Chlorine magically disappears!!!!

[BigDave]

Perhaps your friend has algae? All the chlorine can be quickly consumed killing algae.
How about testing every hour after bleach goes in - see if you can catch some before it's consumed. If that pool is 15,000 gallons he 3 gallons of 12% should raise the FC well past 20.

[scootchu]

No doubt there is algae, but would it consume that much chlorine? I will take my test kit over to his pool.
Every experience I have had is that chlorine in that amount would knock it out fairly quick unless the CYA was way too high. I measured between 30-40ppm with my test.
Very strange.

[TonyPH12345]

ABSOLUTELY.

I had a fairly nasty algae outbreak early this spring. It took tens of gallons of bleach and probably 8 pounds of CalHypo to eradicate it.

[scootchu]

Well I went over there and he has 4.5ppm of FC. I told him to get some Cal-Hypo at the store. He told me he closed the pool green, which I din't know. He said he was yo-yo-ing all last summer, green, cloudy, clear.
His Alkalinity is 80 and his pH dropped a bit again. I told him to get some more Borax, which I swear by. If he dumps enough in to hit the magic ppm number, he'll be in better shape anyway.

[aylad]

Unless his pH is extremely low, he'd be better off to fix one thing at a time--and he really needs to concentrate on the chlorine demand first. If he needs to add Borax to get the pH above 7.0 then by all means go ahead and add it--but I wouldn't worry about trying to raise the borate level, at least not until he gets the chlorine demand taken care of. If he closed the pool green, there's a really good chance that some or all of his CYA was converted to ammonia during the winter, and that can create a HUGE chlorine demand (and sometimes for a really long time)that must be overcome before he's going to be able to get a clear pool. He's going to need to get the chlorine up to shock level (see the "best guess chart in my sig for proper levels, based on his current CYA number) and keep it there until he's able to hold chlorine in the pool. That can take lots and lots of chlorine and time, but he'll need to accomplish it to have any good swim time this summer.

Janet

[scootchu]

You folks are absolutely right.
His pH was very low, 6.8 or so. I figured the Borax wouldn't do any harm.
I am afraid he is going to get frustrated and stop believing me and head for the Pool People and armloads of crap.
I saw pH minus, Alk increaser, conditioner, and so on in his shed. They sold it to him once, they'll do it again.
BUT it is his pool and I cannot be there 24/7 monitoring it, brushing it, vacuuming it and most importantly dosing chlorine and it looks like he will need A LOT from you have told me.

You know how it goes right?

[aylad]

Yup, we know how it goes. He's just going to have to decide to trust you OR the pool people who are draining hiis wallet, because doing both won't work. But after all, it's his pool, and at least you can say you tried. Maybe he'll take your pool as an example??

Janet