Moblaine's pool

[moblaine]

No. If you have 0.0 ppm copper, it's not an issue.



You're not 'using' the Frog, your 'abusing' it!

The mineral reservoir has copper in it. But I don't think it always succeeds at adding copper to the pool (in other words: it fails to work, which is good, but expensive).

You're sort of working around their program, using their feeder. You need to watch out for staining when you replace the mineral pack. However, if you are just using the plastic cartridge as a holder for your own tabs . . . why do you need a new one?

Good point - what are the disadvantages to not using a mineral reservoir?

Also -you mentioned earlier adding "3 gallons, per 10K gallons of pool water, of PLAIN 6% household bleach each evening. Use an OTO kit to test before re-dosing; if you get a DARK yellow value in the evening, skip that dose."

Question: Is it put in during evening so that it can work without sunlight affecting it? I'm anxious to put it in now but can see the wisdom in waiting until tonight. It's supposed to rain heavily & possibly hail today, does that make a difference? Now that I have the K-2006 as opposed to using the OTO kit you mentioned, at what measurement do I stop putting in the 6% bleach? I just went to Wal-Mart & 2 large grocery stores in the nearest "city" and bought all the large containers of 6% bleach I could find. The price worked out to about $2/gallon but liquid chlorine can be bought with 12.5% from local hardware store for $4/gallon. Seems like the price is equal or am I missing something?

Borax was hard to find but I did locate 4 boxes at a grocery store. Is this also pertinent to add at night?

[BigDave]

You're right the 6% at $2.00/gallon and the 12.5% at $4.00/gallon are basically the same price per pound of chlorine. If you're clearing the shelves, there's no loss in clearing the 12.5% as well as the 6%. use the 12.5% first 'cause it won't last as long.

FWIW - my opinion - get rid of the Frog. At best, it will add copper which will cause you a problem later. Just say no to metal(mineral) algae control. It doesn't kill fecal coliform, only algae. We can eaisily see when algae gets out of control, but, butt bacteria you can't see, but, it'll make you really sick.

[aylad]

Borax was hard to find but I did locate 4 boxes at a grocery store. Is this also pertinent to add at night?

No, you can add Borax anytime you want...the sun doesn't break it down like it does the chlorine.

[moblaine]

Okay, now what? Last night I put in about 950 ounces of 6% household bleach as per Ben's advice (3 gallons per 10,000 gallons). Yesterday my FC was 0.4 and so was my CC. This morning, the results are not what I expected: FC 1.4 and CC 1.8. I anticipated CC would have been lower, not WAY higher. My current course of action will be to test tonight and put in a similar amount of bleach but wondered if there were any other recommendations.

[PoolDoc]

Hi Moblaine;

My apologies for posting the wrong links to your Pool History form and log; here are the correct ones. If you use them, it will make the pool clean-up more comprehensible, and will make it easier for us to help you.

Pool History Form
Pool History Results

Your dose -- 3 gal 6% per 10K gal -- is about 18 ppm. If you have TC=3.2 this AM, you still have some ferocious chlorine demand. There are only 2 ways to get rid of it, that I know about: drain & refill the pool, or chlorinate till it's gone.

Draining and refilling a vinyl pool requires professional help (and even then, old liners may not survive), OR a pool cover that's about 16' larger on all sides than the pool itself.

Chlorinating requires lots of unstabilized (bleach or cal hypo) chlorine. You can do a bucket test to get an idea how much, but knowing doesn't change anything. We've seen much more of this, this year, than any previous year. Probably something in the weather favored ammonia formation, but we really don't know what stabilizer-eating bacteria sometimes 'poop' nitrogen gas (harmless) and sometimes ammonia (what you've probably got).

The most efficient way to do this, is to add chlorine in the evening so all your loss is eating 'goo', rather than to sunlight. You can increase the dose to 4 gallons per 10K (10 gallons or 13 96oz jugs), but I wouldn't go higher lest you bleach your liner. You didn't report pH, but if it's below 7.6, add 2 - 3 boxes of borax (20 Mule Team, slowly, via the skimmer, pump ON) to raise the pH. The byproducts of oxidizing ammonia tend to be less noxious at a higher pH.

If you'll log your tests and doses in the spread sheet, it will be much clearer to you, what's happening.

[CarlD]

I would use the 10ml test for your FC and CC tests. Using the 25ml test will burn thru your reagents quickly and give you no addional useful info.
Carl

[moblaine]

For the past four nights, I've been adding 7.5 Gallons of 6% bleach each evening (or 4 gallons 12.5% liquid chlorine, depending on which I can get my hands on). The filter has been running 24 hours per day (pressure did not rise for days until today it went up 2 psi to 12) and the pool continues to look great. I test 1x or 2x per day with the K-2006 and while FC is hovering around 0.5 to 1.0 ppm, my CC has ranged from 1.0 to 1.8 during this time.

Will this cycle end? I was planning to increase the dosage slightly tonight (equivalent of 4 gallons/10,000 gallons) but wondered if I should be doing anything else. Also, is it normal for water to run a bit yellowish/greenish after pouring in all that bleach? Within a short time (like an hour), it's always back to blue.

any feedback appreciated.

[moblaine]

FWIW - my opinion - get rid of the Frog. At best, it will add copper which will cause you a problem later. Just say no to metal(mineral) algae control. It doesn't kill fecal coliform, only algae. We can eaisily see when algae gets out of control, but, butt bacteria you can't see, but, it'll make you really sick.

I contacted King Technology -- they tell me there is NO copper in their Mineral Reservoir. What do you make of that?

[PoolDoc]

I contacted King Technology -- they tell me there is NO copper in their Mineral Reservoir. What do you make of that?

image and quote from: http://www.kingtechnology.com/produc...s-poolfrog.htm; archived 7Jun2012
The POOL FROG® Mineral Reservoir, which contains our EPA registered mineral formula and fits inside the Cycler. The minerals continually replenish themselves for added protection against bacteria, as well as keeping your pool's pH balanced by acting as a neutralizer. One Mineral Reservoir will last the full season or up to 6 months; use two reservoirs for year-round pools.

In the pool industry, the term "minerals" has been applied to three things: copper, silver, and zinc. At effective levels, copper kills algae, inhibits bacteria a little, and stains hair and pools. At effective levels, silver inhibits algae, kills some bacteria slowly, and stains pools gray or black. I've seen no evidence to date that zinc can be added to pools at levels that are effective at anything . . . but it doesn't stain.

I'm going to try to look up the King Tech EPA registration, but it may be they've revised it to remove copper (which stains) and silver (which stains and is expensive) and left zinc (which AFAIK does nothing much). This allows them to keep the claim "minerals", charge more, and still not stain your pool. Of course, if they DON'T have copper or silver, then the question would be, why replace the unit . . . EVER?

Ok, I found it (below) -- the mineral pack is 99.5% inert and 0.5% AgCl, silver chloride. Now, that's interesting: silver chloride is not likely to stain your pool, because it's so very insoluble in water. The "efficacy" data (last link below) is also very interesting: in a glaring typo, not only does it ID the effective agent as "0.5% sodium chloride" (salt) in the front of the report, the efficacy data appears to me to show that the added silver has ZERO effect on sanitation.

I'm going to ask Chem_Geek to take a look, and see if it looks as weird to him, as it does to me; he's much more familiar with EPA registration standards.

But it appears to me that, when you purchase a "mineral reservoir", you are buying a product that's almost perfectly safe to use . . . because it does almost nothing!

Just a caution: this discussion is likely to get into deep technical waters, resulting in this thread moving to the "China Shop" section.

===================================
Found it:
http://iaspub.epa.gov/apex/pesticide...PLS:4:0::NO::: - King Tech index
http://iaspub.epa.gov/apex/pesticide...EG_NUM:53735-2 - Trichlor pack
http://iaspub.epa.gov/apex/pesticide...P8_PUID:463787 - Mineral reservoir
http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/chem_sea...7-Oct-06_a.pdf - Efficacy data

All reports archived 07 June 2012 @ SwimmingPoolResearch

[PoolDoc]

Will this cycle end? I was planning to increase the dosage slightly tonight (equivalent of 4 gallons/10,000 gallons) but wondered if I should be doing anything else. Also, is it normal for water to run a bit yellowish/greenish after pouring in all that bleach? Within a short time (like an hour), it's always back to blue.

1. Yes, the cycle will end, but I don't know when. The only way I know to tell is to do a bucket test, with 20 - 50 ppm FC additions, and testing to see when the CC residuals in the bucket end.

2. Regarding the "yellowish/greenish" water. I don't know what that could be. As noted above, the "mineral pack" contains 99.5% of something "inert" but that doesn't mean it can't react with high chlorine. Can you take it out? It's not impossible that it's the source of your CCs. Are you pouring the chlorine in via the skimmer? If so, change to pouring directly into the pool, preferably in front of a return, so it will mix rapidly.