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waterbear

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Everything posted by waterbear

  1. If you are going to use chlorine this is what you will need: A Taylor K-2006 test kit dichlor (use initially for the first shock and the first 2 times to a week then stop. This will bring your CYA levels up a bit. You don't want the CYA above 30 ppm. 20 ppm is probably better but is next to impossibe to test that low a level) Liquid bleach (your main source of chorine after the first week of dichlor) Baking soda (to increase total alkalinity--this is exactly the same thing your dealer sells you as total alkalinity increaser) Sodium bisulfate (dry acid, pH decreaser--this is what you use to lower pH when too high) Borax (the 20 mule team stuff in the green box in the laundry aisle in the grocery store. This is sodium tetraborate and is used to raise your pH without affecting your total alkalinity. It works much better at this than the soda ash that is commonly sold as pH increaser. It is used in spas in a concentration of 30-50 ppm as a water 'enchancer' under such trade names as Proteam's Gentle Spa, btw! When used in this way it acts as an algaestat and pH buffer.) For a 350 gal spa one cup of regular or ultra bleach will get you into shock level and 3 oz (6 tablesppons) wil raise your FC by about 4 ppm. Test your levels after adding and that way you can make any adjustments to your dosing. The amounts I am giving your are ballpark (but faily close). Testing is the key to figure out how much to use for your spa. I would recommend testing daily for the first few weeks until you learn how much and how ofthen you need to add chlorine to maintain a 3-6 ppm range. Your shock level should be about 10.12 ppm. Don't go back into the spa until the chlorine had dropped below 10 ppm after shocking. Bromine is a bit different. For bromine you don't need the dichlor and the test kit you want will be a Taylor K-2106. You will also need sodium bromide added to the water on each refill (so your shock can produce the bromine sanitizer) and might want to use bromine tabs in a floater to help maintain the levels. Tabs by themselves are too slow dissolving to maintain a bromine sanitizer level at first which is why the sodium bromide is necessary. Bleach is also your best shock. The chlorine is converted into the active bromine sanitizer, hypobromous acid. In fact, bromine tabs contain chlorine as part of their makeup for this reason! If you don't want to use bleach you can use MPS (non chlorine shock) to do the same but it is more expensive and adds sulfates to the water and causes the pH to drop. In either case you should drain and refill about every 3-4 months.
  2. If you acid wash a filter before you remove the organics from it you will cause them to harden into a cement like substance and that will effectively ruin the filter. Real TSP (which is not available in many states such as Florida because of the phosphate ban) or automatic dishwasher detergent (which is mostly TSP--they haven't found a good substitute for it in this application) is the best thing to soak them in to remove organics. 1 cup of REAL TSP or automatic dishwasher detergent like Cascade or Electrosol to every 5 gallons of water and soak overnight. If there are any calcium deposits after soaking then you can acid wash to remove them but acid washing tends to shorten the life of the polyester material that most carts are made of. Unicel, which is one of the largest manufacturers of OEM and replacement filters recommends this on their website. This only applies if you are using chlorine or bromine. If you are using biguanide (Baqua, SoftSoak, Revacil, etc.) then you need to use one of the proprietary cleaners compatible with this sanitizer.
  3. Some clarification on the misinformation above: Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate----this is used to raise total alkalinity NOT pH! While it is true that it will cause a temporary increase in pH when added it does so by raising the total alkalinity! 8 oz of baking soda in a 500 gallon spa will raise your total alkalinity about 80 ppm!!!!!!!! Soda ash is sodium carbonate, also known as washing soda found in the laundry aise of your grocery store. This will raise pH but will also raise total alkalinity. THIS IS NOT THE SAME CHEMICAL AS BAKING SODA! Borax (sodium tetraborate), also found in the laundry aisle of your grocery store, will raise pH with minimal effect on total alkalinity and if you maintan a 30-50 ppm borate level in the water will also act as an algaestat and will reduce sanitizer demand. This is the indredient in such products as Proteam's Supreme and Gentle Spa and in Bioguard's Optimzer. White vinegar is a 5% solution of acetic acid. It is what is known chemically as a 'weak acid' and is not effective at lowering the pH of your spa! To do so you need a chemically 'strong acid' such as sodium bisulfate (forms sulfuric acid when dissolved) or muriatic acid (very difficult to dose in the small amount of water used in a spa.) Sodium bisulfate would be my first choice. It is what is commonly called "Dry Acid, pH increaser, pH Plus, etc. (Weak acids vs. strong acids have to do with what is known as the dissociation of the acid in water. Acids are simply substances that contribute hydrogen ions. Strong acids do this very well. Weak acids do not.)
  4. When you filled your tub did you add sodium bromide to the water? If you didn't and you are relying on only the tablets in the foater then you don't have a bromine system...at least not yet. 'The tablets are slow dissolving and it can literally take weeks before they dissolve enough to establish a bromine reserve in the water. In the meantime what your strips are measureing are the chlorine/mps in your water and ozone will deplete these. If you have added the sodium bromide then I would suggest just openeing the floater bit by bit until you are maintaining the level of bromine you want (I like 4-6 ppm). Every time you add shock to the water you will be raising your brormine levels very high....that is what shock does! Adjust the floater without adding more shock. Give the water some time to adjust...wait at least 24 hours before retesting. If you can find it get the biggest bottle of "New Spa owner Patience in a Bottle" that you can find and apply it liberally to yourself! As far as the ALK goes....stop trying to test and ajust it with strips, let them 'fly into the garbage'...it's the best place for them, IMHO...Invest in a decent drop based kit and you will find that a lot of your water testing problems will disappear. For bromine I recommend the Taylor K-2106 FAS-DPD complete.. It has every test you need. As far as the price... You just spent literally thousands on your spa...is $60-$75 really a lot to spend on a GOOD test kit? You will find that your ALK (and pH) will most likely be going down in the spa because of the acidic nature of the bromine tabs, MPS shock if you are using it, and the body oils and secretions from your bather load. Just a fact of life. You will soon learn how to adjust it. BTW, alkalinity increaser is sodium bicarbonate...I don't care who's brand it is...it's stll just sodium bicarbonate....I don't care if the label says it's sodium hydrogen carbonate, that is just another name for sodium bicarbonate....Sodium bicarbonate can be found in any grocery store under the name of BAKING SODA (and usually in a purer form!) Also, chlorine is, IMHO, the best shock for a bromine pool and the best form to use is liquid. I won't go into all the technical reasons for time and space considerations but the easiest source of liquid chlorine for shocking is plain, unscented laundry bleach. 3/4 cup of ultra (6%) or 1 cup of regular (5.25%) is more than enougth to shock a 300 gal spa on bromine...You should only need to shock about once a week, perhaps a bit less with your ozonator!
  5. actually, the other 90% is just water and salt and bit bit of sodium hydroxide left over from the manufacture of the sodium hypochlorite (which helps keep the chlorine from gassing off), exaxtly the same as pool chlorine except for the conentration. When you say that Dichlor is 60 to 80 per cent chlorine (it's actually 56%) that is the free available chlorine. Each measure of dichlor you use is actually about 1/2 CYA (the 'buffer' you speak of) by weight. CYA (cyanuric acid) is by no mean innocuous, as the level increases in the water the sanitizing ablility of the chlorine goes down since it combines with the chlorine to form chlorinated isocyanurates. In fact, several states public health departments are now saying that dichlor should NOT be used in spas at all but only unstabilized chlorine be used. This would be calcium hypochlorite (cal hypo--will raise pH and calcium hardness--this can lead to scale formation), lithium hypochlorite (expen$ive to use), or sodium hypochlorite (liquid chlorine or bleach). As far as the dosing of bleach vs. dichlor---for a 250 gallon spa 1 tablespoon of ultra (6%) bleach or 1/2 teaspoon of dichlor will raise the water about 1 ppm so your average dose for your average 300 gal spa would be just undert 1//4 cup bleach or 2 teaspoons dichlor. With continused use the dichlor will become a less effective sanitizer due to the build up of CYA in the water. If the spa is exposed to sunlight then, IMHO, a level of maybe 20 ppm CYA would be ideal so I would use dichlor for santizing until I reached that level (the lowest level that can be tested with a melamine precipitation test for CYA) and then switch to bleach. I would use only bleach for shocking since using stabiilized chlorine for shocking is not a good idea in either a pool or a spa for the abovementioned problem of CYA buildup in the water! To effectively shock our 'average 300 gallon spa' with bleach we would need between 3/4 and 1 cup of ultra (6%) or 1 to 1 1/4 cup of regular (5.25%) bleach. If you want to use 'pool store 12.5% liquid chlorine' then just use half of the ultra beach dosages. It's really the most ecomonical way to chlorinate and it has the lease impact on pH and total alkalinity. Dichlor is mildly acidic and will cause pH and TA to drop by increasing the outgassing of carbon dioxide from the water. Outgassing of CO2 is always a problem in spas because of the aeration from the jets and bubblers. Hope this clears up some misconceptions.
  6. In a bromine system you do not worry about bromamines since they are considered to be effective sanitizers (unlike chloramines). Also, unless there is NOT a 30 ppm level of bromide in the water (which is easily achieved in a bromine system by ALWAYS adding the sodium bromide on each refill) then any chlorine added will convert to bromine sanitizer and if any bromamines form it's not a big deal. In fact, in a bromine system the Taylor FAS-DPD test for bromine (such as in the Taylor K-2105 kit) and all other test kits I have ever seen, including strips, only tests for TOTAL bromine for this reason. Bottom line, although chlorine and bromine are similar in some ways there are major differences in how the two systems are used and tested (and what is a major problem with one [chloramines] becomes moot in the other[bromamines]). Also, bromine is a known sensitizer and does commonly cause a rash in some people. (What else is in the product that 'contains MPS' that you are allergic to? Are you sure you are not allergic to the bromine itself?) You can try using only chlorine for "shocking" on your next refill to see if it eliminates the problem. That way you know if your rash is caused by the MPS or the bromine! IF it's from the bromine then I would suggest switching to chlorine for sanitizing. I would use biguanide only as a last resort as my choice of sanitizer if there were also problems with chlorine.
  7. And correct information speaks louder than misinformation. You might not feel the need to 'right a water chemistry master piece' (sic) but it might be useful to at least write the correct terms and make some attempt to find a spelling that is close to the proper English so people can understand what you are talking about. You might have some valuable into to impart but your credibility is destroyed by using made up words or throwing out terms in the wrong context. Also, your reference to TDS causing a salt cell to foul with calcium is not quite the case. First, ALL salt pools will have an extremely high TDS because of the amount of salt dissolved in the water and, second, it is a high calcium hardness combined with allowing the pH to rise by not montoring pH and keeping it in line that will cause the cell to foul. Yes, salt systems do require some maintenance on a regular basis to keep them running properly but isn't that also true of other pool equiemment such as filters, automatic cleaners, etc.? As far as pool store chlorine being better or purer than bleach.....The main objection to bleach is that it will raise TDS by adding salt. So will pool store chlorine. In fact the 6% pool store chlorine and the 6% ultra bleach are identical. When I refer to bleach I am referreing to plain, unscented laundry bleach without additives. It is intersting that now, with the rise in popularity of salt water systems that there is suddenly a variety of "pool salts" becoming available. (I am not referring to the propriatary mixes that also might contain stabilizer, borates, etc. being put out by at least 2 different companies now but the plain old soidum chloride type of salt). These 'Pool Salts' are usually close to twice the price of solar salt, have the same purity, and may have a smaller crystal size so they dissolve slightly faster. The impression beign given is that these are the only thing that should be used in a SWG because they are pure! ( Actually, water softener pellest are ususally the purest at 99.8% while the pool salts and solar salts are 99.5% pure.) I save my customers money by recommending using regular solar salt and I use the same in my pool, even thought we do stock "pool salt". This is also what the majority of SWG manufacturer's recommend, water softener or solar salt with a purity of at least 99.5%.. Once again chemical manufacturer's and pool stores are trying to give the impression that the speciality product is different from the one they can get just about anywhere. This is very similar to liquid chlorine vs. laundery bleach except that now we ARE dealing with exactly the same thing except for the price and where it is sold (or is that who is making the profits on the sale?)
  8. It is posible that iron in your water has reacted with the peroxide shock and caused the yellow coloration to the water. Have your water tested for metals. Iron is very commen in many areas, especially when well water is used. pH rise in a spa is a normal occurance. It is caused by the constant aeration of the water by the jets and bubblers causing the carbon dioxide in the water (part of the carbonate/bicarbonate/carbonic acid buffer system we call Total Alkalinity) to gas off into the air. You probably are also finding that your TA is slowly lowering also.
  9. It's not that the strips are not accurate (they are if used properly), they are not precise. Accurate means that they prodoce the same results for the same test conditions. Precision is how small a measurement they can make. For example, let's look at a drop based kit for Total Alkalinit. I will use the Taylor K-2000 series as an example. They use a titration test with a color change from green to red so the endpoint is easy to read. Each drop used represents 10 ppm of total alkalinity so if you get a reading of 100 ppm total alkalinity it is accurate to +/- 10 ppm. On the LaMotte InstaTEST 6, LaMotte InstatTEST 6 and Aquachek Select the graduations on the color scale are 40 ppm apart. In reality this is +/- 40 ppm and the colors can change (get lighter) if you let water fall off the strips and do not hold them horizontally (a particular problem with the LaMotte strips I have used) so that decreases both your precision and accuracy. pH is even worse.Both the LaMotte 6 and the Aquacheck jump from a pH of 7.2 to 7.8 on their scale and the colors are very close and very difficult to determin. The compartor used in the Taylor kit goes from 7.0 to 8.0 in .2 increments and the color changes are much easier to read and compare, making it easy to get precise pH measurements! The chlorine test on the strips can bleach out and give a lower reading if not read in the correct time span or continue to darken and give a higher reading, depending on the reagent chemistry used (this is not brand specific, LaMotte uses different chlorine test reagents on the InstaTEST 5 and InstaTEST 6 and Aquacheck uses different reagents than LaMotte 6 for the chlorine tests.) None of these strips will read above 10 ppm and the color scale is graduated in large increments. The FAS-DPD chlorine (or bromine) test in the Taylor K-2006 (K-2106 for bromine) is a titration test. You count the number of drops that cause the test sample to change from pink to colorless. It is an easy test to read and it is accurate to .2 ppm (.5 ppm for bromine) and can work with sanitizer levels up to around 50 ppm (important if you are shocking the water or trying to kill algae!). Strip do have a place. They are fine for a quick daily water check to see if your water is within range but they are not sufficient for making changes to your water balance! If you use strips for this purpose ( I do) but haul out the big test kit if the strips show anything is not OK and use the big kit once a week for full water testing the strips can be a real timesaver! Also, if you do this you will soon learn which of the tests on the strips are giving yoo valuable info (the chlorine/bromine tests are pretty close, usually, and let you know if you sanitizer is in the ballpark or not) and which are just not really worthwhile (pH is a prime example of this. Unless the pH is REALLY out of range the colors are just too close together so you only have a gestimate that your pH is ok or out of whack!) Hope this explains the difference and is helpful to you.
  10. This kit has the DPD test for free and total chlorine (same as the K-2005), not the FAS-DPD test in the K-2006. It has the same total alkalinity test as the K-2005 but uses the R-0014 pH indicator and only has an acid demand test (no base demand) and the small comparator tube instead of the R-0004 pH indicator and large comparator tube found with both acid and base demand as in the K-2005 and K-2006. It does not have tests for stabilizer (cyanuric acid) or calcium hardness but these can be added as separate modules making the kit the same functionally as the K-2005. It has a list price of $18.75 on the Taylor website
  11. If you are going to use chlorine then I would recommend a Taylor K-2006 test kit and for bromine a K-2106. Both these kits use the FAS-DPD test for chlorine or bromine, which is the most accurate test out there (down to .2 ppm for chlorine or .5 ppm for bromine) and can read up to around 50 ppm since it is a titration test (similar to the tests for total alkalinity and calcium hardness); and is the easiest one to read, with a color change from pink to colorless so the titration endpont is distinct! The kits and replacement reagents are available from many dealers, online retailers and directly from Taylor Technolgies! There are other good kits out there but, IMHO, non come close to the Taylor kits for price, accuracy, and ease of use. They are not the cheapest kits out there (the K-2006 is around $60) but when you consider how many thousands your spa cost you it really isn't a lot of money to spend on what is probably the MOST important tool you need to keep your water in good condition!
  12. I know you are a newbie so I am going to simplify the answer for you. As to what you put in the pool (which is about 3000 gallons, BTW--acutally 2986 gallons if you have 3 feet of water in it, and would be just under 2500 gallons with 2.5 feet of water--2488 gallons, but calling it 3000 or 2500 is close enough for government work ) : Liquid shock is another name for liquid chlorine, It comes in different strengths but even if it is the weak 6% (which by the way is EXACTLY the same thing as unscented ultra strength laundry bleach--sodium hypochlorite solution, 6%) you had a free chlorine level of about 3 ppm (actually if you had a full 3000 gallons of water in the pool your free chlorine should have been about 2.5 ppm)....which is excellent. However, since the chlorine is unstabilized and there is no stabilizer in the water you chlorine will get burned off by the sun very quickly. Next, you put in an alkalinity increaser. A big secret that most pool stores don't want you to know is that alkalinity increaser is sodium bicarbnate, sometimes called sodium hydrogen carbonate--a different name for the same chemical. Most people know this chemical by it common name of baking soda. Yep, the suff that Arm and Hammer sells in the yellow box for a lot less money then the pool store sells it for! Now baking soda will cause the pH to rise to about 8.0-8.2 and, without knowing where your total alkalinity was before you added it I cant really say whether this was the right amount, too little, or too much. Your pool might be a small one but it is a real pool and needs to be cared for exactly as any other. The chemicals you need are: a chlorine source (Laundry bleach is fine!) pH adjusters (Muriatic acid and borax are what I would use, the are problems with using the pH incraser usually sold, which btw is just sodium carbonate, AKA washing soda found in the laundry aisle of the grocery store, same place you can find the 20 mule team borax!) Alkainity increaser (baking soda) Stabilzier (cyanuric acid) Your pool is vinyl so you don't really need calcium so don't waste any money on this. a GOOD drop based test kit (don't rely on strips) that will test for all these things. I recommend the Taylor K-2006 but the K-2005 is adequite but not as easy to use and is limited to how high it can measure chlorine levels (which can be an issue if you ever develop algae!) ajust the Cyanuric acid to between 30-50 ppm Keep the free chlorine between 3-5 ppm Keep pH between 7.2-7.6 (you will find that you will have better pH stability if you shoot for the higher end of 7.6 in most cases) Keep the total alkalinity between 80-100 ppm (if you decide to use trichlor pucks for chlorination you might do better keeping the alkalinity between 100-120 but you will need to keep close watch on the cyanuric acid levels since the pucks are about half cyanuric acid and if that gets too high your chlorine becomes much less effective and you might find that you are getting algae outbreaks! The only cure would be to drain and refill some of the water to get the CYA levels back down!) Don't let this scare you off. It's really a lot easier then it sounds! The first step is getting a GOOD test kit (Your pentair 2 way tester only tests for Total chlorine (you have the yellow liquid test for chlorine). You want to be testing Free chlorine, which is why I recommend the Taylor K-2006 test kit, about $60. Also the pH test in your kit is likely to give you a false high rading on pH when the chlorine levels are high. This is a common interferernce to the pH test and has a lengthy chemical explanation I won't go into now (I've posted it many times before). The pH reagent in the Taylor kit has a chlorine neutralizer built in and is compensated to give accurate results for chlorine levels up to about 15 ppm. Most pH reagents aren't. (NO, I don't work for Taylor. We don't even sell their kits where I work! I wish we did! I just own a few different ones for my own use.) Hope you find this info useful!
  13. 1//4 cup of bleach should raise your spa in the neighborhood of 4 ppm and 1 cup to about 10 ppm (this would be either 5.25% regular bleach or 6% ultra bleach. It's not an exact measurement and it will get you in the ball park, but then again, it's a spa and not rocket science! If you want it more exact 1/2 tablespoon of regular bleach will raise 100 gallons 1 ppm and .45 tablespoon of the ultrra will do the same! So if you are using dichlor an easy way to switch is to use about 2 tablespoons (1 oz) of bleach for each teaspoon of dichlor you were using. It will be pretty close. Test your water with a good test kit before and after dosing and you will know exactly how much bleach will cause a certain ppm rise in your tub. For example, if you start at 2 ppm FC and add 2 oz of bleach and then have a reading of 4 ppm you know that 2 oz of bleach will raise your tub 2 ppm. Hope this helps. Hope this helps.
  14. What sanitizer are you using? (unstabilized chlorine can probably go longer between water changes then either bromine or stabilized chlorine) PPM stands for parts per million and is a measurement. On which water chemisry parameter is the ppm 'creeping up a bit'? Some, like total alkalinity, can be adjusted. Others, like calcium hardness or cyanuric acid in a chlorine system, cannot without draining. 100 ppm cyanuric acid (CYA) is a marker of when a commercial pool will be closed in most states. it is WAY to high for normal operation or either a pool or spa. In fact many state health departments recommend that spas contain 0 ppm CYA. IMHO, 30 ppm would be the top limit for a spa before either draining and refilling or switching from dichlor to unstabilzied chlorine.
  15. The small amount of bromine carried into to the pool by bathers that are in the hot tub should not have any negative conswquences. You could convert the hot tub to chlorine. Many people succcessfully run chlorine tubs. They tend to have less of a chemical smell and are less expensive to maintain. If you decide to stick with bromine in the tub I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. The worst that can happen is it can create a bit of a temporary chlorine demand in the pool. Sodium bromide is used in chlorine pools as an algicide, besides being used to establish a bromide reserve in the water of a bromine spa on each refill.
  16. Thye Dawn would reduce the surfact tension of the water and the bugs would not be able to 'walk' on the water surface and would sink and drown. However I would not suggest adding Dawn to your pool unless you want a bubble bath. You can achieve the same results with tile soap squirted across the surface of the water. Tile soap is very low foaming. Bioguard Back Up is a linear quaterinary algaecide. The quatinary compounds are a class of detergent known as cationic surfactants. I am assuming it would also reduce the surface tension of the water and cause the bugs to sink and drown, especially in conjunction with another wetting agent such as tile soap. Be aware that linear quats are the type of algaecides that foam so they might not be much better than using Dawn! I'm still around!
  17. First step to determine if you have a leak or just evaporation is a bucket test. Take a 5 gal plastic bucket and fill it about 1/2 to 3/4 full of pool water and place it on the steps of the pool (or if there are no steps on the deck next to the pool) and mark the water level in the bucket. Also mark the water level in the pool (The skimmer is a good choice for this. I use either a marker or a piece of tape for marking). Now wait for the water in the pool to go down and measure how much it has gone down. Do the same in the bucket. If the pool has gone down much more than the bucket then there is a leak. If they both are close in the amount of water lost then it is just evaporation. Good candidates to check for leaks, short of a tear in the actual liner, are around the skimmer, lights, and the light niche itself.
  18. no difference between them except for the price you pay and where you buy them!
  19. If you read the first post they say that they have an automatic chlorinator turned all the way up (inline or offline chlorinator) with three STICK (of trichlor) also in the skimmer basket. There is no mention of a SWG. Also no salt reading was ever given but a TDS of 800 ppm was! Makes it pretty clear that this pool is on trichlor and NOT a SWG!
  20. Zeobrite (zeollite filter medium), the next great hope, or is that hoax? some facts: While it is true that zeolite has 'pores' in it that are micron sized the actual grains are bigger than sand grains for the most part. The rougher surface of the zeolite might catch a few extra particles so this should be a break even but water is NOT going to filter through it. In a pressurized ( or a non pressurized for that matter) filter water is going to take the path of least resistance, which would be AROUND the grains and not through them. If you want fine filering and water polishing with a sand filter there is a very old trick of adding a bit of DE to the skimmer (enough to increase your filter pressure about 1 psi).. You are now filtering THROUGH DE. (Sand filters work better when the sand is slightly dirty so you have'dirtied' the sand). This DE will wash out on the next backwash but it is a simple and cheap solutions. Let's look at the costs. 50 lbs of filter sand cost between $6 and $10 dollars in most places. Zeolite filter medium weighs less for the same volume so approximately 1/2 the weight is needed. A 50 l b bag of the stuff goes for beteen $30 and $60 dollars so the equivalent 100 lbs of sand would cost you beteeen $12 and $20 dollars. Now let's throw in that bag of DE powder.A 5 lb bag goes for about $7 dollars (enough to last for quite a long time with a sand filter) and you can get a 25 lb bag for about $25 dollars. At the highest prices for 200 lb sand we are now up to $65 dollars with enough DE to literally last for years. The Zeolite media will cost in the neighborhood of around $100. Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty of ammonia scavaging. This is the REAL reason to use Zeolite, right? Well Zeolite has been used in fresh water aquariums for years for this very purpose and any aquairist can tell you it's ammonia scavaging properties are quickly depleted!. But it can be regenerated! You have to mix ujp a concentrated salt solution (which is why it is not used in salt water aquariums and is probably of limited benifit in pools with s SWG) and to save time in the cleaning process you might use this regeneration solution to mix up the sand bed cleaner solution so you only have to do this once instead of twice every 6 months! (remember, those tiny pores in the zeolite will clog up). You now have an acidic salt solution to dispose of. Backwash it into the lawn? Down the sewer? Into a drum to get carted away as hazardous waste? (If you are maintaining a proper chlorine level for your CYA level and shock whenever your combined chlorine is above .5 ppm then what is the big deal about ammonia scavaging anyway?) Now let's look at deep cleaning a sand filter (and yes they need it maybe yearly or so). You open the filter to expose the sand, stick a garden hose into it and turn it on. The sand will loosen and the dirt will overflow out of the filter. CAREFULLY use something like a broom handle to break up clumps and channeling (be very careful not to damage the laterals). When the water is running clear you are done, REassemble the filter and backwash again and recharge with DE and you are good to go. IF you notice a scale builup while doing this THEN it is time to break out the acid filter cleaner and clean your sand bed chemically. Personally, I have a single element, oversized cartridge filter on my pool for the best compromise between water polishing and ease of maintenance. My filter would probably take over a year (and I have a 9 month swim season and the pool is not closed for the other 3) before I got any appreciable rise in filter pressure. I do clean my cart monthly however to make the maintenance go fast. It takes me between 15-20 minutes a month to open my filter, take out the dirty cart, drop in a clean one (I have 2 and rotate them), close the filter, clean out the pump basket, and hose off the dirty cart. I soak one cart in the spring and one in the fall so each get their yearly over night soak. I admit it's a bit more work than a sand filter but the water is almost as polished as a DE filter and THOSE are a lot of work. They really should be broken down to be cleaned, not backwashed or bumped but I'll save that for another thread!
  21. Purchase a Taylor K-1517A (or K-1517C if you want the 2 oz bottle of titrant) which is the FAS-DPD test for bromine. The difference between the chlorine test and the bromine test is that the bromine test uses R-872 reagent for the titrant and the chlorine test uses R-871 and also uses R-0003 reagent. Both use exactly the same DPD powder. When testing bromine only total bromine is tested so there is only one titration necessary. The tests for pH, acid and base demand, total alkalinity, and calcium hardness are identical for both chlorine and bromine and are exactly the same in the K-2006 kit for chlorine and the K-2106 kit for bromine. The bromine kit does not include the test for cyanuric acid since this is not needed in bromine systems. Since you already have the K-2006 adding the FAS-DPD bromine test will give you everything you need to test your bromine spa.
  22. Ditch the strips and get a drop based kit for testing. Strips just don't have the precision you need for water balancing! (I would recommend the Taylor K-2006 for accuracy and ease of use.) It is normal for the chlorine to burn off in sunlight until some cyanruic acid (stabilzier) builds up from continued dichlor use. You didn't say how many gallons your spa was so I cant tell you how high 1 teaspoon of dichlor will raise the FC level but I can tell you that one teaspoon of dichlor will raise the FC about 2 ppm in 250 gal water. The ozone is also destroying your chlorine. It is a fact of life in systems that use both chlorine and ozone. You might need to ajust your chlorine levels to accomodate for this. I would recommend that you keep your FC level at a minimum of 2 ppm in light of recent research on kill times for water borne pahtogens.. The MPS is fine (it can cause your total alkalinity and pH to drop because it is acidic and it will add sulfates to your water) but you can also shock (superchlorinate) with unstabilzied chlorine. (Dichlor is stabilized chlorine, it contains cyanuric acid to help prevent the chlorine from burning off in sunlight). The easiest to use in a spa is plain, unscented laundry bleach (It is sodium hypochlorite, same as liquid chlorine sold at pool stores, just a lower strength usually, but not always.) For regular strength (5.25%) bleach you would use 1 cup for each 250 gallons, for ultra strength (6%) you would use 3/4 cup. If you decide to use pool liquid chlorine it is usually 12.5% (sometimes it is 10% and sometimes 6%--same as ultra bleach!) so you would use about 1/4 to 3/8 cup of the 12.5% . While you are at it don't waste your money on alkalinity increaser. This particular chemcial can be found at your grocery store under the name of baking soda! BTW, enjoy the new spa! It's not rocket science and you will soon get the hang of it!
  23. Sorry to sound harsh but there is enough bad advice in this industry from 'professionals' and manufacturers trying to sell products (some of dubious value) so that someone who really has little understanding of pool chemistry but knows a few terms (but not their meanings) should really not try to give advice about things they really don't understand.
  24. IMHO, if you are using chlorine then the Taylor K-2006, if you are using bromine then the Taylor K-2106. Both these kits use the FAS-DPD test instead of the DPD test. It is more accurate and since it is a titration test (similar to the Total Alkalinity and Calcium Hardness tests) with a distinct color change from pink to colorless there is no problem determining the exact sanitizer level as there is with the colormetric (color matching) DPD test in the K-2005. Also, FAS-DPD test does not have the bleachout at high sanitizer levels problem that the DPD test suffers from! All other tests in the K-2006 are identical to the ones in the K-2005. The K-2106 is made for bromine so it does not include the Cyanuric Acid test, which is not needed nor used in a bromine system but contains the other water tests included in the K-2006 and K-2005. The K-2005 is an excellent test kit but the two kits that Taylor makes that used FSD-DPD are FAR superior!
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