Light brown stains from pool need suggestions

[FormerBromineUser]

A p.s. to Sunny's post. You can get washing soda in the laundry aisle at Walmart or your grocery. It's called Arm and Hammer Super WASHING Soda. It is 100% sodium carbonate. Make sure you buy this and not BAKING soda. I would buy two boxes to have on hand, but don't add it until you report your numbers.

[phillipjko]

Tested today at 4/20/2015

FC is 50 drops x 3 - 150 ( too high)
CC - 5 Drops
PH - 10 drops (Base Demand Test)
TA - 90
Calcium Hardness - 300
2 weeks ago when opening I added CYA of about 3 LBS remainder accidentally. I do not have the CYA agent to test....for now.
What I should do? Thanks

[SunnyOptimism]

Tested today at 4/20/2015

FC is 50 drops x 3 - 150 ( too high)
CC - 5 Drops
PH - 10 drops (Base Demand Test)
TA - 90
Calcium Hardness - 300
2 weeks ago when opening I added CYA of about 3 LBS remainder accidentally. I do not have the CYA agent to test....for now.
What I should do? Thanks

[EDIT]

DUH!! Just realized something - if your FC is so high (which it could be), then your pH tests are all meaningless!! FC over 10ppm causes the phenol red indicator dye to chemically change giving it false color readings.

SO, you need to get below 10ppm FC to do any other tests. The CH and TA indicator dyes are also chemically interfered with by high FC.

[END-EDIT]



Is it 50drops or 150drops? Why are you multiplying by 3??

If your water sample size is 25mL and its 50 drops then -

FC = 10ppm
CC = 1ppm

pH - ??? (It's 5 drops of phenol red and then compare color of solution to color comparator on measurement block...why were you putting in Base Demand??)

TA = 90ppm
CH = 300ppm

If your sample size was 10mL and it's 50drops then -

FC = 25ppm
CC = 2.5ppm

So, either way your water is not right. You have 1ppm at least of CC's which is indicative of organic waste in your water.

You have to get your CYA tested. Order more reagent. Try Amazon. As a stop-gap measure you could take a water sample to a pool store and ask for them to test your stabilizer level. Pool stores suck at testing CYA and usually get it wrong, but you have no CYA reagent test and it's going to take time.

Assuming you were actually at 0ppm CYA, then adding 3lbs of stabilizer would get you to 17ppm. You would have needed to add 84oz (5lbs 4oz) to go from 0ppm to 30ppm. So, you're not even halfway there yet...again, ASSUMING your CYA was actually 0ppm.

At this point you need to retest pH and report back as adding that much base demand reagent makes no sense. Whatever your pH is, it needs to be ~7.2 or so in order to shock your pool.

One question - how old is your K-2006 test kit? None of these numbers/drop counts make any sense. If your reagents are old or spent time outside the house in a cold/hot/humid environment, your reagents could be screwed up. Several of them are temperature and humidity sensitive.

I'll ask others to chime in, but until you can get your testing under control, you may have to go to a pool store and get your water tested there. It's a lousy option but the only one that make sense to me given all the spurious test results.

[SunnyOptimism]

After pondering it a bit more, I think the prudent course of action is to not do or add anything and let your FC fall back into a normal range (less than 10ppm). Until we can accurately test water values, we'll just be chasing our tails.

Also, the CYA test can be interfered with by high FC levels and cold water temperature. The water sample for CYA needs to be below 10ppm FC and at ~70F for an accurate read.

Can you order more CYA reagent?

Forget pool store testing too, the high FC will screw them up as well

[SunnyOptimism]

One other trick you can try to get a pH reading - take a sample of pool water and dilute it with equal parts of DISTILLED water (not bottled spring water or tap water). You can typically buy DISTILLED water in a supermarket as it is used in steam irons and coffee pots.

It turns out that DISTILLED water has a pH of 7.0 And practically 0ppm TA. Therefore, mixing it with pool water will not change the pH due to the buffering capability of the pool water (the pool water sample resists pH changes because it had a much higher TA than the DISTILLED water).

If you do this, you should be able to get a better read of your pH.

[FormerBromineUser]

How is it going?

[phillipjko]

Thanks so much for the advise. It was good. I got it all balance finally. I know.. there is still copper but somehow the brown stains are coming back on the steps and liner... see my photo below... that was a few days ago.