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itabb

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  • Birthday 01/01/1908

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    Atlanta, GA

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  1. I got the 2005, which was great. Then I ordered the titrating reagents for testing chlorine (R-870, R-871). Wow, it is so much better. I should have ordered the K 2006. The good thing about the 2005 is that it tests bromine. That was fine for a little while until I switched my spa to chlorine. Wow, my spa is so much nicer now, and easier to maintain.
  2. I'm mostly concerned about your CYA levels. They're basically unsafe. I think if you want to be swimming by this weekend, you want to completely drain most of the water from the pool, say 75% of it, and refill. If CYA of 150 is correct, this will leave you with 37.5. You can drain all of the water to be sure though. I would, if I had a supply of dichlor. Refill the pool. While filling, retest your fill water to be sure of the readings. Adjust PH to 7.5 (about 13oz of dry acid or 9oz of muratic acid for 5000 gallons). Since you are filling from a well, add a bottle of Jack's Magic (blue stuff or pink stuff) to get the metals out. 32oz (1 bottle) per 10,000 gallons. Add enough dichlor to bring the pool to FC 20 (which will bring your CYA to about 19). This is about 25 oz at 5000 gallons. Run your filter 24/7, and leave your pool exposed to the sun during the day. Each evening, check the chlorine levels (preferably with a titrate test kit) and add dichlor to bring up the level to 20ppm. Test each morning and make sure it is FC 19 or higher. If it isn't, add more dichlor. If it is, your done and let the FC burn off. Do not add more than 65 oz of dichlor this season over all. Once you've added 65 oz of dichlor, your CYA will be about 50 and you need to switch to Clorox bleach. I'm no expert, but I think this is what I would do in your situation.
  3. After spraying the fiberglass pool into place, would you have any concern with water getting between the fiberglass and the concrete and lifting the pool out of place?
  4. Take it off only when you use the pool. The solar cover will help heat the pool during the day when the sun hits it. If it is opaque, it will also minimize chlorine breakdown from sun while the pool is not in use.
  5. If it were me, I'd get about 5 estimates. This does not obligate you to use any of them, and you'd probably learn a lot about what work needs to be done and what is involved. Then you can do it yourself. There's a reasonable chance you'll find a great contractor at a great price and just have him do it.
  6. Looks like you have an OTO test kit. For the problems you appear to be having, this is not going to help you fix them. Your TC may be way off the charts, but does that mean you have Free Chlorine or has most of it combined? This is a very important question. If most of it has combined, add more chlorine. If it is free, let it burn off. OTO measures only Total, which is Free plus Combined. See the difference? Furthermore, you need to know how much as combined so you know how much chlorine to add to get to breakpoint. When you are ready to fix this problem, get a Taylor 2006 test kit from taylortechnologies.com. Shipping is free. At this point, you are just guessing. I know this test kit is expensive. So ask yourself, when do you want to start using the pool? It was a tough pill for me to swallow, but it has paid for itself in saving me from my pool store owner. OTO kits should not bleach out unless your TC is above 25ppm. Unless you added sodium bromide to your pool, you do not have any bromine. Just focus on the chlorine numbers. Does your pool stink? That is a sign of high combined chlorine. You may actually need more chlorine, but you won't know until you get a good test kit. At this point, nothing else matters but your chlorine. You can attempt to measure PH if you add some sodium thiosulfate, maybe 5 drops, to your PH test sample. It is usually part of the alkalinity test. It will have an effect on your PH reading. I forget the effect. With a CYA level of 150, if that is correct, you will probably not be able to get a chlorine level high enough to clear the water, much less maintain a level of santitation. I don't know what chlorine level you have to have in order to properly test the CYA level using reagents.
  7. No birdcage in Florida? You'll be sorry. Plus, you'll need one if you want 100% resale value on your pool investment when you sell your house. There's a very good reason why. Maintenence. Also, a child safety fence is required. Drowning in pools is the #2 killer of children in Florida. And it won't be your children, but someone else's, which makes it even worse. Most counties require this fence by law. You must also have some form of heater -- solar, heat pump, gas. Again, no one wants a cold pool. I have a polaris for cleaning my pool. Love it. Go look at other people's pools. See what they like, and build something similar. Again, resale value. Concrete is always good, but take pains with shifting on that limestone and sand. You can get some nasty cracks. Go for small chunks or pavers over concrete. No tile (that's for inside)! And if you're on the west coast north of Charlotte county, and especially north of Hernando, you know sink holes are a problem. You're digging down 6 feet, so you could be inches from an open hole that used to be filled with water. You open up a sink hole, your house is worth $0. So is your neighbor's. One other thing, land grade!!! Lots of flood insurance claims are from overflowed pools going through the walls of the house. Just because your house is cinderblock doesn't mean water won't go right through the walls and soak your drywall and carpet. Lots of these claims are from neighbor's overflowed pools going into your house too. Good luck.
  8. Just go jogging. $6000 later, you'll use it once. Jogging is just a $100 pair of shoes, which you can use as lawn mowing shoes when you quit that sport.
  9. It seems the boatmen eat algae. No algae, no boatmen. The backswimmers (greater boatmen?) are preditors and eat other bugs and small fish and people's fingers. They're attracted to light, so put up a bright light away from the pool all night and see if they die around the light. Keep your pool light off. If you can cover your pool, they might drown.
  10. Sodium Hypochlorite, 12.5% is liquid chlorine. That's what you normally run a pool on. Your pool is probably a chlorine pool right now. How many gallons is your pool, incidentally? You are shocking with the right stuff both for chlorine and bromine. Your Free Available Chlorine levels are probably quite high now, and you may want to test that. If you take a sample to a pool store, demand a titrate test. Better yet, get yourself a Taylor K 2006 test kit (or if you are really going bromine, K 2106). I used to have a bromine spa that I shocked with Clorox. I have since switched the spa to chlorine because of the sun exposure. All the bromine would burn off in 3 hours and I'd have to shock again. And bromine tablets are so much more expensive (though I found them much cheaper at Home Depot), than bleach. Also, I find bromine smells while a well maintained and balanced chlorine spa has almost no smell at all. I just cannot keep it hot all the time, only when I use it. Sodium Bromine may be called Bromine Starter or something similar. You don't need very much. 2-4 oz per 500 gallons, I think. If your FC is as high as I think it might be, you put some of this salt in and you are instant bromine. BTW, once your pool is bromine, you cannot go back to chlorine without a complete refill.
  11. At my pool store, they are inconsistant in the way they test. Both my pool and spa are at 50 CYA, and they read 25, 40, and 90. They don't take it seriously. They see my pool is at 5+ FC and don't bother diluting to get a more accurate reading. I told them is was probably around 7, and I taught them how to use the titrate test. One of them got all excited about an electronic salt meter. It read 4400. My pool is at 3600. You think she put in a strip to verify? Nope, the eletronic meter must be right . . . it's new! They don't know the titrate end points either. The see TA turn from green to mostly red, and they're done. They don't realize they need to add 1 more drop so it is bright red and no longer changable. If I don't monitor their testing, I get wacky results.
  12. Yeah, there's your problem. You may be on a chlorine pool right now. What chemical is in your liquid shock? Anyway, try a chlorine test, like DPD or OTO and see what your level is. It would take months to get enough bromine in your pool to be effective just using a brominator. If your pool is in the sun all day, uncovered, seriously consider chlorine over bromine. Once you add sodium bromide, shock to activate it (MPS or Chlorine).
  13. Monitor your CYA levels (cyanuric acid). If you do a lot of backwashing (a lot), you might be ok, but probably not. CYA protects free chlorine in sunlight. However, the more CYA (stabilizer) you have, the less effective the chlroine is at sanitizing your pool. For example, if you have no CYA, then you only need FC 1 to sanitize, but it will all burn off in 20 minutes in sunlight. If you have a CYA of 50, you need FC 6.5 to sanitize, but after 7 hours, you should still have a FC of 3, which is probably enough for most things. Above 50, and you start having issues with keeping your FC high enough. After 100 CYA, your pool is just dangerous. You can lower CYA by changing out some of the water. You can use dichlor until your CYA is 50, then switch to sodium hypochlorite (bleach). I think for every 1ppm FC you add using dichlor, you will add .9ppm CYA. So if you add enough dichlor to get to 5ppm FC, you will have about 5ppm CYA. If you keep record of how much dichlor you added since the last refill, you can probably predict your CYA levels, and when to switch to bleach. The difficult thing with dichlor is that the more you use it, the better your FC hold each day in the sun, but the higher FC levels you will need for sanitizing and shocking.
  14. You really need to know the Calcium Harness levels, not Total Hardness. The TA is so far up, I'd really want to see a titrate test to verify that this is even remotely accurate. Finally, don't try to burn off the TA with a strip test. You must have a drop test to do this. Just guessing from your early posts . . . if the pool store did a titrate test on your pool and came up with Cal Hardness of over 500, then the calcium hypochlorite is a big problem for you. On one hand, refill seems like a good idea to get the CH down. On the other hand, to start that fight over with TA seems painful. If you had a TA of 60-80, you might be alright with a CH of 500, as long as you are on your PH religiously.
  15. There may be a bromine demand. First, did you set up your bromine bank with sodium bromide? If not, add some. Second, try shocking your pool with MPS (non-chlorine shock) or liquid chlorine and see what happens. Let us know. I would expect that you need to shock a bromine system at least once a week, and maybe more often. If you have something in the water that is demanding bromine, activating the bromine is the only way you can deal with it. You activate by shocking.
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