New to BBB

[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.

[PoolDoc]

. . . membership updated.

[TexasGolfer]

I'm confused about the chlorine additions. I had been using a calculator at another website that seemed to be working well. It told me to add 83 oz of 8.25% bleach to get from 10.5 to 15. So I just plugged my numbers into your calculator and got 86 oz. Please show me how you calculated that 80 oz would raise my level by 16.3. Also, I see I have full access now, so I will go enter all my pool details into a signature. But just to make sure we're on the same page, my pool size is 12,300 gallons. Maybe you used liters?

[TexasGolfer]

Hmmmm... still unable to edit my profile.

[Watermom]

Nah, I didn't use liters but I do not know what I plugged in to the calculator to get that result! Duh. Must've still been asleep. Sorry 'bout that!

To Edit your signature ---- click on that tab in my signature below.

EDIT -- i realized what I did wrong. 80 oz. would be 2.5 of the 3-quart jugs of bleach. My brain apparently was not yet switched on this morning and I accidentally plugged in 2.5 gallons and 8% instead of 8.25! Mystery solved!

[TexasGolfer]

Okay, got the sig edited. Please let me know if there is any additional info needed, or any questions about what I put in there. Fingers crossed, but I think the algae problem will be under control in a day or two.

So next issue for me is CYA. That little test is a pain. It's my understanding that 3" tablets will add stabilizer. That is what I have always used for chlorination, prior to discovering BBB. I probably still have 20-30 lbs left over from last season. Can I use these to up my CYA level, once I'm completely finished with the algae battle? Or do you recommend something else?