Quote Originally Posted by DM
How often should I do the water test?
Where do I find the charts to understand the numbers I get after testing?
Hi Denise,

How often you do the test is up to you. The OTO test is quick and easy so I would suggest you do that every day or every other day depending on how it fits into your schedule. Because you will have to run with higher chlorine (due to the high CYA) the OTO kit has a maximum reading of 5 ppm so you will have to do the dilution method to make it work - mix one part pool water with one part distilled water, test, and multiply the result by 2. (If that isn't enough you can do two parts distilled water and one part pool water and divide the result by 3.) You can do the other tests once a week or after a lot of people have been in the pool to check for CC. The alk and calcium shouldn't change that much so you might only do those once a month. If you are using pucks or other chlorine with CYA, then I would check the CYA every couple of weeks.

Other than the partial drain and refill, there is no good solution for lowering the CYA. There is a chemical out there that is supposed to lower CYA but I think the cost vs. performance was pretty poor. Over the winter it may get consumed by stuff that develops in the pool but if you can't do anything about it now, it shouldn't be a problem as long as you keep your chlorine where it needs to be.

This thread from the testing section has some guidelines for the things you are testing for and Ben;s best guess chart should give you the chlorine numbers you need.

http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=1113

Peter