Draining pool

[l1tech]

I will be draining my pool this weekend in order to get my CYA back in check (it measures off the scale). In what order should I get the pool water back in balance. I was thinking first ph then cya and then fc/cc, what about ca?

[CarlD]

I will be draining my pool this weekend in order to get my CYA back in check (it measures off the scale). In what order should I get the pool water back in balance. I was thinking first ph then cya and then fc/cc, what about ca?

First pH, then FC because you can do this in a day before algae takes over, then CYA (this will take far longer, up to a week).

If your pool is vinyl, don't worry about calcium unless it's too HIGH. If it's hard rather than vinyl or fiberglass, you can add calcium or chlorinate with Cal-Hypo rather than bleach. You can do that with vinyl as well but you don't have to.

You also need to worry about T/A and get that in balance.

[waste]

Tech, welcome to the forum! (I see you've been around a while, but this is my first time bumping into you) I just want to make sure that you are aware that you can do damage to the pool by draining it and are going to do it safely.

[nater]

A little more info could help, as you may have major issues if you're draining an IG vinyl pool (liner wrinkles, failure, collapse, etc).

My CYA was "off the charts" (150+ ish) and I brought it under control with smaller drain and fills + natural dilution from rain. It took about 18 months, but I'm actually going to have to add a couple pounds this spring as I'm currently less than 30.

Are you using pucks, bleach, or SWC to chlorinate? That will make a difference in your methods as well. If you're using pucks, then stop and switch to bleach. If you're using bleach, a few 1/4 to 1/2 drain and fills will get you where you need to be without a total flush and fill. If you're using a SWC, then just jack up the output to maintain FC according to the best guess chart, and you'll be OK until your CYA drops off naturally or you do smaller drain/fill cycles.

[l1tech]

Should have posted a little more info sorry. The pool is a 15,000 gal inground plaster pool that was built in 2002 by the previous owners of the house (I bought the house in 2004) The water always looked good until last year when I fought with mustard algae all summer long. Before I was only ever concerned with fc, ph and ta (I didn't know better) It wasn't until the end of last swim season that I started really lurking on the forums here and finding out what was really going on with my pool. Once I found out that my cya was through the roof (the cya test kit I have only goes to 100 and if I had to guess I would say it's somewhere around 150) and that the pucks were adding more than chlorine I stopped using them and started using only bleech, keep in mind that I have never had a ph or a ta problem and always kept my fc around 2 ppm, I couldn't tell you what the cc was becasue i never tested for it...didn't know it was important. I thought about only doing a half drain but am a little concerned that after I am done the cya won't be where I need it to be. I don't think that I need to be to concerned with the pool coming up out of the ground from water as my yard is a higher than some of the surrounding neighborhood and I live in Phoenix (Chandler to be exact) and rain or standing water is not something we get alot of here, I also don't plan on letting the pool sit empty.