Higher chlorine loss than last year

[dancu]

Does high UV fluctuate daily or is it more seasonal?
I always thought it had a direct relation to cloud cover.
Today was cloudy, 9 ppm 6AM, 4 ppm 6 PM or do I need many cloudy days
for the effect of UV to drop?
Are there more factors related to UV strenght?

Dan

Buying stock in bleach factories

[chem geek]

Thicker clouds can block a lot of UV, but thin clouds may still pass 60-80 percent of the UV through (which is why you can still get sunburn even if you feel cool because thin clouds reflect most of the infrared heat). The UV is also directly related to the total radiation from the sun which changes by time of day and time of year, both relating to the angle of incidence of the sun relative to vertical. There is a direct angle effect (based on the cosine of the angle if vertical is 0 degrees) plus at lower angles there is an additional effect from the extra absorption by the sunlight passing through more of the atmosphere.

This link will let you see the amount of solar radiation in your part of the country at different times of year. HOWEVER, this is an average over day and night and includes the actual cloud cover. Even the "maximum" is for the month average, not a peak during the day with no clouds. You can see that the east coast and even Florida has lots of daily clouds that lower potential output compared to the southwest.

There was a link on the web to a calculator that would tell you the peak solar radiation at any time of year and time of day for a given latitude, but I can't seem to find that.

Richard

[dancu]

Just wanted to post some conclusions.
Never was able to lower the chlorine consumption this season.
Pool stayed cristal clear only if kept above 6 ppm, cya is 40 now
No chlorine loss overnight!
Loss per day is still 2ppm which is more than double compared with last year around this time.
I figure there is something else in the water that makes the cya ineffective.
Maybe antifreeze from last winter?
Any thoughts?
Also I am using Walmarts Ultra, which to me has a scent to it?

Thanks
Dan

[CarlD]

If you smell anything other than bleach, like a perfume, don't use it. Period.

One thing people forget is that each summer is different. One summer may be relatively bug (as in biters) free, the next may be mosquito-central. There's different levels of pollen, and other contaminants. It depends on the amounts of rain in the spring and summer and the amount of sunlight.

Saying that, this summer seems to have been one where there was a lot more biological stuff getting in the pools. My usual vacation ritual of having someone dump 1 gal of bleach in the pool every other day failed, and I came home to a mild algae infestation--for the first time. My system always worked in the past. So why did it fail? I don't know, but I just think there was more stuff to metabolize.

I don't know if this is right or wrong but it seems to fit the facts.