Excuses for Chlorine loss: Fact of Fiction?

[LearningCurve]

Here are a few excuses for sudden drop in Chlorine levels that I have heard in the last couple of years. I am curious if anyone else has heard of these.

1: Gases from the septic tank have drifted over the pool and robbed you of all of your chlorine.

2: A farmer was applying anhydrous ammonia to a nearby corn field and some drifted over your pool and robbed you of all of your chlorine.

Confirm or deny?

[waterbear]

Don't know about the first one but the second one is certainly possible (although I am not sure how probable). Ammonia will cause choramines to form.

[troykristoffer]

Hmm. Well, there are a about 3 pool stores around me. 2 of the three, I only go to when I have no other choice because I feel they always want to sell me something I dont need.

My question about cholorine loss is this: One of the stores I dont like that much tried to tell me that I need some kind of chemical (I remember he said it was something "acid"...) to help keep the chlorine in my pool. It was more than just "Do you want this, it does this." He literally said..."If you dont buy this, you might as well flush your money down the toilet..." and put it in my cart without asking. It was a bit high pressure to me.

ANYWAY. This is my first season with a pool, and It took me FOREVER to get the chlorine level to even register on my test strips. Now it seems okay, and i only have to add Chlorine every couple weeks or so. Does this stuff he was talking about really help?

[waterbear]

He was probably talking about cyanuric acid (CYA) and it is necessary in an outdoor chlorine pool to keep the sunlight from destroying the chlorine. I suspect that you are chlorinating with trichlor tabs which do containg cyanuric acid. Once it build up to proper levels your chlorine started to hold. However, this is not a free lunch! The CYA will continue to build in the pool and you will reach a point that you need to run your chlorine levels higher just to keep up. See this post.
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=365
The problem you will run into with the trichlor is that as you add more chlorine you are adding even more CYA! This will eventually cause you problems!

This is why most of us on the forum use bleach for chlorination.

What this pool store told you was basically true!

[troykristoffer]

Thank you Waterbear I use sticks, but I suspect it might still be the same deal.

[waterbear]

still trichlor. If you look on the ingredients you wil find it says either Trichloro-s-triazinetrione, Trichloroisocyanuric acid, or something very similar to this. There are several chemical names for it but it is all the same and just usually called trhchlor.