Starting resurfaced pool

[PoolDoc]

Couple of quick points:

1. If the your finish product company wants you to wait on the chlorine find, and add, some polyquat ASAP: http://pool9.net/polyquat/ I'd recommend ordering a quart from Amazon, but then seeing if you can find some locally, sooner. You do NOT want your pool to turn green. Just save whatever polyquat you don't use -- it lasts indefinitely -- and use it to 'keep' your pool when you go on vacation.

2. Kent Williams' article on CYA frankly pi##'s me off. It's about time I wrote a rebuttal entitled something like "Kent William's Cyanuric Acid theories: merely ignorant or actually fraudulent?". His background is as an employee for Stranco, who made very expensive, very high-end commercial pool chemistry controllers. The problem is, these controllers work very badly on pools with CYA present. Many years ago, I talked with an Arizona parks and rec director who was FURIOUS at having bought a number of those units for $10,000's . . . only to discover that they wouldn't work on his outdoor stabilized pools.

The "Benefactor or Bomb" article reflects earlier efforts by Stranco to get rid of stabilizer in commercial pools, NOT because it was bad for those pools, but because it was bad for their product. By blaming CYA, they could deflect blame from their over-priced and under-functioning controllers.

The fact is, without CYA, it's almost impossible to keep commercial pools safe. With clear water under full sun most large modern pools, with side wall inlets, do not have adequate circulation to make sure the interior areas of the pools remain chlorinated when there's a heavy bather load. Ironically, many old pools built in the 60's and earlier, have floor inlets scattered around the pool that made it practical, if not very efficient, to keep unstabilized pools sanitary.

Anyhow, the "CYA, B or B" article is based on a misunderstanding of CYA chemistry -- but since the purpose of those theories was apparently to protect Stranco controller sales, why bother with getting the chemistry right?

[Kidney]

Watermom: I added 2 quarts of 8.25% bleach at dusk tonight only. No CYA yet. (I am really curious to do my first FC test tomorrow morning and see what it reads....). I have so far followed the National Plasterers Council start up card at https://npc.memberclicks.net/assets/...nt-rev3.09.pdf as per my Pebble Tech installer's instructions. This start up card asks to "adjust Cyanuric acid levels to 30 to 50 ppm based on the primary sanitizer of the pool". Dichlor is not excluded but before your post I was planning tomorrow to raise CYA to 30 at the least in one row (not sure if that's allowed by the Leslie's conditioner. i.e 100% CYA, I was going to use). My installer recommended 25ppm in anticipation that its clients will use trichlor tablets and do not need high initial levels of CYA (but I don't plan on using trichlor). Also I don't know if Leslie's Chlor Brite is 55-56% available chlorine: does that mean that if it is not 55-56% (i.e. dihydrate I assume) but 62-63% (anhydrous), I should not use Leslie's product? (BTW, I know about Amazon Prime, I just haven't used this service yet.)

PoolDoc:
1. Pebble Tech just say not to chlorinate water that has not been filtered and is not within acceptable ranges for pH and TA. As my water has been filtered and is within acceptable ranges (with pH fluctuating some but in range today), I added bleach. As I mentioned above the National Plasterers Council directions I follow ask for chlorine to be added 3 days after fill. As I now have some chlorine in the pool and will be able to decide this Tuesday morning whether to keep using bleach and added CYA or more simply dichlor (assuming Leslie's is 55-56% AC), I do not think I need to add polyquat, correct? (Today and since day 1, the pool was sparkling clear.) Would you have a link to a page discussing using polyquat (or other techniques) when going on vacation?
2. Thank you for shiming in on the reference to Kent William's article. That did seem really contrary to common wisdom but what about the CDC's findings regarding diminished "chlorine’s ability to inactivate the chlorine-resistant protozoan, cryptosporidium": should we worry about this at all? (I must admit I haven't done any research yet about protozoan cryptosporidium but it does remind me of a parasite some people suffer from after bathing in local water reservoirs but I may be wrong...)

Let me express my gratitude for your very helpful answers!!!

[PoolDoc]

Adding CYA reduces the percentage of chlorine that is active at any given time. That's bad, if you try to follow the 1 - 3 ppm recommended levels . . . but we don't!

In fact your target chlorine level should be 5 - 10% of your CYA level. If you operate that way, you'll have a fairly constant amount of ACTIVE chlorine present.

BUT, there's a huge advantage to higher levels of CYA *if* you follow our cl-cya chart: http://pool9.net/cl-cya/ . You can have FAR more chlorine in reserve, ready to almost instantly replace the ACTIVE chlorine, if it gets used up.

[Kidney]

This morning at 9:45am on a bright sunny Texan day:

TC 0.1 (using K1000), FC 0.8 (using K2006C after adding a lot of powder), CC 0.2
pH 7.8 (or 7.9)
TA 80
CH 160
Water temp 79
SI 0.05

Not sure I am doing the right thing yet with the FC/CC test in the K2006C. Very hard to read at these low levels.

pH is back up, TA is perfect: should I add dichlor and wait 3 to 5 hours before retesting in the hope pH dropped, or more drastically lower pH with muriatic acid or even raise TA with baking soda then lower pH with muriatic? I discovered http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/lowe...p-by-step.html after having followed my installer's instructions to lower TA (initially reading 120) but now my pH is bouncing around and TA is in range but no longer high so not sure I can or should follow directions at this link.

I will make a run to Leslie's to get dichlor if it is 55-56% available chlorine. Should I use bleach and CYA if the dichlor I found is 62-63% available chlorine?

PoolDoc: the best guess chart is great, your rule "your target chlorine level should be 5 - 10% of your CYA level" is even easier to remember! Thank you!

Watermom: regarding the Super Simple Startup Recipe, I assume I skip adding "borax in equal quantities as dichlor" since my pH is so high, correct?

[PoolDoc]

Dichlor in the 55% - 62% available chlorine range is fine; there are 2 'flavors': hydrated and anhydrous. The anhydrous 'flavor' has a bit more chlorine per pound.

Regarding your TA, you'll probably need to add BOTH acid and baking soda.

[Watermom]

Judge your use of Borax based on your pH readings.

[Kidney]

Things are looking better!

Yesterday morning pool was looking bluer after adding the bleach but TC was low, I added a bit less than 2lb of baking soda to raise my TA then several hours after that after noon added a dose of muriatic acid to lower my pH. In the evening around 9pm, once water had had plenty of time to recirculate with pH and TA in range, I added 2/3 of a pound of dichlor based on my understanding of what is needed for the 14k gallons I have without exceeding the upper limit of what the NPC recommends. 4 hours later, TC had raised a little (0.5) nowhere near the 3ppm I was expecting. Around 1am, I added the same quantity of dichlor again.

This morning around 8:45am:
FC 1.6
CC 0.4
pH 7.3
TA 80
CH 160
Water temp 80
SI -0.45

Tonight I will add another dose of dichlor 55% AC and so on every evening until I run out of the six 1lb bags I got. That should add a tad more than 30ppm of CYA total (if I calculated that right), which should show on the K2006C CYA test. Hopefully by then I get a feeling of how FC/CC last under current conditions, can add some more CYA and switch over to using bleach.

Questions:
1/ Once CYA rises, should I cease measuring TA and measure Carbonate Alkalinity instead?
2/ How much salt/sodium can I expect to add to the pool by recurrently topping off with bleach?
3/ I have a DE filter and a heater for the hot tub that are both parts of the pool system: I hope dichlor then bleach are ok for use with those, are they?

[BigDave]

A) 7lbs of dichlor should get you right up to 30.

1) Does it matter? CYA will affect measured TA consistently. You will raise it if your pH is unstable - you will determine the best level. The CYA component factors out when comparing new TA reading to old, why bother doing the calculation?
2) A little, maybe 10ppm salt in a jug of bleach.
3) Just fine - no differrent than any other source of chlorine.

[Kidney]

Thank you BigDave!

A) Good! At least my calculations are not off ;-)

1) I see. It's just that the NPC asks for CA not TA to be measured once the pool is started and recommends CA be kept between 80 and 120ppm.

2) Does that little amount of salt translate into huge amounts over several years? I'm not really sure how to calculate this and don't know if I should bother but I sure wouldn't want to see metals rusting around the pool... I just hope this isn't a bad tradeoff vs using Trichlor and having CYA steadily increasing over the years which in my case and in the past led to algae (as I assume chlorine levels couldn't keep up with high CYA) and to having to empty the pool at least partially. CYA does not evaporate right?

3) Great. I was wondering as I saw the post about running pools at high pH where dichlor is a source of chlorine never to be used. However I don't think I could easily run my pool at high pH since I have a heater that would perhaps (?) suffer from this.

[PoolDoc]

+ All forms of chlorine add salt, because -OCl (free chlorine) => O2^ + -Cl (salt) . Bleach adds somewhat more, because it contains free salt, in addition to the chlorine.

+ CYA does not evaporate. It is readily biodegraded however, whenever 'slime' (algae + bacteria) layers form in the pool.

+ Heaters are one place where the SI index actually does matter. You can use the LSI calculator, here, but remember you must use the water temperature at the INSIDE SURFACE of the heat exchanger. A reasonable estimate is the heater effluent temp + 20 degrees F.

So, if your pool is 75 and the heater effluent is 85, you'd use 105 as the calculation temp. Taking your reported figures, and assuming a TDS of 500 ppm for a freshly filled pool, your POOL has an LSI of -0.26, but your HEATER would have an LSI of 0.1