How Do You Lower CYA?

[aquarium]

A water change is cheaper (and will probably take less time!)

I'm sorta surprised that a water change isn't recommended here more often. I see a lot of people throwing a lot of chemicals and/or bleach at problems, when a simple water change would solve things right away. Gets you back to a known baseline.

TW

[cheshamjim]

I checked the label of my old (never-to-be-used-again) sanitizer, a hugely expensive product from BioGuard called Smart Shock. It is 63% sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione. Using this stuff for 4 plus years, along with "Smart Sticks" (slow desolve tablets) is probably the source of my CYA problem.

Water drain and replacement may be an easy solution for many pools, but my vinyl lined pool doesn't like to be drained. I drained about a third of my water earlier this year and ground water caused the sides to billow inward. Thank goodness everything went back into place when refilled. But my draining problem is why I was so interested in the idea of a membrane (tarp) to aid the process. I think I'll post something on the Pool Construction and Repair forum on the subject.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I am always amazed at how useful this forum is.

-Jim

[let_her_flicker]

I'm sorta surprised that a water change isn't recommended here more often. I see a lot of people throwing a lot of chemicals and/or bleach at problems, when a simple water change would solve things right away. Gets you back to a known baseline.

TW

Some people live in places where you just cannot dump 5 or 10 thousand gallons of water into their yard. Drainage can be an issue where it goes into a neighbors yard, etc. Without knowing the particulars of a situation it is easier to add those "low cost" grocery store chemicals to solve the problem.

[aquarium]

Ah, okay. I guess we're 'lucky' to live in a drought area.

That's a special challenge, the caving walls, that vinyl pools present. It would seem to me that that makes the trichlor pucks completely unsuitable in that case. Wonder how many pool companies tell people that.

TW