Short Cycling

[donjoarm]

I am beginning to get confused. One person is telling me to boost chlorine to 15 and add more when I get to 3 ppm and now I am being told to raise it to 25 and keep it there. Which is correct? How high can I raise my chlorine in a vinyl pool?

I do have a drop test kit but the highest it reads is 3 ppm. Where can I get one which will read 25?

Thanks.
Don

[duraleigh]

Don,

with a CYA level of 100, you will need to be around 25ppm to get to shock level for your pool. It then starts down immediately. Keeping it way at 25ppm as often as you can will accelerate the time frame it takes to clean your pool. I think the 15ppm level was recommended without noticing your CYA level.

If your test only goes to 3ppm it doesn't sound like a drops-based test. Go to Walmart, Lowe's etc. Better yet, spend the bucks and get Ben's kit...it's all you'll ever need.

Dave S.

[expose]

You'll probably get better results with low pH (~7.2) than with high pH (> 7.6) . . . UNLESS you had high CYA when you closed the pool, and now have low CYA. (Test to find out!). In that case, you'll need to RAISE the pH to around 8.0 with borax before you began dosing with chlorine. You'll get very fast algae kill, in that case, but you'll have to continue adding chlorine long after the water is clear, to get rid of all the chemical residue from bio-degraded CYA.

1)What do you do if you don't know what the CYA levels were when the pool was closed?
2}What would be the effects of having "all the chemical residue from bio-degraded CYA?"
3)How much chlorine would you add, and for how long after the water is clear?

[waterbear]

1)What do you do if you don't know what the CYA levels were when the pool was closed?
Don't worry about it and get your CYA level correct. (See second answer for what will happen if your CYA was biodegaded.)
2}What would be the effects of having "all the chemical residue from bio-degraded CYA?"
You would have a lot of ammonia compounds and urea in the water and your chlorine levels won't hold. You will also have a lot of combined chlorine.
3)How much chlorine would you add, and for how long after the water is clear?
You would add enough chlorine to bring it to shock level for the amount of CYA CURRENTLY in your pool (see this thread http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=365 )
and KEEP IT THERE until the Combine Chlorine is 0 ppm and your FC is holding. This might take a while and a LOT of chlorine!

Hope this helps.

[edarling]

Back to my original problem of clogged DE filter. I finally went out to undo the 15 bolts in my DE filter, and hose down the fingers. The DE was sooooo gummed up - it was like putty. I don't know what got into the filter to make it that clogged up, but it took a hose spayer on full force to get it out. I only added shock (for conveinience factor), bleach, and ph+. The algae was still active when I started the filter, so maybe I should have really shocked before using the filter to filter out the dead stuff.

Now I can re-add DE the normal way by draining to waste periodically, and the pressure is back to my pool's normal. I can do the normal to clear up the pool - add bleach to shock levels, vacuum, retest, repeat. WHen the pool is clear, I'll open the filter up again and clean it again for the season.

It does filter much faster with the filter than with my Aquabot I can almost see the bottom of the deep end. We've gotten so much rain this week (about 7 inches here, but lots more in other parts of NE) it has been hard to get the pool work in.

-betty