Chlorine Lock ????

[chem geek]

waterbear gave you some advice in this post regarding the possibility of ammonia and getting an inexpensive ammonia test kit from a pet/fish/aquarium store. I suggest you get such a kit since it will tell you if you have ammonia in the water. Ammonia can be formed in a pool over the winter when a pool is "let go" (not maintained with chlorine) as bacteria can convert CYA into ammonia.

If you have ammonia in the water, then it takes a cumulative FC of around 10x that ammonia amount to get rid of it. So this can give you a rough idea of how much more chlorine it will take -- if there is ammonia in the water.

Or you can just keep adding chlorine and eventually it will hold, but you won't know how much more it will take.

Also, in this post on June 23rd you reported a TA of 160 while in this post on July 3rd you reported a TA of 16 from your LaMotte test kit (did you mean 16 drops which is 160 ppm TA?) and this post on July 6th where your pool store reports 0 ppm TA after which you added Alkalinity Up. I doubt very much that your TA went away that quickly.

Richard

[poolrescue30]

Chem geek,
I have followed everyone's advice here EXACTLY .I did test for ammonia and it was negative . I gave all the right TA numbers here, it looks like somehow the ALK did nosedive, first it was 160 , then when I said 16, that's what it was 16 , down from 160, then a couple of days later is was 0, we had alot of rain here and I did let out about 3K gallons twice during that period trying to get rid of the CC.
I did dump in 3 gallons of ammonia on the advice of the new pool guy, but I can't imagine the amount of 6% bleach and 12.5% LC was not enough to get rid of that amount .My big question is , is dumping the chlorine in slowly getting the organics I'm trying to kill even if I can't maintain it at a constant level due to work hours ? or am I wasting my time??

THANKS FOR EVERYONE'S HELP AND ADVICE !!!

[chem geek]

I didn't mean to be accusatory...I just saw some things that seemed inconsistent or strange. I'm glad you're hanging in there. As for what to do about the organics or whatever the chlorine demand is coming from, the answer is it depends. If the organics are static such as a fixed amount of pollen, ammonia (which you say you don't have), lotion, etc., then it's the cumulative chlorine amount that gets rid of it. If the organics are living and reproducing such as algae, then if the chlorine level gets low and isn't maintained at or near shock level, then the chlorine demand won't go away. If you don't know what it is, then play it safe and try (as best you can) to keep the chlorine level up as much as possible.

With the TA measurement of 16, was this a pool store measurement? The standard TA test kits have one drop for every 10 ppm so you can't really get 16 ppm with your own test.

Richard

[CarlD]

P-R:
We are all trying to help. We all want you to have a safe, healthy and easy-to-maintain pool.

The reason I'm hammering steps is it sounds like you are inadvertently letting FC levels drop to ineffective and, as 'Geek says, you'll not get organics to stop growing that way. It's like a fire that you have to keep pouring water on or it flares up again.

One final ingredient is needed--P.O.P.P. Pool Owner Patience and Persistence.

[poolrescue30]

Ok, I poured in the 5 gallon 12.5 sodium hypo last night at 10:45 pm, I tested this morning at 8am , and got .5 FC
And 2.00 TCL !!!I put in the sedcond 5 gal. Sodium hypo and by 10:30am, it was only showing 1.2 FCL, 2.2 TCL , so my CC's are still there. Pool guy is at his wits end, gave me two 5 lbs containers of Cqalcium hypochlorite 65% chlrine and told me to mix with water and pour in the skimmer. What are my options, should I drain half the pool ?? Keep on pouring chlorine in ??? Thanks

[CarlD]

Ok, I poured in the 5 gallon 12.5 sodium hypo last night at 10:45 pm, I tested this morning at 8am , and got .5 FC
And 2.00 TCL !!!I put in the sedcond 5 gal. Sodium hypo and by 10:30am, it was only showing 1.2 FCL, 2.2 TCL , so my CC's are still there. Pool guy is at his wits end, gave me two 5 lbs containers of Cqalcium hypochlorite 65% chlrine and told me to mix with water and pour in the skimmer. What are my options, should I drain half the pool ?? Keep on pouring chlorine in ??? Thanks

The Cal-Hypo won't do any good--if anything it will work slower than the Sodium Hypochlorite (the LC you are using). In the water, chlorine is chlorine. It will just make your pH go up. I think you have to keep hammering it with the LC until it goes up and stays up. You are clearly fighting something--I don't know what.

Chem_Geek...What would happen if P-R boosted the borates, then added acid to bring pH down? Would that help at this point or be a waste of time?

[chem geek]

Borates are a rather weak algaecide. They do inhibit algae growth a little, but if the chlorine demand in this particular case is due to algae, I doubt the borates will help enough to make a difference. If this is truly nascent algae growth, then a costly but effective way to stop it is with a phosphate remover, but that's a last resort (a copper algaecide would also work, but then you've got copper to deal with).

The nature of this problem, with FC rapidly consumed, CC rising and then dropping (even at night and rather quickly), sounds very much like ammonia. I went through the posts in this thread and it sounds like anhydrous ammonia was possibly added to the pool. This was a pool opened upon startup which is typically when an ammonia problem can occur after soil bacteria convert CYA into ammonia. I did not find an earlier post with an ammonia measurement -- only yesterday's post that said it was tested for ammonia and was negative. I wouldn't trust the pool store numbers at all.

poolrescue30, if you still have your own ammonia test, test the water again for ammonia. If you do not have such a test, please get one at a pet/fish/aquarium store. The ammonia test is inexpensive. Do not trust the pool store for measurements. The rapid drop in TA from 160 to 16 in 10 days and then to zero three days later makes no sense whatsoever (a zero TA in the normal TA drop-test showing up immediately red instead of green would mean the pH is 4.5 and is completely inconsistent with the reported pH of 7.1).

Richard