Dealing with scale problem

[Watermom]

By CA do you mean chlorine or CYA? I think you meant the latter. If you meant chlorine is 0, get some in there! Don't retest your CYA for about a week to give it time to dissolve or else you may be wasting the reagents.

(By the way, the Taylor K2006 is not available locally anyplace that we have heard of. Has to be ordered online. )

[beaverplt]

Hi, Yes I did mean CYA. Wish I would have read this before I tested CYA again this morning. OOPs. Anyway, Now that I seem to have my chlorine, PH, TA, and hardness in line, I need to attack my algae problem. My problem is severe. All, and I mean all of the liner is covered with green, black and a yellowish green algae. It does not come off unless vigorously scrubbed. I've been running my pool cleaner as much as possible with barely any headway made. In the past if I've had issues, I've used fairly inexpensive algae guards, mostly HTH, with good results. Now after reading things on the forum along with comments on this thread, I don't want to go headlong into buying anything. Any suggestions?
BTW, thanks so much for the input thus far.

[Watermom]

Your chlorine cannot "be inline" if you are fighting algae. (I'm not sure what level that means.) The way to kill algae is to shock your pool (based on your CYA level) and hold it at that high level until it is dead. Brush the pool frequently when the chlorine is high and run your pump 24/7, cleaning your filter as needed. Take a look at the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in my signature below. It shows the correlation between CYA levels and needed chlorine levels.

[beaverplt]

Hi Watermom. I'm assuming that stabilizer levels in the chart and CYA are the same thing? My test kit gives me a chlorine level over 5 ppm. My CYA is probably still low as I only added stabilizer on Saturday. Does that mean my "free chlorine" is low and therefore my chlorine is ineffective?

[PoolDoc]

stabilizer = "conditioner" (mostly in Calif) = cyanuric acid = isocyanuric acid = CYA = "CA" (some kit instructions => C.A., cyanuric acid) = etc.

Why have just one name for a chemical, when you can have a half dozen?

[Watermom]

Did you look at the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in my signature above to understand the CYA (stabilizer) and chlorine connection?

Your kit only has the capacity to measure to a chlorine reading of 5ppm which means you can't really tell what your chlorine is when it reads 5ppm. This is one of the main reasons we want people to order the K2006 as it can measure chlorine levels way higher than that.

Assuming that your CYA is still low since it was just recently added, you need to get your chlorine level up to around 10-12 and try and hold it there in order to kill the algae. Since your kit won't read higher than 5, you kind of just have to judge based on the color. Take a look at the first post in the following thread. If you click on the link in that first post, it will give you a color matching to try and decipher what various OTO colors mean in terms of chlorine levels. (Your kit uses an OTO chlorine test.) Aim to keep yours in the very dark yellow/orange level.

http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthr...sults-by-color

[beaverplt]

Hi again, Yes, I did look over the chlorine chart, and it makes sense. I'm not sure I understand the difference between the two "shock" columns. Looks like I need to get out to buy some more shock. Did I read in another forum that some people use regular unscented chlorine bleach instead of paying for shock? I'm assuming you need to use more due to the smaller amt of active ingredients.
One question I have is about CYA levels is the relationship between CYA levels, total chlorine levels and free chlorine levels. When CYA levels are closer to "normal" is there less of a spread between total and free chlorine levels?
Also, how long does stabilizer levels take to rise after addition to the pool?

P.S. one more name for stabilizer - clarifier.