Cloudy water plan of action

[wsommariva]

I respect your opinions and you have helped me in the past especially with the staining and not listening to pool stores regarding chemicals not needed and I appreciate your input greatly. Yes I always ask a lot of questions because I am searching for answers to problems that I have had for 3+ years. As you didn't reply to my last post on the other forum I came here.

Yes I think my filter grids are good. Not rocket science, I cleaned them and reinstalled them properly.

My water is now crystal clear despite the great amount of tree debris this time of year. Also I have no stains at all and I can't figure that one out. One thing I did was buy a filter that claims to remove iron from water. Last Fall I removed maybe 15% of the water in closing. Replacing it with no iron water (maybe) reduced my iron from .4 to .2 ppm. Regardless, as you convinced me, my minor stains are not an issue.

I am slowly increasing my TDS to 800. I am stopping the bleach. I may buy a smaller pump to reduce the flow into my filter. So I am hopeful.

[waterbear]

I respect your opinions and you have helped me in the past especially with the staining and not listening to pool stores regarding chemicals not needed and I appreciate your input greatly. Yes I always ask a lot of questions because I am searching for answers to problems that I have had for 3+ years.

And if I am not mistaken this is your 4th year with the ClFree, isn't it?

[wsommariva]

This is my fourth year. And maybe I'll get it right with you help.

[waterbear]

The only help I can offer to solve your problems is to get rid of the ClFree and either start using the BBB method as taught on this forum (It's really just good pool care and maintenance) or install a SWCG if you don't want to deal with daily bleach additions (it's still BBB since the generator is making sodium hypochlorite in your water which is what bleach is).
Your pool problems are mainly due to your ionizer system. They are common with ionizer systems. When people get rid of the ionizers and start taking care of their pools properly the problems go away. I've already told you this a while back on the other forum and chem geek had also given you input about your system and it's shortcomings.

[wsommariva]

I also appreciate Chem Geeks input. Can you tell me the normal levels of CL in the SWCG system for a fiberglass pool. And what is the normal level of CL just by using CL tablets?

[CarlD]

"normal" depends on the CYA (stabilizer) level. Check out Ben's Best Guess chart link on his signature above.
We usually refer to it as the maintenance level of FC (Free Chlorine) as opposed to "normal". Again, CYA levels determine that.

But for an SWCG, Chem_geek tells us that the chlorine level should be 5% of the CYA level. Since most SWCG manufacturers recommend a CYA level of between 60 and 80ppm (check your manual), that would mean the SWCG should be set to keep between 3 and 4 ppm of FC in the pool. Note that this is NOT the same level as the Best Guess table--you use a different set of standard chemical levels with an SWCG. I don't think an FG pool matters.

Carl

[wsommariva]

Thank you Carl. Seems from Ben's chart FC might be similiar in both cases. Maybe a dumb question, but is CL generated by a SWCG the same as CL in tablet form?