Clear, but no chlorine???

[BigDave]

At 150ppm CYA, the pool is safe between 8 and 15. I don't recall if I've asked you to look at the Best Guess Chart. It explains the relationship between CYA and chlorine.

How does the pool look? Did you measure FC / CC this morning?

[mary jo]

Good Morning! At 10:00 last night I put 2 jugs into the pool to bring the FC high enough so that I would be OK until this morning. At 8 the FC=9, CC=.5 The pH=7.6 (so I'm losing much less FC per hour today!)

I found the Best Guess Chart and it makes perfect sense to me, but I guess being told for years that you "never, never, EVER want to swim in anything higher than a 4 or 5..." takes some getting used to.
I know you guys must get this all the time, but it's really like we're Neo (from the Matrix movie) and you're Morpheus and we've just taken the red pill….strange indeed.
But I get it now.
Fingers crossed for good weather- it's cool and 40% chance of rain. Can't control the weather…….
Thanks for all your help!

[BigDave]

You may want to push the FC a bit higher before the guests arrive. You're still losing chlorine at a pretty good rate and a bunch of swimmers will only increase the demand.
Pool Party Hint: If you make all the kids get out every 45 minutes for "adult swim", you'll get less pee in the pool and less chlorine demand.

[mary jo]

OK- I will do that.
I want to turn the heater back up- I usually keep the water temp at 84-86 for swimmers. Will I have to compensate for that by adding more CL?

[Watermom]

No. Shouldn't make any difference.

[CarlD]

Yeah, colder water doesn't start to inhibit algae growth till it gets down to about 60 degrees F. Heat CAN break down chlorine, but that's got to be hot tub temps first.

[FormerBromineUser]

.
Hope your party went perfectly except for the cool weather. Bummer!

I just re-read about the Tuesday pool party - perhaps you should wait until after the party to shock.

Just a thought here. If you decide to take your pool to shock level and follow the overnight test procedure, you may want to do one more thing.

If you have underwater lights (which I think you may), and haven't yet cleaned them, consider doing this:

While FC is high, unscrew and release the lights. The screws SHOULD be only lightly hand-tightened for ease of removal. Scrub the cords, screws, in the niche itself, everything. Leave the lights off for a while and let the high-chlorine water really get into the light niche(s). While you're doing this, you can soak the light housing(s) above the pool in a bucket of chlorine-saturated pool water.

Water sits behind those lights with very little circulation and can harbor all sorts of nasty stuff that can contribute to chlorine demand. Cleaning behind lights is one of those occasional maintenance items that often doesn't get done or done often enough. Shock levels are the perfect time to do this.