Open Green and Cloudy & No CYA

[Watermom]

Sounds like you have a pretty good understanding of what you need to do. Just a couple of comments.

Keep an eye on your pH if it is just a tad over 7. You don't want it to drop any lower. As a matter of fact, I'd go ahead and add a little Borax.

Those tabs are trichlor and not dichlor. They will add CYA and you need some but it takes time so you may find that until the CYA builds up some, you'll have trouble keeping chlorine in the pool. You may want to use dichlor instead of the trichlor tabs. It is a granular form of chlorine which means it is quick dissolving and thus will build up your CYA level a little faster. Then, once your CYA is where you want it (most pools do well at about 50), you'll want to switch to just using liquid chlorine or bleach so your CYA doesn't get too high. If you do use dichlor, you have to be careful. A lot of places sell blended dichlor which has unwanted stuff in it. If you have a Sam's Club near you, you can buy their PoolBrand dichlor which is fine.

Now, a question. What was your CYA reading when you closed last fall? Some pools lose all their CYA over the winter when it biodegrades, leaving a huge chlorine demand. I hope this doesn't turn out to be the case in your pool. Let us know if you are losing chlorine really fast. Especially telling is if you are losing more than 1ppm of chlorine overnight.

Welcome back for another season on the Pool Forum!

[Winicott]

Glad to be back. I reccomened this site to a buddy of mine who had mustard algae last year. He asked me for the site this year when he opened after the great year I had last year.

The place I looked had Dichlor in 1' tablets. They also had granules as well. I hear you saying that I need to get the CYA up to 50ish then use liquid chlorine? The resource page says use liquid chlorine until I can maintain 2 ppm then add stabilizer.

CYA was around 30 when I closed. I kept it low so I could use less bleach to maintain proper levels.

I think I am losing chlorine fast, but not sure. Added a gallon @ 700 after the sun went behind the house and checked at 9. 1ppm. Added 3/4 a gal of bleach and at 10 it was at 2 ppm. I am going to add another gallon now and check it in the morning.

[Watermom]

What resource page are you referring to? I am not aware of dichlor tabs. Do you have a link to them somewhere?

Are you adding the 121 oz jugs of 8.25 bleach?

[Winicott]

Here is the resource page:
http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/spri...-problems.html
Problem #2 item 4.
"Initially, your stabilizer-eating bacteria and biofilms will STILL be active in your pool. So, do NOT use stabilized chlorine to start with -- you could end up making your problem worse, faster than you make it better. This means NO dichlor powder. Use bleach or calcium hypochlorite only."

I will have to take a pic of the #50 bucket of the 1" tablets I saw. I may have read the ingredients wrong.

The bleach I have is 12.5% concentration. I buy it from the feed store. I get deposit bottles. When I come back with the bottles I get my $6 back. I understand he fills them there himself. The chemical company is Funshine. They are 1 gallon bottles. With the deposit taken into account it is about the same price as the 10% Pool Store For pool only bleach, but everything at the feed store is cheaper. Accessories are less and I can also get the dog food and the chicken feed there as well. It is win win for me. If there is a good argument for the 10% bleach with the throw away bottles I would love to hear it. Even if my 12.5% ends up being the same concentration as the 10% bottles I would not mind since they use the bottles over and over all summer instead of throwing them away.

[Watermom]

Your 12.5% bleach is just fine.

It was late when you added bleach so you may have not had time but when you are trying to determine if you have a chlorine demand, we like to be able to measure overnight chlorine loss. The best way to do this is to add chlorine when the sun is off the pool in the evening. Then, a couple hours later test so you'll have FC and CC numbers to compare with the next morning's readings which should be taken within an hour of sunrise.

[Winicott]

I will do that tonight and tomorrow morning.

My first reading was .6ppm, but 1.5 hour after sunrise, but no time to get full FC reading. I added a gallon of bleach, just to keep the pressure on the algae, but I figure it will be gone by lunch.

I hope that since there was SOME chlor this morning that I an not dealing with the larger issue.

[Watermom]

By the way, what is your wall height on your pool? I think you may be overestimating the volume of your pool. I'm assuming it is 54" (same as mine ) which means your water level is around 50 inches. This puts your volume at more like 18K gallons. I was trying to determine how much chlorine a gallon of 12.5% bleach would add to your pool (assuming it is that strength) and need an accurate volume to do so.