No Chlorine Reading

[johnm]

We recently had our pool installed and with it a Hayward CL220 offline chlorinator. It was shipped to us without the o-ring. I initially had it set to "3" (that's what my dad's pool has been using for years.) My testing indicates no chlorine. I then turned it up to "full" and after a week I still get no reading. I've been forced to shock it several times now to keep it clean. I bought the HTH 6-in-1 kit to test again and it also shows no chlorine.

Being that there is a slight leak (it was HUGE until I used teflon/duct tape to seal the lid) could the fact that the lid isn't sealed 100% be causing the chlorine to not flow into the return lines from the chlorinator? I have 4 "pucks" in there and when I open the lid there is VERY strong chlorine odor, so I know water is getting in and dissolving the pucks. The place where I ordered the chlorinator was supposed to send out the or-ring, but it's been 1.5 weeks already. I'm going to pick up the o-ring at the local pool store but was just wondering if that's the problem. If not, what else can I look at? My pH is good, water tests slightly hard, but not bad. Alkalinity is at 60 so I need to bump that up a bit.

Edit: some details...18x36 vinyl.

Thanks.

[ANG]

Because you say that there is a very strong chlorine smell when you open the lid, it leads me to beleive that the chlorinator is either installed backwards (there is an arrow on it that points in the direction that the flow would be, arrow should be pointed towards the return side) or the dial may be stuck. Check the arrow and turn the dial to the full position.

[johnm]

John,

This sounds very similar to my own problem from last week. Richard (Chem Geek) helped me greatly and taught me a good deal about chlorination and shocking in the process.

I, too, have a chlorinator, and though I had the chlorinator turned up to it’s maximum setting, I was not getting a chlorine reading. Don’t wait too long, as in my case, my entire pool became cloudy. Assuming your chlorinator is okay, It sounds to me like the free chlorine in your pool is being used up on algae, ammonia or some other enemy. This would explain the strong odor, as it is probably combined chlorine which is spent up killing things in your pool, leaving nothing left for free chlorine. In my case, the chlorinator was simply not enough to overcome the problem. I ended up shocking my pool several times, in order to get the FC reading up to about 20 or 30, before I finally had the problem under control. Once you’ve super shocked your pool, and you can get a free chlorine number to hold, your chlorinator should be able to continue doing what it’s supposed to do. In route to solving my problem, Chem Geek has really enlightened me on chlorination, and I am now reconsidering whether or not I should even use a chlorinator at all, due to the fact it puts a great deal of CYA (stabilizer) in the pool.

Please follow the link below for how I discovered and solved my problem. I think you could very well have algae, ammonia or something similar that could quickly turn your pool into a cloudy mess like mine was over a week ago. My guess is that the solution to your problem will involve super-shocking your pool with very large amounts of chlorine, preferably liquid bleach.

If you can post your actual numbers here, I'm sure it would help someone narrow in on your specific problem: FC, TC, CYA, PH, TH, etc..

Read on:

No Free Chlorine / Chlorinator

Thanks for the info. I'll test again tonight or tomorrow and post all the numbers. The pool was filled with drinking water, and I began testing a day or so after it was filled. I've never seen any Chlorine numbers so I doubt it's from algea, but who know. I've been shocking it very often as is (maybe 6 times so far?). As was mentioned above, perhaps it's hooked up backwards (the pool company hooked it up.) But in any case, I'll retest, read your link, verify that it's hooked up properly, shock it tonight, and see what happens. I will likely shut off one return and direct the other out of the pool so that I can get a sample of the water coming directly from the return. Also, I'll be putting the o-ring in tonight.

I'm guessing the problem/issue is simple, but just frustrating right now. Will post in a day or so with new numbers. Thanks again.