Need instructions on opening a pool

[waterbear]

I already added the baking soda per Janet's instructions. She's never let me down yet. I only added half of what the calculator told me to, just in case. I thought the target alk was 120 because of the post rom our dear Ben on lowering alk.



22,000 vinyl inground Greensboro, NC

that was right on the money!. I think you will find that if you give it 24 hours and retest you will be in the ballpark like I said before

[littleHeidi]

Yay! I think I'm getting the hang of this. I hate that I almost had a handle on it last year and now have forgotten it all. Isn't there a chart somewhere on what the different chems. do? for example:

Borax- raises alk along with pH
Bak Soda- raises JUST the pH
Muriatic Acid- lowers alk and pH etc, etc. Did I get that right?

[waterbear]

Check out the sister website http://www.poolsolutions.com
Lots of info on there. read everthing on it that you can access!

[littleHeidi]

When I got up this morning the pool looked like it had quite a few patches of light foam. I emptied the skimmer basket and backwashed. The water's still too cloudy to see to the bottom. (How long will it take until THAT clears up?) I tested the cl and it's FINALLY high enough to kill of the algae!!! The pH is still a little high too but I'm guessing that's because of the bleach I put in last night. My alk is now at 110!!! YAY!!!! Thankfully, it's supposed to be cloudy today so I don't have to worry too much about the sun eating up all my cl while I'm gone. As soon as we get back, I"m going to test again to see if I need my bleach and keep an eye on the pH. Thanks so much to all of you for helping me!

[littleHeidi]

I've been adding bleach like a fiend when it needs it to keep it at 3. The water is still light green and cloudy. How many more days should I keep this up until it finally clears? Or does that mean there's another problem I should be dealing with? (ie should I add clarifier at this point?)

[waterbear]

if you have algae you need to bring you FC levels up to shock level. Try about 12-15 ppm (I noticed that your CYA was 9 when you posted your numbers. I find that suspect becuase most of the CYA tests on the market don't go below 20 ppm and test strips are not accurate!) and keep it there until the green is gone. You shouldn't need to add anything else at this point other than possibly bringing your pH down if it is still up at 8.2. It should be around 7.4 to 7.6 right now to help kill that algae. Use muriatic acid or pH decreaser (dry acid) to bring it down!
It would be very helpful if you would retest your water and post:
FC (Free Chlorine)
TC (Total Chlorine)
pH
ALK
CH (if applicable)
CYA (stabilizer, conditioner, cyanuric acid)
total gallons in your pool
type of pool (plaster, vinyl, fiberglass)
What type of testing is your pool store doing? From the numbers you posted it looks like they are using one of those computerized colormetric type of tests. (CYA reading of 9 is a bit suspect to me)
GET YOURSELF A DROP BASED TEST KIT AND DO YOUR OWN TESTING!
DON'T USE TEST STRIPS!
(Sorry for shouting but it's important!)
You really need to keep tabs on your water parameters and it's very easy to do. Ben's kit (ps234) is a good value for the money!. There are also good kits from Taylor and other companies, even walmart has a 15 dollar kit that I personally would trust over the numbers your pool store gave you although it will only measure Total chlorine and not Free chlorine. It certainly would be better than nothing until you can get a good test kit.

[littleHeidi]

I AM keep tabs on my water parameters. If you read my first post, you'll see that the only reason I went to the pool store was because I was out of agent for the Stabilizer (CYA) test. (I have some ordered and on the way.) It is the $15 Aqua CHem test from Wal-Mart. (We can't all afford to spend $80 on Ben's test kit, unfortunately.) I tested the pool this morning and added bleach as needed. I just tested it again and here are the results (with what little agent I had left for the CYA.)

pH 7.2
cl 3
alk 110
CYA LOW the dot never disappeared and the tube was full of water.

I'm guessing I'll have to go to the pool store and get something to raise the CYA before this algae will go away? Here's a picture of the shallow end: http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b5...t=IMG_0012.jpg
and of the stairs: http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b5...ent=Stairs.jpg and if you look at the very first picure posted (Hit next) you can see what it looked like last year.