START UP: Keeping CL up

[chuck9997]

I am in day two of "start up".. Been dumping the bleach in.. Have had CL up to near 20ppm,.. but can't seem to leep it there. I understand it's going to go up and down.. but is 18ppm down to 3ppm overnight reasonable?

While the ppm was down this morning.. I checked the PH.. it's about 7.8. I can't check stabalizer.. I ran out of R-0013. I would guess its not too high.. I have never had high stabalizer counts.. and usually each sprng its low. I do a lot of back washing, etc

The water color has turned from a med/dark green to chalky white after 24 hrs.

should I be overly concerned about the drastic up and down CL readings? It seems in years past it wasn't this hard to keep the reading high while starting up.

[AnnaK]

At that high of a FC level your pH measurements are likely off. The pH test loses some accuracy at FC >10 ppm.

How does your test for CC come out? With an FC drop of 3 ppm over night and milky water you likely still have algae not yet all killed. It sounds like you may have no stabilizer at all—unless you added some and didn't say in your post—which means the chlorine you're adding is being quickly consumed by the sun. In the absence of knowing the CYA level why did you select 20 ppm FC as your shock level?

My approach would be to keep the filter running 24/7, to brush the pool daily, to monitor FC level several times a day and add enough chlorine to maintain shock level appropriate to the amount of CYA in the water. This could mean adding bleach or LC several times during the day.

If you have a Leslie's nearby, call and see if they have either the R-0013 or a "Blue Devil" CYA test kit.

[chuck9997]

thanks for the information.

I checked the PH while the CL was down (3ppm).. so it should be accurate. I am sure there is still algae.. Just was surprised about such a huge drop in ppm overnight.

Not knowing stabalizer level.. I picked 15 - 20ppm as the "shock" level,.. thinking too high would be better than too low.

[chuck9997]

by the way.. just checked:

FC 6ppm
CC 1.5ppm
TC 7.5ppm

[Watermom]

CC 1.5ppm means you've still got a ways to go. Having the water turn from yucky green to whitish means you're killing algae and have dead algae in there that needs filtered out. Continue shocking. You're doing the right things. As you know, the more times a day you test and re-dose with bleach to take it back up to shock level, the faster you're gonna get this under control. Run your pump 24/7 while you are fighting this, but keep a close eye on your filter pressure. If it increases by 8-10 psi over your clean filter pressure, backwash. Keep us posted!

[AnnaK]

Yes, at 3 ppm FC the pH reading was accurate.

1.5 ppm CC tells us that you have live organics (algae or bacteria). Keep chlorinating. You may not need to go to 20 ppm FC; 15 ppm might be a good level but you do need to keep it there as consistently as possible. It may take a few days of chlorinating until your FC holds over night. Certainly you should continue to filter and backwash/rinse as indicated by your pump pressure, and brush as often as you have time.

Do you use skimmer socks? They are useful in trapping dead algae before they reach the filter and reduce the need for backwashing somewhat.

Is yours a vinyl pool or concrete? You might consider putting your pool's specs in your signature block via the UserCP.

[chuck9997]

OK.. adding bleach.. and more bleach. and doing the other things.

I have read that if you have no (or very little) stabalizer... the bleach will go away too quickly and its almost impossible to keep it at shock level. Then I also read: don't worry about the stabalizer right now.

I am not sure (since I can't test right now) how much, if any .. stabalizer I have. I would guess none.

If you were me... would you add any now?.. or just keep feeding the pool bleach? So far I have used about 15 (or more) gallons in 24 hours.