waterbear

Test strips are fine for a quick daily check but do not have the precision needed for water balancing (and you WILL need to balance your water from time to time). Taylor test kits are distributed in Canada by Lowry and Associates in Ontario (905-836-0505).

To make sure the stains don't return add a metal squesterant like Proteam Metal Magic or Jack's Magic to your pool on a regular bais ( weekly to monthly, you have to experiement and see how long you can go without the stains returning). Also keep watch on your pH. High pH will contribute to the stains returning. If you start to see the stains coming back often all you need to do is drop the pH to about 7.0 and add a treatment dose of sequesterant and they will disappear if you catch it just as they are starting to reappear.

you have .5 ppm combined chlorine. This is what you are smelling. Shock with chlorine with the cover off and cirulaton running for about 4 hours. You need to raise your FC level about 10-12 ppm over what it is now to reach breakpoint.

IMHO, the only way to get accurate readings is to get an FAS-DPD test for chlorine such as in the Taylor K-2006 kit or the standalone FAS-DPD test kit from Taylor (if you already have the K-2005), model # K-1515

From what I know there has been some research in biofilm dispersion technology in dealing with wastewater and lakes and ponds and it has shown promise but I can find no information on the use of this technology in hot tubs. My concern is whether the product has been approved by the EPA and from what I have seen on their website it has not. From reading their website it looks like it's just another enzyme type of product and if that IS the case then it is not a primary sanitizer. They really don't provide very much information. Their website does say that the product should be used in conjunction with chlorine, bromine, ozone or UV which also leads me to believe it is simply an enzyme type of product. It also appears that this product is primarily available in the UK and that it is essentially the same as AquaFinesse, which includes chlorine tablets as part of the system.

A few clarifications, I hope you don't mind! I prefer Chlorine but it is a person preference, I do also I have tryed them both. Seems with Bromine my water always smelled of chlorine because the feeder was always adding Bromine continualy and the active ingediant is chorine. The smell is actually bromine which has a stronger smell than chlorine. The active ingredients in a bromine tab are a bromide compound and a chlorine compound (or as an alternative, MPS which is a non chlorine oxidizer.) The chlorine oxidizes the bromide to hypobromous acid, the active bromine sanitizer, and is destroyed in the process. Chlorine does not stay around ina bromine system if there is a 'bromide reserve' in the water created by adding sodium bromide on filling the tub. If you don't do this it is possible for chlorine to exist until enough tablets dissolve to create the bromide reserve. This can take several weeks and until it happens it is possible for chlorine to be in the water. But with chlorine (dichlor) you add it after your soak and be the time you use the tub again the level is so low that there is no smell. For proper sanitation at the elevated temps in tubs the FC should be maintained at 4-6 ppm when you are in the tub. Nasties like pseudomonas grow quickly at hot tub temps! A properly maintained chlorine system will not smell of chlorine. If there is combined chlorine in the water then you will smell a strong chlorine smell and the tub needs to be shocked with chlorine. Also, Dichlor adds .9 ppm cyanuric acid (stabilizer) for every 1 ppm FC it adds. This can quickly lead to overstabilzed water and the chlorine will become ineffective as a sanitizer. For this reason some State health departments have outlawed the use of dichlor in commercial hot tubs and now only allow unstabilized chlorine. HTH has stopped selling dichlor for hot tub use and now only offers cal hypo (one of the unstabilized chlorines) for their chlorine regieme. Bromine also had a tendency to drive down my PH and TA which required constant, or at least more frequent adjustments up. Dichlor also drives down my PH and TA but at a much slower rate. Using MPS (non chlorine shock) also drives down pH and TA. Everyones results will vary though so try them both and see which works best for you. They both work fine with an Ozonator but never rely on the unproven sanitation effects of an ozonator. Use it as a supplement to a good sanitation routine. I agree completely, Ozone is a supplimentary sanitizer and requires a proper bromine or chlorine residual in the water.

I would have to guess that you have combined chlorine in the water and need to shock wit chlorine. If the tub is outdoors I see no advantage to shocking with MPS. MPS will NOT break down combined chlorine. It works by oxidizing organics before they combine with the chlorine but only if a residual level of MPS is kept in the water by using it on a regular basis. If you could post a set of test results that would be helpful.

a floating fountain is a very effective aerator. Why do you only want to raise the pH to 7.2? If you are using a non stabilized chlorine source you will have less acid usage if you lower the TA to about 80 ppm and raise pH to 7.6 . If you are using a stabilized chlorine source you are, in effect, always adding acid since the pH of both trichlor and dichlor is acidic so you wantot run a higher TA (100-120 ppm) and keep the pH at 7.4-7..6 so it doesn't go too low. The only way to know how long it will take in your pool is to start aerating and test your pH every few hours. Every pool is different and a lot will depend on just how well the fountain aerates the water. This is dependant on the water pressure through the fountain to a degree.

1- Is Lithium Di Chlor? If not which is easier to maintain Bromine or Lithium? No, it is lithium hypochlroite, an unstablized chlorine. It is really no different from using Sodium Hypochlorite (liquid chlorine or bleach) in terms of water chemisitry. it IS the most expensive form of chlorine you can buy! That is the main reason why it is not used as often as other forms of chlorine. Calcium hypochlorite is the other unstabilized chlorine and it will increase calcium hardness. Too high a calcium hardness can lead to scaling in your tub. Dichlor is stabilized clorine, the problem with it is that it increases the stabilizer (cyanuric acid) level in the water very quickly and the water becomes overstabilized and the chlorine becomes ineffective at santizing. When this happens it is very possible and probable for pseudomonos (which causes "hot tub itch") and other nasties to grow in the water even if the chlorine levels are high! This is the reason that some State health departments have outlawed stabilized chlorine in hot tubs. IMHO, a small amount of stabilizer is needed in a chlorine system if it is exposed to sunlight or the chlorine will burn off in about half an hour of direct sun. Lithium is just one of the options for running a chlorine system. It is a fine, but very expensive choice. Chlorine needs daily attention to maintain but it's really not a lot of work. Bromine is more forgiving of a few days neglect when set up properly (that is the big IF...many bromine systems are NOT set up properly and just depend on tabs in a floater. It takes more than tabs in a floater to do a bromine system) 2- The Taylor K-2106 kit I have reading about is only for Bromine set ups correct? K-2106 is for bromine, K-2006 is for chlorine. 3- Can someone provide a definitive Pro and Con for Bromine and Lithium? Chlorine is simpler to set up and will require fewer chemicals to maintain water balance if you are using an unstabilized chlorine. It will require daily testing and addition of chlorine to maintain the required FC residual in the water. It will require weekly shocking of the tub to keep combined chlorine under control (combined chlorine is chlorine that has reacted with ammonia and organics in the water from the bathers. It smells like chlorine and burns the eyes and is not an effective sanitizer) . A properly maintained chlorine system does not smell like chlorine and is gentle on the skin. Very few people have a chemical sensitivity to chlorine. Bromine is a bit more complicated to set up properly and requires more attention to water balance (it eats up total alkainity faster than unstabilized chlorine) but it is more forgiving of many water balance issues and can be neglected for a week without major problems occurring (but this is not really recommended!) It has a harsh smell (chemical or caustic is how it is often described) and is a known sensitizer that many people have an allergic reaction to. If you are willing to devote 5 minutes a day to testing and water maintenance then I would say go with chlorine. If you are not, try bromine. If you have an ozonator then you should know that ozone will deplete chlorine but will activate bromine. However ozone can cause bromates to form in a bromine system. Bromates are a suspected carcinogen in drinking water. Ozone can be used successfully with either system but you will have to watch your sanitizer levels closely until you get everything adjusted properly.

to properly aerate the pool it will need to be uncovered, otherwise the concentration of CO2 under the cover at the air/water interface will cause it to redissolve in the water.

two observations: First on calcium hardness. One of the overlooked aspects of calcium hardness in a hot tub is to help prevent foaming. Soft water will have more of a tendency to foam than hard water will. I personally feel the calcium hardness in an acrylic tub should be at least 150 ppm for this reason. Second on the quote function. It hasn't worked since the board software was upgraded. I wish they would turn it back on as it made answering long posts much easier!

Your salt level is fine. Aquarite won't shut off until it' hits about 4500 ppm. Don't lose any sleep over it. Your free clorine is above 20 ppm but do you have any CC? if you do you are not finished. Also, the FC has to do more than just stay high. It has to stay withing 1 or 2 ppm overnight. If it had dropped more than that you are not done. A drop of 5 ppm is a big drop but some it could be from sunlight. That is why you want to test the chlorine when the sun goes down and again in the morning. If therre is more than a 1 or 2 ppm chlorine loss you know it is not from the sun. Was your metal problem copper or iron. Blue stuff is for copper.

Chlorbrite is dichlor. It will keep adding CYA to your pool as long as you use it! For each 1 ppm of FC it adds it is also adding .9 ppm CYA! You need to switch to an unstabilized chlorine right now! Based on the fact that your calcium is high I would use either liquid chlorine or the expensive lithium hypochlorite.

might be better to pour the chlorine into the skimmer so if any staining occurs it will be in your filter and not in the pool. You can add the seqesterant at any time. In my area Metal Magic is less expensive than Jacks Magic so it's what I use. They both work well (as do several other ones on the market)

The green color is form the metals that you initially treated with the stain treatment. They are now in solution in a reduced (colorless and soluable) state and when hit with high chlorine levels they oxidized and became colored again. You never did say if you were treating iron or copper. Iron usually makes a yellow to brown color to the water but if the pool is blue then it will look green. You need to add sequesterant (NOT an EDTA based one but an HEDP based one like Metal Magic or Jack's Magic). There really issn't any difference between the walmart bleach and the Chlorox except that chlorox has soidum polyacrylate added which is actually a clarifer that helps dirt from redepositing back on clothes in the wash. If you can smell chlorine then you don't have enough! Keep testing and adding bleach or liquid chlorine to maintain the FC level at 20 ppm. Hit the pool with some seqesterant and that should get rid of the color from the metals. Just keep up the chlorine until your FC is holding. If any stains come back we will deal with them later but get some more sequesterant in the water to take care of any metals that are in it now. I am not surprices that your FC is only about 6-9 ppm. the excess ascorbic acid has created a hugh chlorine demand and until it is oxidized your chlorine will NOT hold! Keep shocking! Let us know when the FC is holding and the CC is dropping. It might take a few days but stop worrying over everything and just do it. Don't worry about pH or TA or CH or CYA right now....Just your chlorine!!!!!!!!!!! Don't even bother testing them right now, it's a waste of time!

Sounda like the polyquat did the trick. Now start chlorinating to shock level like we talked about and testing until there is NO CC and the FC is holding. It will be easier now since you have killed off a lot of the algae with the polyquat! If there is algae on the waterfall I would turn it on now and let the polyquat and the chlorinated water fall over it....Most solar heaters cannot take the high levels of chlorine but if there is any algae in them it should be taken care of once you get everything operational...Don't worry too much about that now. Just get the pool (and waterfall) clean first. AS far as cleaning your filter, do NOT use a pressure washer even with the low pressure hose. You run the risk of damagine the cart and if you have priced the replacements for yours you will see that you don't want to do that!!!!! As far as diluting and spraying on a proprietary cleaner, you need to consult the manufacturer's dirctions for that. Most of them have you spray it on full strength or dilute to soak. If you are using automatic dishwasher detergent then you can't spary it on....you need to soak it in something big enough to hold it submerged. Soaking only needs to be done once or twice a year, btw.(Or after cleaning up a bad algae outbreak)

Pool is clear. I'll come home for lunch with armfulls of bleach In your pic the pool is green and not clear. Did the polyquat kill all the algae already? If it did the pool should look milky. Your desriptions can be a bit confusing at times. The pool store guy says that because I have a salt system, my TC = FC. This is clearly not the case. Why would he say that? Ingnorance and not really understanding how a SWG works. He is partially right. Most pools with SWGs very rarely exhibit any CC but it can happen and when it does you need to shock just like with any other pool that uses chlorine. The best way to schock is with bleach because that way the chlorine level is quickly raised instead of over a 24 hour period. This creates less undesireable byproducts than when the clorone level slowly rises. Also, it does not wear out your salt cell as quickly (and they are EXPENSIVE to replace!) Educate your pool store guy. Tell him that while it is true that pools with SWGs rarely need shocking it can happen that they do because they are simply being chlorinated with sodium hypochlorite, which is liquid chlorine or bleach! Tell him this is why most SWGs have superchlornate or boost functions but it's better to shock with liquid chlorine or bleach to preserve cell life. Do this nicely and he might offer you a job! (How do you think I got started in this business! ) (just joking! your pool has been intense....gotta lighten up a bit!) I read what you posted about cleaning the filter (granted, this is in the distant future, at this point). I have cartridge filters. The thin one is half as tall as me. The bigger one is 3 times as round as me. How do I soak that in Cascade? I don't have a container big enough to immerse the filters. Sounds like you have a StaRite System 2 or System 3 modular media system. According to Starite you hose them off and soak them when needed or use a propriatary cleaner just like with any other cartridge! If you have a system 3 you will need help lifting the larger cart out since it's very heavy when wet. As far as finding something to soak it in you need to be creative. My Pentiar Clean and Cleanr 150 has a cart that is over 4 ft tall but I was able to find a rubbermaid storage bin that it will lay in sideways and I use that for soaking. If you can only find a container big enough to soak half the filter at at time soak one half overnight then turn it over and soak the other half. It will take you twice as long to soak this way but you can get the job done. It's also a good idea to have a second cart or set of carts and swap them each time you clean. (With the StaRites this is an EXPENSIVE proposition!) I have trouble with just my spa filter. If I put it in the sink, I use half a bottle of cartridge cleaner. If I put it in a bucket, I can only clean half at a time. Also, how is using pool store cartridge cleaner different, better, and worse than using Cascade and Muratic acid to clean the filters? Proprietary cleaners are much more expensive to use (most carts will requires several bottles unless you have a REALLY small cart or a spa cart) and not really any more effective than using cascade for degreasing and then following it with a dilute muriatic acid soak if there is scale present. Their advantage is that they can often do this two step process in one step! You still need to soak the cart if it is really dirty!

Most hardware stores and some supemartkets carry water softener salt. It comes in pellets and in crystal form. The crystal form is either solar or rock. You don't want rock becuase it has too many inmpurities. Both Morton and Diamond Crystal have solar salt. The pellets are fine but the solar will dissolve faster.

Since your CYA is testing at 19 ppm (I assume that is what CYD means, never saw that one before!) you should stop using the dichlor and switch to an unstabilized chlorine. Since your calcium hardness is so low cal hypo would be a good choice. HTH chlorine spa sanitizer and HTH chlorine spa shock are both cal hypo. You could also use liquid chorine or bleach (both sodium hypochlorite), or lithium hypochorite (very expensive!) instead but if you did I would add some calcium chloride to raise the calcium levels to about 125 ppm. Sounds like this tester is the LaMotte ColorQ. It just came out. Don't know too much about it but Lamotte chemistries are good and dependable! It's the only other company besides Taylor that I would recommend.

The salt is $9 per 40lbs. I recall morton water softener salt at Home Depot used to be around $5 a bag, assuming it is 99.5% pure. The solar salt is 99.5%, the pellets are 99.8%. solar will dissovle faster The shock is Cal Hypo, so I can't use that. It was $4 per lb. I'll get a case of ultra clorox at BJs tonight. I think the pool store guy told me he prefers Proteam's Metal Magic, but it is not phophate free. Like I said phosphates are a non issue! Metal Magic is actually my first choice for sequesterants but there are many good ones out there. The kit is bought is the K-2005 ($46). You will have to do dilutions to test for the high clorine levels. get a jug of distilled water from the grocery and follow the dilution directions on the lid of your kit at the bottom of the chlorine (yellow) section. So my plan is: tonight (thurs): 1. Test FC, TC, PH, ALK, CA, and CYA 2. add 100lbs of salt (directly into the deep end) Just dump it in the pool and brush it. It will dissovle pretty fast. It might trigger a high salt warning in the SWG. Just reset the genterator and you will be fine or shut it off until the salt is all dissolved--about 24 hours with the pump running. 3. add 3lbs of CYA (mixed in water and poured into the skimmer) If your pool is 15k and your cya is between 45-50 this should get you where you need to be 4. add polyquat 60 @ 16oz per 10k gals for 24oz. total Run filter 24 hours - run aquarite 100% - cover pool (automatic coverstar cover) - waterfalls off leave the pool uncovered and add your bleach after about 12 hours of filtering. this will give the polyquat 60 time to work. no reason to try and shock with the SWG. It won't be able to keep up with the chlorine demand and you will just raise your CC levels and destroy the polyquat you just put in! Either turn off the SWG or run it at it's normal setting. Test and add bleach 2 or 3 times a day to maintain the FC at 20 ppm. Tomorrow night (fri) 1. Test FC, TC, PH don't worry about pH now....just your chlorine levels! 2. Add 4 gal (5.3 96oz bottles) of Clorox Ultra to the skimmer . . . slowly see above Run filter 24 hours - run aquarite 100% - cover pool (automatic coverstar cover) - waterfalls off see above, you are making this harder than it really is. all you need to worry about for now is your FC levels and keeping them at 20 ppm by adding bleach or liquid chlorine until your FC is holding overnight and there is no CC! Sat AM: 1. Test FC, TC, PH 2. Adjust PH 3. Add Chlorine to bring to 20 FC do NOT try and adjust pH until FC levels are lower than 20 ppm. Don't worry about that now at all! repeat 2x per day until FC holds over 12 hours Until it holds overnight when you know chlorine loss is NOT from sulight. a minimum would be 2 times a day. The idea is to keep your chlorine as constant as possible at 20 ppm. It will be consumed very quickly by the ascorbic acid and the algae so put some in, test a few hours later, and add more as needed. If your pool store sells 12.5% liquid dosing is easy. every pint will raise your pool approx. 1 ppm (not exact but close enough for government work!) Sun PM: 1. Test FC, TC, PH, ALK, CA, and CYA Until your FC is holding and your chlorine levels drop do not worry about testing for anything else! CYA will take a week to fully dissolve so don't even bother testing for it until a week has passed since you added it! 2. Adjust CYA to 80ppm if necessary You should do this immediately on the first day you start this! After FC holds at 20ppm over 12 hours, open cover, balance PH, turn off aquarite, run filter on normal schedule and allow FC to drop to 4ppm. Once your FC is holding overnight and there is no CC then stop adding liquid and let the chlorine levels drop. Keep the pool uncovered the whole time because part of what destroys the CC is the UV in sunlight and the gassing off of some of the TMHs that form. Once you need to drop the FC you can turn on your aeration (waterfall). It will help. Does this sound right to you? What I would do is put in the salt, CYA, and the polyquat right away. run pump for 12 hours and then start hammering away at it with the liquid chlorine. test and add chlorine as many times a day as you possibly can to keep the chlorine levels from yo-yoing up and down, which they will at first! You will see your CC go high and then start to come down as the FC begins to hold. either turn off the SWG or leave it at it's normal setting. If you want to shorten cell life by running it in boost mode (100%) you can, it might help keep the FC levels up but really isn't necessary unless you really can't be there to test and add chlorine. Once you have taken care of the chlorine demand, your chlorine levels have dropped below 10 ppm and you have no CC your can then test your other water parameters. If any staining has reappeared drop your pH to 7.0 with muriatic acid and add Metal Magic (treatment dose, not maintenance dose) and filter for 24 hours....pool might cloud but it will clear and the stains should diminish.

FYI, I also work in a pool and spa supply store. I would be more interested in your tests results from your taylor kit (I assume it's the K-2005?) since I DO know how many pool stores test and how inexerpienced many of the testers are! Is your store using strips with or without a strip reader, liqiud reagent tests, or powdered reagetns in vials that might or might not be read with a colormeter? If it is the first forget their results and trust your own. If either of the second your results should be pretty close to theirs if they are doing the tests correctly, which is not always the case! Based on their test results your CYA is too low for a SWG. Goldline recommends 60-80 ppm and this level works very well. I have my own pool (Goldline Aqualogic PS-8) at 70 ppm. 2 40 lb bags of salt would get you to just over 3100 ppm which is still a bit low. It's bette to run the salt slightly higher than lower. It extends cell life. I would put in 2 1/2 40 lb bags! this will bring you to about 3300 ppm. This is all based on your 15000 gallonage being accurate! As far as the salt goes you DO NOT NEED TO BUY POOL SALT!. Get water softener solar salt or pellets that is at least 99.5% pure and does not have any additives to clean the softener tank or remove iron. It will cost about half as much as pool salt and is not any different except for the size of the crystals. (If you don't believe me just look in your goldline manual or check their website!) I am sure they are recommending that you use powdered shock. It is much higher proft than liquid chlorine! (Do they even sell liquid? Many pool stores don't!) With your Calcium at 360 ppm I would be hesitant to use cal hypo (the most common form of powdered shock) since it will raise your calcium levels and they are arready at the high end of what is acceptable for a SWG. If they get much higher you will have a major problem with scale fouling your salt cell and will be cleaning it often! If they are recommending Dichlor you want to run and not walk from them. Dichlor adds a LOT of CYA with every use. For every 1 ppm FC it adds it will also add .9 ppm CYA! If they are suggesting lithium hypochorite, well there is nothing wrong with this except for the price. it is THE most EXPENSIVE form of chlorine that you can use and the only advantage it has over liquid or bleach is that it is a fast dissolving powder that is a bit more convenient becuase it's a powder. YOU DON"T NEED PHOSFREE!!!!!!!! Even if your orthophosphate levels are over 3000ppb it is unlikely that it will lead to algae blooms if you maintain a proper FC in the 3-5 ppm range! Lanthemum based phosphate removers do have a place but are not needed that often!!!!!!!!!(this is a subject for another thread). Sounds like you have been 'pool stored' into buying stuff you really don't need! MetalFree is an EDTA based seqesterant. I have found that they don't work as well as the HEDP based ones like Jack's Magic or Proteam's Metal Magic. I find that I have to dose them a bit more often then what they recommend to keep the stains away while the HEDP based ones I can often dose once a month and they still work. Don't believe the hype about about phosphates from metal sequesterants. I have many pools with orthophosphates that are considered too high (My own pool has orthophophate readings above 3000 ppb!) and none of them have turned green because of it! There are some instances where a phosphate remover can be of value but they are not needed in the vast majority of pools! I have already told you what I think in the previous post. Until you both oxidize the excess ascorbic acid and kill the algae you will not be able to hold chlorine in your pool! Also, your CYA is low for a SWG. Get it up to arond 70 ppm or 80 ppm! You are not going to fix this problem overnight but it is fixable. I can tell you exactly what caused it. You overdosed on the stain treatment (I assume the ascorbic acid you used was StainFree since you also bought Metal Free, if your pool is really only 15k then you only needed 24 ox of MetalFree and not the whole quart! Overdosing in this case is not that critical and sometimes sequesterants need to be overdosed by 2 or 3 times if metal levels are high or staining is severe. You can buy ascorbic acid powder over the net for a LOT less money than the StainFree costs next time you need it! You don't need food grade for the pool and I have seen it go for about $10/lb !). Hope this info is helpful to you. I was watching this thread for a while but until you said you had put 4 lbs of ascorbic acid into a 15K pool I was as puzzled as chemgeek as to why your FC would not hold!

What kind of digital tester? Some are more accurate than others. Does it use strips or does it use liquid or tablet reagents? The strip readers are NOT nearly as good as the coloremters. I assume you are using chorine and not bromine in your spa so a CYA reading of 19 is about as high as you want to go. Calcium hardness is a bit low (I assume you have an acrylic spa with an electric heater.) Personally, I feel CH should be above about 125 ppm. This will help prevent foaming. What are all these other 'perfect' readings? With your CYA at about 20 ppm you should have your FC in the 5- 10 ppm range. TA depends on they source of your chlorine. If you are using an acidic stabilized chlorine (dichlor) you need to run your TA higher than if you are using a non stabilized pH neutal chlorine (cal hypo, lithium hypochlorite, sodium hypochlorite--liquid chlorine or bleach). Even though all these unstablilized chlorines have a high pH the reaction that occurs when the chlorine sanitizes and is converted to chloride ions is acidic so the net effect of using one of these is fairly pH neutral! IF you post the full set of test results we can see better what is going on since many of the readings are dependant on where another reading is (FC/CYA, TA/CH/pH)

OK, understand what the problem is....you have a few things going on. First Ascorbic acid will create a HUGE chlorine demand until it is all oxidized by the clorine. You overdosed on it big time! the usual dosage is 1 lb per 10000 gallons so you only needed 1.5 lbs for your pool! Second, your salt level is very low. The readout on the AquaRite is not a salt meter but a conductivity meter that approximates your salt level. The strips are a chemical test and will be much more accurate. You need salt. The recommened level is 3200 ppm but I like to run it slightly higher, around 3400 ppm because it puts less stress on the salt cell. I assume you have a Taylor K-2005 test kit? Post a full set of results so we can take it from here. To address your problem you need to do a few things and have some patience! First, get your salt level up. You need to add 100 lbs. This should raise you 800 ppm to about 3300 ppm. Next you need to get your CYA up about 20 ppm. 2 lbs should bring you up about 17 ppm which is close enough for government work. Do NOT clean the filter for a week after adding it or you will lose some of it! Next, you need to take care of the algae from the low chlorine condition. Get some polyquat 60 algaecide. Do NOT use anything but polyquat 60! Look for the ingredient poly[oxyethylene(dimethyliminio)ethylene-(dimethyliminio)ethylene dichloride] on the bottle and you have the right thing. Dose according to bottle directions and run the pump for 24 hours after adding. About 12-24 hours after adding the poly quat we can start attacking the chlorine demand that you have! You are going to need bleach and a lot of it! (you can also use 12.5% chlorine from the pool store if you prefer. You will need less of it since it is the same things as bleach but more concentrated). You want to add enough bleach or liquid chlorine directly into your skimmer 2 or three times a day to raise the pool to shock level (20 ppm) until your FC is holding overnight and the pool is clear. (You want to pour it slowly into the skimmer because this way it lessens the possibility that any staining will reappear in your pool but will more likely stain the filter, which is what you want. At first the ascorbic acid and the algae will be eating the chlorine but it will finally start to hold. Your SWG just can't keep up with it even in superchlorinate and it's better to use bleach or liquid chlorine for shocking anyway because it doesn't wear out your salt cell as fast and it's more effective since the chlorine is added all at once instead of slowly rising. Your cell is creating exactly the same thing as liquid chlorine or bleach anyway. If you did a stain treatment I assume you added metal sequestant to the water. If you did not add a double dose now or the stains will return. Normally, it's a good idea not to shock for 2 weeks after a stain treatment but you overdosed on the ascorbic acid and it's more important right now to get your chlorine demand in line. If the stains start to return just drop your pH to 7.0 and add more sequesterant! For your 15000 gallon pool you need to add 4 gallons of Ultra bleach (6%) or 5 3/4 gallons of regular bleach (5.25%) or 2 gallons and 1.5 qts. of liquid chlorine (12.5)%. This is the right amount to raise your pool 20 ppm. It will take a lot of bleach and a bit of time to destroy all the excess ascorbic acid in your pool! Keep at it. Test your water 2 or three times a day and add more bleach to maintain the FC at 20 ppm. (with your taylor kit you can use the dilution method to test higher FC and TC levels. It's on the lid of your kit at the bottom of the chlorine test section. Use the 1.8 ml dilution ) You will have a LOT of combined clorine at first, just keep tabs on the FC. Test the pool in the evening after adding the chlorine and again in the morning and when the FC is holding overnight (no more than a 1 or 2 ppm drop) , there is no Combined Chlorine, and the pool is clear (or possibly milky looking from dead algae). you can start to let your clorine levels drop to normal. It might take a week for your filter to clear all the dead algae. Once the CYA you added has had a week to dissolve it's ok to start cleaning the filter again unless the pressure has risen too high. Then clean it and worry about the CYA after you finish. I suspect that enough of the CYA will dissolve before you need to clean the filter that it will get you into the correct range. Don't worry about your pH or other water parameter right now. Just kill the algae and satisfy the chlorine demand! Once you have finsihed and your chlorine levels are back to normal then you can procede to fine tune your other water parameters! If there is any metal staining in the filter you can remove it by using an acid filter cleaner if you have a sand filter, or (if you have a cartridge filter) by soaking the filter overnight in a solution of 1 cup automatic dishwasher detergent powder such as Cascase or Electorsol to every 5 cups water, rinsing, and then soaking the cart for about 20-30 minutes in a solution of 1 part muriatic acid to every 20 parts water and rinse again. DO NOT acid wash a cart before soaking in a degreaser (the automatic dishwasher degergent powder) because you will ruin it! The oils and organics will harden into a cement like mass! If you have a DE filter just break the filter down and clean it and recharge with DE. Hope this helps! Forgot one thing. You are going to need the biggest bottle of POP (Pool Owner Patinece) you can find. Apply it liberally to yourself several times a day!

"FC 2 (or maybe 3 if I let it sit for a couple of min - not sure how to use 0001 and 0002 . . . do I read immediately or wait?)" Read it immediately after mixing to get your Free Chlorine. Then add the R-0003, cap and mix and read immedaitely to get the Total Chlorine. (does anyone else have problems with quoting replies since the software was upgraded? It won't let me post if I quote.)

quick test to do. Hold an ordinary vitamin c tablet on the staining. If it disappears in a matter of about 30 seconds it's iron and easy to treat with ascorbic acid and metal sequesterant. Post your results of the vitamin c test and we can take it from there. High pH and high santizer is what usually causes staining to appear and you did say you added pH increaser. Did you also shock the pool?