New member, pool owner for 10+ years

[Themadczar]

Yep. That's the right kind...
Just use to chlorinate instead of bleach until you reach the desired level of cya... Probably will take a few weeks. I use poolcalculator.com to figure out the effect of adding chemicals. Never add all at once... Incremental doses of course.

[Straightleg]

Yep. That's the right kind...
Just use to chlorinate instead of bleach until you reach the desired level of cya... Probably will take a few weeks. I use poolcalculator.com to figure out the effect of adding chemicals. Never add all at once... Incremental doses of course.

2 gallons of bleach when I first took the cover off....4 gallons when I got my pump running 24 hours later.
On a test stick, no chlorine and it said ph low, cya low and ak low.
I guess I started wrong all ready...
Taylor Test kit not here yet, just bottle of test strips.

What should I do from this point on.



SL

[Watermom]

Pick up a cheap OTO/Phenol Red kit (yellow and red drops) to use in the meantime. Actually, even after you get your good kit, the OTO kit can be used for quick daily checks of chlorine and pH. Or, see if they have the HTH 6-Way kit instead of the OTO. It is pretty cheap and includes a CYA test in it. If you haven't yet opened the dichlor, I wouldn't until you have a CYA reading. It may be the your CYA is ok and you don't want to add more and thus would be better off just using bleach. I know your test strip said low but we don't really trust test strips.

[Straightleg]

Did a couple of tests
ph 7.1
ta 140 - 150
fc 0
tc 0
cya almost .30 I would say .25


what now
Thanks

[Watermom]

What kit did you use?

Add a little Borax and bring your pH up some. Also, get some chlorine in there before an algae bloom starts! Your volume is around 26,000. In a pool this size, each 121 oz. jug of 8.25% bleach will add about 3ppm of chlorine. Since your CYA is so low, your chlorine isn't gonna stick around through a day. In addition, your chlorine dropped to zero. If it were my pool, I would probably add 3 of those jugs of bleach this evening. That will help you hold some chlorine through the day tomorrow, plus it should hopefully knock out any impending algae that may be trying to start as a result of no chlorine in the pool. Alternately, you could use some more dichlor to raise your chlorine level and also add a bit more CYA.

Regarding your CYA readings, you surely mean 25 or 30. It is not possible to get a reading of .25 or .30.

[Straightleg]

What kit did you use?

Add a little Borax and bring your pH up some. Also, get some chlorine in there before an algae bloom starts! Your volume is around 26,000. In a pool this size, each 121 oz. jug of 8.25% bleach will add about 3ppm of chlorine. Since your CYA is so low, your chlorine isn't gonna stick around through a day. In addition, your chlorine dropped to zero. If it were my pool, I would probably add 3 of those jugs of bleach this evening. That will help you hold some chlorine through the day tomorrow, plus it should hopefully knock out any impending algae that may be trying to start as a result of no chlorine in the pool. Alternately, you could use some more dichlor to raise your chlorine level and also add a bit more CYA.

Regarding your CYA readings, you surely mean 25 or 30. It is not possible to get a reading of .25 or .30.

Just learning, will get on that tonight....

[Straightleg]

I added 3 gallons of bleach....2lbs of stabilizer....1 box of borax....
Added 2 1 lb bags of dichlor
Will retest tommorow

Did I add the right things?


SL

[Watermom]

I assume that you meant 3 jugs (121 oz. each) rather than 3 gallons. That was fine to add. Also adding dichlor as well is probably going to make your chlorine pretty high. If you still haven't received your Taylor K2006 kit, your 6-way kit isn't going to be able to register that high. However, since the 6-Way kit has an OTO chlorine test in it, you can use this chart to kinda estimate what reading it is showing.

http://pool9.net/oto-chart/

Also, with chlorine above 5ppm, you won't get an accurate pH reading, so don't bother testing it right now. (When you are using the K2006 kit, the pH test is valid as long as the chlorine isn't above 10ppm.)

How did you add the stabilizer? Don't run the CYA test today. CYA takes awhile to fully dissolve and show up in a reading so you'll just be wasting your reagents if you test again too soon. The amount you added should have increased your CYA by about 10ppm. That, plus the dichlor you added, may put you at just about the right place for your CYA level. For now, don't add any more CYA or dichlor until we get a good reading on it in a few days.

You're on the right track!