test kit you are using. If you have not already done so, I would recommend you buy a Taylor K2006 or 2006C (better buy). You can get it through the test kit link in my signature below.

Welcome to the Pool Forum!

[TexasGolfer]

Thanks! Yes I have the K-2006. Here are my test numbers from 5:15 tonight. (about an hour ago)

FC: 7.5
CC: 0.5
pH: 7.2
TA: 100
CH: 325
CYA: Less than 30. That's as low as the test kit goes. It was right at 30 to 35 when I did the CYA test a few days ago.

I'm going to add a gallon of bleach right now, which should take me up around 14. I'll give it an hour to circulate, then test FC again for a final number for the day.

[Watermom]

Don't test CYA too often or you'll run out of reagent. After you get this cleared up, you'll probably want to bump your CYA up to around 50 or so. Also, keep an eye on the pH. Don't want it to drop any lower. If it does, add a little Borax to bring it up. Report back your results from overnight.

[TexasGolfer]

Thanks. Yeah, I figured out pretty quick that some of the chemicals would run out pretty quickly with the amount of testing I was going to be doing. I ordered a 16 oz bottle of R-0013, a 2 oz bottle of R-0871 and an extra 10 g vial of R-0870.

[TexasGolfer]

Overnight drop was 3ppm from 13.5 to 10.5. Appearance this morning was noticeably clearer and bluer than yesterday - almost perfect. Also there was no rise in preasure at the filters. Hooray!!! First time it's gone more than 8 hours after a cleaning without rising. I went ahead and added about 80 oz of chlorine to bump FC back up to around 15. Was that enough? Too much?

[Watermom]

Adding 80 oz of 8% bleach would have added approximately 16.3 ppm of chlorine to your 10.5 that you already had. Too high, especially in a pool with low CYA. Take a look at the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in my signature below. It is a guide for how high you want your chlorine to be for various levels of CYA. Also, there is a bleach calculator that you might find helpful. (It actually has more than just the bleach calculator part if you use the drop down menu from the upper left corner.) You can find it in a stickied thread near the top of the Forum Q & A section.

By the way, once you do get to the point where you lose no more than 1ppm of chlorine overnight and also have a CC reading no higher than 0.5, keep the high chlorine for one additional day for some added insurance before letting the chlorine drift down and then keep it in the range shown in the Best Guess chart.

Hope this helps.

EDIT -- Just went back and noticed that you have a gunite pool so the higher chlorine level won't hurt anything. If it were vinyl, you wouldn't want to go that high, though.