Re: Pool Help, Please!
a couple of things:
You didn't say but I suspect your 6 way test kit is an HTH (rebranded Taylor) since you said the TA test was supposed to go from green to red and that the hardness test is a total hardness test.
The Orange color of the OTO test indicates a fairly high FC level (definitely above 10 ppm and probably closer to 20 ppm)
The TA test turning from blue to pale yellow instead of green to red is from the high chlorine. One of the indicator dyes was bleached out by the chlorine. The test is still valid if you stop when the test changes from blue to yellow. That puts your TA at about 110 to 120 ppm. It's fine for now.
the high chlorine is bleaching out the calcium test also. The colors are more like pink and pastel blue anyway under the best conditions. Your reagents could also be old. Don't lose sleep over this until you get a new test kit.
pH of 7.2 is problematic if your reagents are not old. The high chlorine levels cause pH tests to read higher than they really are and we know your chlorine is high. I suspect your pH is actually much lower than 7.2, especially if the pool was maintained on trichlor or dichlor.. We can't know for sure until the chlorine level drops to a normal range. As a safeguard I would pour a half box of borax into the skimmer. It will bring the pH up without have much impact on anything else. Test the pH the next day. If the pH still reads 7.2 with the chlorine still reading high I would add another half box. This is more of a safeguard than anything else and if it turns out that the pH was ok and it ends up a bit high it's not a big problem and one that a bit of acid will take care of in a snap!
One final thing. When you get a test kit get the Taylor K-2006 (not the K-2005). It can test chlorine levels up to about 50 ppm with a precision as small as .2 ppm! If you had it now your chlorine would not be "too much chlorine to get a reading".
Retired pool store and commercial pool maintenance guy.
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Originally Posted by Watermom
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