Congratulations on the clear water, it's a beautiful thing, isn't it?


What do you use for chlorination in your pool? I'm guessing it's trichlor tabs since your CYA is so high--and do you know where the copper came from? Did you use a copper-based algaecide when you closed?

Your calcium level is high--do you have a lot of calcium in your water? Do you notice any scaling in the pool?

I would not be concerned about the TDS--it's usually something that you only have to worry about if you're having continual algae blooms that you can't kill that don't have any explanation. However, your algae problems are almost certainly caused by your CYA level, which is WAY WAY high. So....you don't need to necessarily drain water to reduce the TDS, but you do need to drain and refill water to lower your CYA. You really need to shoot for 60 ppm or less, and then you don't have to run the chlorine so high and won't be fighting algae all summer. In addition, unless your fill water is high in Calcium, you will also be able to lower your calcium a bit.

Use the muriatic acid to lower your pH and alk--lower the pH until it's around 7.0 (this will also lower your alk) , then aerate your pool to raise the pH back up without also raising the alkalinity.

As far as the copper goes, higher levels of copper in the water would make a difference because high levels of chlorine can make the copper fall out of solution in the water and cause green staining (that's where you get green hair and nails that many people blame on chlorine), but the level that you describe shouldn't cause you any problems. I would not use anything else that contains copper in your pool, though, because once it's in there it doesn't come out.

There is not a drop test for pH that I know of--there has been some mention around the forum of an electronic pH test, but I've gotten the impression that they are not reliable unless very meticulously maintained.

Janet