I hate being Color Blind - Strange Test Results

[aylad]

Yes, I would definitely wait until the morning to retest, and adding the baking soda over a period of time. Dumping it in all at once is going to cloud your water. Did your pH move with the last box of Borax? If not, you could use washing soda instead of the borax/baking soda combo since it will raise both pH and TA.

Also, go ahead and add the chlorine--except I'm not sure how you got the 50 oz. With a CYA of 100, you need to have a minimum of 8 ppm of chlorine in order to keep the water clear, and to do that with 6% bleach you need more like 102 oz. That's why we needed the CYA number (and by the way, 100 is a LOT more realistic after using the trichlor, but it is much too high--before you do a lot more chemical addition, I would strongly advise you to drain about 1/2 your water and refill in order to bring it down. Refilling it with tap water should help some with your TA and pH issues, as well.).

Janet

[tabjraxa]

Hi Janet,

Well, you were correct ... CLOUDY WATER ...

I guess 3 lbs of Baking Soda at the same time was a bit much.

Wonder how long till it clears up?

I'll see what it looks like in the morning.

... keep you posted ...

g'nite.
T.

[CarlD]

Wow! With a CYA of 100 and a pH of 6.6 you are DONE using tabs for this season.

You are wise to add LESS of baking soda than you think you need--you can always add more. Once your T/A hits 80, stop add the baking soda.

Dumping half your water and refilling isn't so bad with a 6,000 gallon pool--that's only 3,000 gallons, about the size of 15' donut pool. Your pH will go up and your CYA will be cut in half--50ppm is a fine number to work with.

You need to get a proper FAS-DPD drop kit so you can measure yourself. There are 2 I know of (but I think Poconos knows a 3rd).
1) The TaylorTechnologies.com K-2006 or K-2006C kit (the latter has larger supplies of the reagents).
2) Lesliespool.com (the on-line site of the pool store chain) has their Chlorine FAS-DPD Service Test Kit, which is basically their re-branded version of the Taylor K-2006

Other than the pH test, you should be able to run the others--and, for the T/A test you can have someone tell you when it goes from green to red if you can't see it.

[tabjraxa]

Hi Carl,

Thanks for your comments.

Here's this morning's data:

Pool, not as cloudy as last night, but still can't see bottom.

PH was about 7.2
Chlorine ... was reading at least 5
TA was reading between 40 and 50 ... it turned clearly red(ish) at 5 drops.

So, things seem to be coming back to normal.

What do you suggest, to take it the rest of the way?

I appreciate all your help.
T.

[aylad]

I still highly recommend draining and refilling about 1/2 your water before you do anything else. However, if you don't want to do that, then make SURE your chlorine stays above 8 ppm. I agree with CarlD that you're done using the pucks for this year--the low pH and high CYA are direct results of trichlor, and while you can use Borax to compensate for the low pH, you are quickly reaching a point where the high CYA levels can't be compensated for effeciently.

If you don't want to drain and are willing to keep your chlorine in the 8-10 range (I suggest using bleach to do that) then give your pool another day or so to clear up, then add small amounts of baking soda until you get your TA to around 80 to 90, then stop. As long as you compensate for the high CYA by keeping your chlorine higher, and don't let your CYA rise any more, you should be good to go for the rest of the summer!

Janet

[CarlD]

Yup. Janet has answered for me.

Thanks!