Where is my chlorine going?

[CarlD]

I'm sorry but this is a VERY simple problem. Something is consuming your chlorine and you have to KILL it.

You need to shock your pool (with bleach) up to 15ppm of Free Chlorine (FC). You have 13,500 gallons. That means you need to add 3.5 gallons of Ultra bleach to get it to about 15ppm. Or you can add 4 gallons of regular bleach.

But you have to do it. Then, 3x a day, check that the FC is still in the 12-15 range. If not, each gallon of Ultra will add 4.4ppm and each gallon of regular will add 3.9ppm.

You need lots of bleach and lots of P.O.P.P.--Pool Owner Patience & Persistence.

You have absolutely NO reason to suspect or treat phosphates. Phosphates are the LAST test you do, when you have exhausted all the other steps. But you need to start with the first one--you have something you MUST destroy so you can maintain your chlorine levels. I've told you how to do it. It's not easy, but it IS simple.

[tonyl]

No need to be sorry, it IS a simple problem and we both agree that "something is consuming your chlorine."

I was simply sharing my situation relative to phosphate buildup that I've experienced several times in the last 9-10 years of pool ownership. I could have shocked for weeks and the problem wouldn't have gone away. Like vanman, I was unable to maintain chlorine leve within the pool. And this situation repeated itself AFTER installing a SWG (chlorine level 100ppm within the cell) virtually eliminating routine shocking.

Your assertion that "you have absolutely NO reason to suspect or treat phosphates" is not clear for me, considering I advised he 'might have his phosphates checked", and it's exactly what I've experienced with my own pool the last decade.

Given my history, what harm could be done by a free phosphate test?

[CarlD]

Phosphate testing seems to be the latest pool store scam to get people to buy expensive chemicals. Phosphate removal is a last ditch effort. Maybe one in a thousand pools requires it. Many of our members have a heart attack when they find their phosphates are high, but following our methods their pools stay clear, clean and sweet--WITHOUT removers. So why bother testing for them?

You go through ALL the steps for clearing your pool first before you go to phosphates. This starts with proper chlorination, proper shocking, patience and persistence. If, after a couple of weeks of PROPER algae clearing techniques your pool is still cloudy, you look to other causes and treatments.

Finally, after ALL of them have failed, you test and treat for phosphates. This is, as I said, one in a thousand.

Respectfully, I suspect that if you follow the standards for chlorination established here, you won't have problems and you won't need phosphate removal chemicals--unless you are that one pool in a thousand.

[VOLDADDY]

vanman,

I had the same issue you are having now when I opened my pool. You can look back at my thread entitled "Excessive bleach consumption" and see all of the information I was given. Carl hit it right on the head...you have got to hammer it with bleach. I did 3x a day to get to 15 ppm and it took almost 2 weeks before whatever alien life force that invaded my pool died off. Now I'm on cruise control and add a jug of bleach every 2 days, and my pool looks great. Good luck, as I know first hand how frustrating this can be. I tested when I got home from work and bumped to 15 ppm, then before bed and bumed to 15 ppm, and on the advice of others I would even add an extra jug about an hour later, then in the morning I would test again, bump to 15 ppm. If you are losing chlorine from the bedtime reading to early AM reading [before the sun hits it] then you have something you don't want in the water eating your bleach. Do you have any CC in your pool? The weird thing about mine was I had 0 CC.

[ShelleyAnn]

Voldaddy - How did your liner survive the barage of chlorine?

[goosegunner]

So when you maintain this high chlorine level is your pool out of service for swimmers for 2 weeks then?

Again what about your liner?

I just found a small 1/4" cut in our 5 year old liner. When I went to the pool store to get patch glue the woman at the pool store told me to watch the Cl levels because too high will cause that. I have never ran with high Cl other than shock.

gg

[CarlD]

"too high" depends on the level of CYA in your water--stabilizer. With none, vinyl can tolerate up to 15ppm of free chlorine. But with stabilizer slowing down the chlorine, you can go higher--see the Best Guess table for the shock levels--they apply to vinyl pools.

[vanman2501]

Well my chlorine has been dropping but not to 0 it goes down to 1 & 2 and holds there that's a big improvement. Maybe what ever is causing the problem is just about gone.

vanman2501

[vanman2501]

I did a full test of the chemicals and found my ph dropped to 7.2 and my th went to 200 but is holding chlorine between 1 & 2.

vanman2501

[Watermom]

With a cya level of 45, letting your chlorine level drop to 1-2 is not adequate to keep algae away. You have to maintain the cl between 3-6 all the time. If you let it drop below that, it is an open invitation to algae. I would shock it back up just to make sure that something isn't starting as a result of the low cl you have had.