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That's an easy thing to check. If you don't already have a salt test kit then that is a good thing to have anyway.

Thanks! I will have to track down some granular CYA. They did not do an acid startup since it was just a plaster repair. I had a rebar come through the wall and it needed to be cut out and pounded back and repaired. I am trying to get another few years out of my plaster before spending the big bucks. I was not told with the patch that I should not add salt and I have started doing that... So we shall see. I have not checked TA yet since I know that the first few days with the new salt things will change a good bit on the TA and Ph front. I made sure my PH was not too badly out of whack at startup and I will make sure it all balances out later in the week when I get the chlorine and salt in line. Unfortunately I am also fighting a big mess since while the pool was down we had 2 big storms that dropped everything from branches and leaves to dirt and lawn chairs in the pool. Thus I am still trying to vacuum up all the small crap that is down there while I am dealing with chemicals. (oh, and the rest of my life. lol) Thanks for all your help.

I had a problem on my salt system where I thought that my flow sensor was not working. I had a pool guy out looking at a plaster problem and I mentioned it and he suggested that numerous lights and problems can be resolved by a simple "reboot" of the salt system. I disconnected power from about a minute and the problem went away. This might be a simple thing to try first since it's easy and does not cost anything. If this does not work, the first steps in t-shooting should be to look and see if you are getting any trouble lights. The 1400 should show if it's generating chlorine, if the salt is low and if it detects flow. The lights should give you an idea of what is going on. What makes you think that it is not working?

Hi All! I just finished refilling my pool after having a plaster repair done. Thanks to this FANTASTIC forum I am pretty well versed in my pool and I am confident in getting things and up and running. What I am not sure about is getting CYA back up. Previously I was fighting high CYA levels (too high) left behind by the previous homeowner and only in the last year was it even at a normal level. This is a salt pool and it has also had issues in the past with high calcium. (always 400+) I am now thankfully down to about 180 after my refill! But back on topic. My question is first, do I NEED to get the CYA back up right away or can I do this over time with a shock that contains CYA? I shock with bleach, but I do keep granular shock on hand for times that I am too lazy to run out and buy a ton of bleach. I was thinking that I might just shock monthly with a shock that contains CYA until it comes up. If I do this, will I need to run my chlorine higher? I usually keep it at about 3 - 5 ppm. (I try to keep it at 3ppm, but I always seem to have the thing set too high) Second, if I need to add CYA, what is my cheapest source? Leslies sells a liquid form. The Taylor book from the 2006 kit talks about it in lbs and I suspect there is a granular form. Finally, how much do I need to add? I am at an unreadable level of CYA (less then the 10 mark on a Taylor 2006 kit) and the pool is 20,000 Gal. I refilled about 15,000 Gal or maybe a bit more and thus need to add CYA to cover about 15,000 Gal. Unfortunately, the local pool store will not even tell me how much CYA to add. (They want to test it themselves and sell me the whole package, sigh) The Taylor book says 1 lb per 5,000 G = 25 ppm CYA. So to bring up my 15,000 Gal up to 50 ppm I should need about 6 lbs of CYA. Is this correct? How does this convert to gallons of liquid CYA? Also, while on the topic, is there anything else that I should be looking at? 2 hours after a fill I am looking at Chlorine (TC=3.5), PH (7.0), Calcium (180), CYA(zero) and Salt (Currently 600ppm... LOL) Am I missing anything? Thanks in advance to all the really smart and helpful folks on this forum. You have saved me a TON of money!

I bought a house a year ago and it had many issues when I purchased it. The ongoing problems that I have had have to do with high CYA and Calcium levels. I have switched to SWG so that no more CYA is being added and I have been draining and refilling as possible in order to get the levels down. Here in Texas we cannot afford to drain 1/2 a pool due to the cost of water. (Especially since the water rates increase with usage) So my solution has been to drain 3-4 inches a month and then refill what I can each month. In addidition I have closed my overflow and run the pool level at the bottom of the skimmer to allow the free rain water to dilute the pool. This has been successful for the CYA which was puching 200 a year ago and is now down to abou 115 or 120. (it's an estimate when over 100 if you are using a taylor kit, but it noticable the difference and I'm getting close to the 100 mark) However, the Calcium level just keeps increasing even as I dilute the water and can see results with the CYA. I have tested my tap water that I refill with and the calcium level is about 110, so I should be lowering the level with the tap water. So my question is where can calcium come from other then if you add it? My current levels are as follow: FC 6.0 CC 0.0 TC 6.0 PH 7.2 - 7.8 weekly with on Gal of acid to adjust from 7.8 - 7.2 TA 120 CH 460 (was at 400 about a month ago) CYA 115 TDS 4200 Salt 3100 The only chemicals I add are 1 Gal of acid weekly. Chlorine (unstabilized bleach) monthly to shock. and some salt occasionally to keep the salt level at 3100-3200 as I dilute. The pool is white plaster with tile at the water line and brick coping. There is also a spa that has a layered brick waterfall flowing to the pool. Could there be some sort of chemical reaction that is causing the calcium to increase? In the past I had calcium deposits in the waterfall which would imply just the opposite that the brick caused the calcium to calcify rather than that it would increase the calcium. Any thoughts on the source would be helpful since I really want to get this calcium level down.

I don't have much more to add here since the previous post really gave you the answers that you need. However, I bought a house (also in TX) last year and I am in the same position as you with CYA just not quite as high. It seems like the pool stores like to sell us overprices stabilized chlorine with no other option. Then they tell us to refill 1/2 the pool every time the CYA gets too high. Our solution was to change our pool over to salt water at the begining of the summer. With the Salt Water system non-stabilized chlorine is generated, so you manage the CYA level yourself and don't have to worry about it getting too high. The added bonus is that the salt water system has saved us a TON of money and it looks like it will pay for itself quickly. Since going to salt water the only things we have needed were salt (cheap), Muriatic Acid (we use a $5 gallon weekly) and Bleach to shock one a month. Previously we were a member of the $150 a month club at the local pool store. The bottom line is that you can save money on chemicals using alternate products mentioned on posts on this board. However, if you can afford a salt system it will save you money, pay for itself pretty quickly and it makes water chemistry much simpler. Just my $0.02 after having the same problems in the same area. Send me a message if you have any questions about our experiences.

Thanks again Waterbear! Your answers are always very helpful.

My one question would actually be a series on the various water chemestry components, correct levels and how to adjust. As a new pool owners I have researched each thing as I run in to problems. Thus I would start with a piece on PH then move on the Chlorine (FC, CC, TC) and then to TA, CH, CYA, etc. This would be a huge timesave for many people. Any individual one of these is not helpful without the others, but handling all of water chemestry is too much all at once.

Hi All, I switched to a Salt System (Mineral Springs) about 2.5 months ago. At the same time I found this forum and I am going through the learning curve. After getting a K-2006 kit I have found that my Chlorine level running at 11ppm - 13ppm at the 80% setting my dealer told me to set the salt gen at. We have gotten the level down and I am working on getting the perfect setting still, but it seem that about 23% will be right for this 20K gal pool. I am shocking the pool monthly using 6% bleach and I am not having any sort of problems with the pool other then calcium deposits which are due to high calcium. We have never had algae problems at all. So my question is this, when I shock the pool to 10 PPM, it takes many days (3-5) for the level to come back down below 3 ppm. I have to turn off the chlorine generation or it takes even longer. I suspect this may be due to high CYA which I know I have. This was caused by the previously used stableized pucks that were used in the pool. We are slowly getting the level down, but doing one large water drain & refill will not be possible due to the high price of water here in the Texas desert. Here are where my levels are running.... FC=2.5 - 3.0 generally CC=0 (rarely do I ever see even 0.2 ppm even with heavy bather loads) PH= 7.2 - 7.8 (this is my weekly flucuation with one gal of m acid to lower from 7.8 - 7.2) TA=120 (fairly stable) CH=400 (again we are trying to lower this as we replace water) CYA= 130-150 (we measure w/ K-2006, so over 100 is just an esimate. It's slowly coming down though) Salt=3100 TDS=3400 So overall I'm happy since the pool is crystal clear. My only concern is that when the pool is running over 3.0 to 10.0 ppm chlorine I am concerned about guests swimming in this high level of chlorine. And I don't really want to shut down the pool for 5 days a month to wait for the shock to burn off.

It would seem that whatever you are using to sanitize the pool would also be working in the spa. You said that when the hot tub water "brings into play a number of factors" a number of factors that you don't deal with in the pool. What do you mean??? If you could be more specific, we can try to help you. What I mean by a number of factors is that it seems that spa's have very different problems from pools due to the fact that the water is heated. This I see that there are a lot of dicussions on this forum about chlorine too high, Ozone questions, Enzyme based product and the like. These are not the same problems and questions that seem to be common in pools. In many discussions I see that the normal things we check in out pools seem to be more complex in a spa since the heat affects the growth of bacteria. So really what I'm looking for is to understand if there is anything I need to worry about in a spa which I might be missing if I am just treating my pool.

I have just started reading this forum mostly for my own education since I do not have a stand along hot tub. However, I do have a hot tub which is built in to my pool. The water in this tub is pool water and it circulates through the pool filtration such that the hot tub has a waterfall and dumps into the pool. Thus the water circulates. The hot tub is not heated unless we are using it and once we are done it cools back down quickly or the hot water is dumped into the pool via the water fall of the pool is running. So my question is if there is anything I should be doing specific to the hot tub outside of what I do to maintain the pool water. I notice that with hot tub water the warmer water seems to bring in to play a number of factors that I don't deal with in a pool. I would also assume that since my hot tub is never heated for more then about 3-4 hours that this is not long enough to cause me to need to worry about these factors. However, you never want to assume since you know what happens then. So Any comments on properly maintaining this sort of system would be appreciated.

Hello all, I want to start by saying thank you. This forum has been amazing in teaching me the details of what is going on in my pool and I am now saving a lot of money using household chemicals rather than overprices pool store stuff. If there are other newbys reading this, buy a Taylor K-2006 testkit and then start reading this forum to save lots of money. So that said, I'm now coming to you with a question that I cannot answer through old posts. We have an infant and a 22 month old and so I am sure that it is just a matter of time before we have a "poop in the pool" incident. I know that the neighborhood pools shut down for a day when this happens and the pools where they give swimming lessons just shut down for an hour. So I am interested in understanding what the processes are. I reviewed the CDC website information at this site: http://www.cdc.gov/healthyswimming/fecalacc.htm It seems that of the two important things to worry about are Giardia and Crypto. From what I read it boils down to that Crypto is not found in hard stool and thus with a hard stool situation you can wait 30-60 minutes (depending on chlorine level) and this will kill off Giardia and the other bacteria in hard stool. When diahrea is in play you have Crypto in the equasion and then you need to wait 9600 minutes at 1 ppm chlorine or less if you raise the chlorine level (where ppm * minutes = 9600) with a minimum of 8 hours at 20 ppm. So the question is, how do you deal with the common situation of baby poop in the pool. Having two kids, I know that their *** rarely produces hard stool, but it is also not a diareha either. In addition, you normally have the kid in swim diapers which contain most of the poop until it breaks up. Thus when I have seen these situations in other pools the result is 90% of the material in the kids diaper and just some little stuff (usually not poop looking) which gets in to the pool. (sorry if any of this is a bit gross) So my question is, do you deal with this as a hard stool situation or a soft stool situation? You don't really get a chance to see the diaper usually and if you are the parent you know that the sample has been badly compromised by the time you see it. So anyone who knows how professionals deal with this situation might be able to shed some light here to a homeowner who would like to keep his swimmers healthy. As a side note, I'm also interested in any science behind urine in the pool. You must know that this is a common occurance and that a proper chlorine level eliminates any risk. However, I have one swimmer who is very concerned about kid urinating in the pool and it would be nice to show some evedence that a little pee in the pool is not a problem. Sorry for the lond post and thanks again for all the great information you all share.

Thanks All! This is what I needed.

Hello All, I have a Mineral Springs MS-10 (Bioguard) Salt Generator unit. This unit has a display that shows the Mineral Level (Salt?) in PPM. Next to the display is a button that scrolls the display through a number of settings. I know that after the Mineral level it will show the water Temp. Beyond this I cannot find any information on what the other readings mean. Is there anyplace to find out what all these settings mean? No sure if they are useful to the end user, but I would be interested in knowing what they are. Thanks!