Cloudy Water out of nowhere

[columbusdan]

How often should I expect to have to add bleach, assuming my kids swim 5 days per week? I know I will have to really watch it if we have a lot of people swimming, especially in such a small pool. Every other day?

[Watermom]

Depends on how high you take your chlorine each day and what your CYA is and what the weather is like. You'll just have to get to know your pool. If I was you, I'd take my CYA a little higher--- up to about 50ppm.

Each evening, test your water and add enough bleach to get the chlorine back up to 6ppm. The next evening, see what your chlorine level is when you test in the evening. Again, add enough bleach to take it back up to 6ppm. After a couple of days of doing this, you'll start to see how much is a normal chlorine loss for your pool in a day. You may find that you can skip a day and add bleach every other day. You want to make sure you keep your chlorine in the proper range per the Best Guess Chlorine Chart (in my signature below).

[columbusdan]

Followed your advice and had clear water again the next day. Been trying to keep FC up around 6. Out of curiosity, why take CYA to 50? Less loss of chlorine to sunlight?

[Watermom]

Good question. Most pools with CYA less than about 50 have trouble keeping a chlorine reading throughout the day, especially when it is hot and sunny outside.

Glad your pool cleared up!

[columbusdan]

Should I buy some of that granular stabilizer (HTH from Wal Mart) or a small (very small) bucket of dichlor tabs to get it up? From what I have read, that stabilizer stuff can be a pain to dissolve. I will NOT buy another gallon of liquid stabilizer from Leslie's. While it was nice to instantly get it dissolved, not worth the cost. I have to move it 20ppm in 10,000 gallons.

[Watermom]

Either way will work. Personally, I just buy granular CYA for my pool. It's not that big of a deal. You can put it in an old sock and hang it in front of a return jet. Give the sock a squeeze every now and then to help it dissolve faster.

[JimK]

I also use granular CYA. I just add it slowly in the skimmer and let the pump run continuously for 24hrs or so. Based on my own testing this seems sufficient time to dissolve the CYA.

I've read some posts saying it can take a week to dissolve CYA, but I have to wonder where that info comes from as that's never been the case in my experience.

[BigDave]

Should I buy some of that granular stabilizer (HTH from Wal Mart) or a small (very small) bucket of dichlor tabs to get it up? From what I have read, that stabilizer stuff can be a pain to dissolve. I will NOT buy another gallon of liquid stabilizer from Leslie's. While it was nice to instantly get it dissolved, not worth the cost. I have to move it 20ppm in 10,000 gallons.

Tabs are usually trichlor and, like granular CYA, are slow to dissolve.

Dichlor is usually granular and dissolves quickly, 1lb of pure dichlor will raise your pool's FC by about 6.5 and CYA by about 6. If you use it for daily chlorination, three or four pounds will get your CYA in range. Accept nothing less than 99% dichlor (55% available chlorine) There's lots of junk on the market some of which adds copper.