Low Chlorine Levels

[BigButz]

I am experiencing low to no readings on my chlorine over the past few weeks. I have an AquaRite salt water chlorinator and my pool is approx 28k gal. I guess I'm just wondering if this is normal during this time of year. I'm here in sunny AZ and we will be up to 110 today. My pool has only been completed since last Aug and my chlorine readings have always been dead on 3.0 since then. During the winter I turned down the chlorine to about 50% and I turned the percentage back up to 90% a month or so ago but hasn't seemed to help much. I'm always having to add acid to keep my PH in line. Someone on the forum told me that was due to having a new pool and the curing process uses up a lot of acid. Anyway, just wondering if this is normal due to the extreme heat and if so how to supplement the lower readings. I added two bags of shock last night and my reading today is only about 1.5.

Thanks.

Brian

[waste]

Brian, without a full set of chem numbers about all we can do is guess. There is a fair chance that your cya is too low to protect the generated chlorine from burning off in that Az sun.
Please post some test #s and we'll offer some suggestions

[BigButz]

I don't have a very good test kit. What are the readings that you need to see?

[waste]

Brian, what I was looking for are :
Free Chlorine
Combined Chlorine and/ or Total Chlorine
pH
Total alkalinity
Calcium Hardness
Cyanuric Acid
- this will tell us about the condition of the water

However, as you have the AquaRite unit, will you please open the door to the unit and press the diagnostic button (located to the left of the LED display) 5 times, and post what the display says after each press? - this will tell us the condition of the unit/ cell.

Thanks for doing this and helping us help you

[Jeffski]

I'm guessing your stabilizer is low. My SWG runs at 40% which is the standard setting.

[BigButz]

OK here are my numbers:

Free Chlorine 2.0
Combined Chlorine 2.0
Total Chlorine 0
pH 7.8
Total alkalinity 110
Calcium Hardness 400
Cyanuric Acid 60


Keep in mind I got to these numbers by adding over the past few days 1 gallon of pool acid and 3 lbs of shock.

Thanks.