Summer Water

[joepool]

Hi I'm new to the forum and have a question.

I live in South Florida. Maintaining my pool diffently tougher this time of year. My stabilizer is 30-50 which the testing strip bottle says is ideal. My question is should I keep my stabilizer higher in the summer?

I know pool professional stop by once a week for pool maintanence. What is the secret to adding chemical only once a week in the summer?

Thanks

[dymondgeezer]

Hey Joe,

Welcome to the forum. Can you repost with all the details about your pool.

Size in Gallons

Free Chlorine (FC)

Total Chlorine (TC)

Stabilizer (Cya)

Alkalinity (Alk)

Ph

Hardness

Temp

These figures really help the experts here diagnose / make recommendations.

Check here for some good education...

[joepool]

12,000 gallons

FC ranges from .5 - 3

Cya 30-50

Alk 120

Ph 8.4

Hardness - ?

Temp - ? guess I should get a thermometer

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Joe

Hey Joe,

Welcome to the forum. Can you repost with all the details about your pool.

Size in Gallons

Free Chlorine (FC)

Total Chlorine (TC)

Stabilizer (Cya)

Alkalinity (Alk)

Ph

Hardness

Temp

These figures really help the experts here diagnose / make recommendations.

Check here for some good education...

[Strannik]

your pH is way to high

you need to bring it down to 7.6

[joepool]

So I need to add muratic acid to lower the ph.

But no one has said what my cya(stabilizer) needs to be in summer months? Is it 30-50 like the test strip bottle says? or should it be a little higher?

your pH is way to high

you need to bring it down to 7.6

[Strannik]

50 is ok

[joepool]

Got the muratic acid in. Water cleared up nicely. I thought it was clear befor now it looks like a spring...crystal clear.

New numbers are:

Ph 7.6

FC 1 (currently)

TA 120

CYA 30-50

Now with my ph level corrected and my TA down slietly will my chlorine last longer?

50 is ok

[Strannik]

if you want your chlorine to last longer you can bump up cya to 60-70

but then you will need to keep higher FC level to get same sanitation effect

[joepool]

OK so I'll keep my CYA at 30-50

TA at 100

PH at 7.6

and my FC at ? what

Pool professionals stop by once a week in the summer right?

So do they keep all there levels right on and bump the FC to what to last a whole summer week? 5 ? 10?

PS Love the forum.

[Strannik]

what do they use to chlorinate your pool?

if i were you i would chlorinate it yourself with bleach

[joepool]

There is no they. I do my pool myself. I just want to know what the professionals do. I use liquid chlorine from the pool store. Now during my reading I came to the conclusion that bleach and liquid chlorine are the same thing (bleach being half the strenth of chlorine).

With all my levels correct will once a week chlorination be good enough in the summer? or do I need to chlorinate twice a week? or maybe float a tablet or two during the summer as well as a 2 1/2 gallon jug of liquid chlorine weekly?

In south florida summer is the challenge with my once a week pool maintanence... winter is a piece of cake for me. I tring to figure out the best approach for summer? Lucky it has already started to cool down so I am now preping for next summer.

[chem geek]

In climates with lots of direct sunlight, especially in southern latitudes, you often need to add chlorine every day unless you overshoot in which case it's still about every other day. If the CYA level is kept high, in the 60-80 ppm range, then that can slow down the chlorine breakdown enough to be able to add chlorine every 3-4 days with some overshoot, but not just once a week without a lot of overshoot. The downside to the high CYA level is that you need to maintain a higher FC and be more diligent about adding chlorine since it's harder to fight an algae bloom at high CYA levels (it takes higher FC levels).

The general rule is to keep the FC level at least 7.5% of the CYA level or higher to prevent algae growth. At 50 ppm CYA, the FC should not be allowed to get below 3.8 ppm, at least not for anything but a very short period of time. If the FC drops below 2.5 ppm, then the risk of algae growth becomes much more likely unless your pool is very low in algal nutrients (phosphates and nitrates).

If you don't want to maintain the higher chlorine levels or want some insurance to prevent algae if the levels drop too low, then use a supplemental algaecide such as a weekly dose of PolyQuat 60 or use of a phosphate remover. These are extra cost (about $2-3 per week for a typical pool, though initial dose cost is higher). Another alternative is to have 50 ppm Borates in the pool.

You can use Trichlor tabs/pucks on occasion, but need to keep in mind that for every 10 ppm FC added by Trichlor, it also increases Cyanuric Acid (CYA) by 6 ppm. So CYA levels can build up fairly quickly over time unless you have a smaller pool with a lot of splash-out and weekly backwashing and a short swimming season. There may also be some slow loss of Trichlor over time getting oxidized by chlorine, though that is still speculative at this point (only some pools see this effect).

A pool service that adds chlorine only once a week is likely doing one of the following things. They are either using a supplemental algaecide as just described or they are raising the chlorine to very high levels so that some still is around the following week. Or they may be using Trichlor pucks/tabs they just refill in an inline chorinator (in pools where there is high dilution). One pool service in very hot desert climates (e.g. Arizona) has the CYA at 100 ppm in their serviced pools and raises the FC to 14 ppm (using a combination of chlorine gas and chlorinating liquid) with it dropping to around 4 ppm by the following week. That's an extreme case and I wouldn't recommend that for a regular pool owner -- usually you don't go above 80 ppm CYA and even then that's usually only with SWG pools. You can certainly do it, but need to be very careful not to let chlorine get low or else it will be very hard to fight algae if it gets started. If your chlorine is holding reasonably well at 50 ppm CYA, then that's a good level to be at. If you lose 20% of your FC per day due to sunlight, then starting with an FC of 10 ppm has you end up a week later at 2 ppm so could be what a typical pool service would be doing. The higher 10 ppm FC helps to shock and kill any algae that starts growing faster in the day or two before they dose again. If you are dosing yourself, then doing so at least twice a week going from an FC of 8 ppm which drops to an FC of 4 ppm would be reasonable.

If you want to do your own pool maintenance, you need to get a good test kit. I suggest either the Taylor K-2006 you can get at a good online price here or the TF100 from tftestkits.com here with the latter kit having 36% more volume of reagents so is comparably priced "per test". You can then see your daily FC loss so can figure out a reasonable plan accordingly.

If your pool has partial or full shade or if it has a pool cover, then the chlorine loss will be substantially less. In my own pool, I have an opaque electric safety cover and even with daily 1-2 hour usage of the pool the FC loss is only 1 ppm per day so I only have to add chlorine twice a week. If the pool were not used daily, the chlorine loss would be only 0.5 to 0.7 per day. I keep a low 30 ppm CYA level and target an FC of around 3 ppm so usually increase the FC to around 5-6 ppm FC and add it 3-4 days later when it gets to around 2-3 ppm FC. I don't use any extra chemicals (algaecide, clarifier, etc.) and only need to add a small amount of acid about once a month or so since the pH is very stable. I get 12.5% chlorinating liquid from my local pool store because it's at a reasonable price and they reuse the gallon containers.

Richard

[joepool]

Thanks Richard!

That is great information. Exactly the answer I was looking for.

I love the forum. Hopefully I can help out and particate in some threads.

Joe

[chem geek]

I should have noted that my pool is kept fairly warm at 86F - 89F (depending on time of day or night) which accounts for at least some of the daily usage. Also, my pool has 2000-3000 ppb phosphates (the fill water has 300-500 ppb phosphates used for corrosion control), yet algae growth is controlled with chlorine alone.

[poseidonpools]

Just checking to see how the levels are after implementing the changes noted above.

[joepool]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3143/285534...8fdf7dddb_b.jpg

POOL IS LOOKING GREAT

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2322/285534...04823ff48_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3092/285617..._47f6e14c85.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/285534...5b62dc168_b.jpg

Current #'s

PH 7.6

FC 3

TA 120

CYA 30-50

I have been using both of these test kits. Strips and drops. I don't always beleive the strips. I think the drops are giving me more accurate results. I know I have read about the taylor test kits and I am going to purchase one of them.

My pool is 12,000 gallons. Since my #'s have been corrected I have been adding 1 1/2 gallons liquid chlorine and 2 cap fulls of trichlor granule (above) per week. Seems to be working great. I know the trichlor has cya in it. So I will cut down on trichlor as the hot summer ends.

[JRM75]

My pool is 12,000 gallons. Since my #'s have been corrected I have been adding 1 1/2 gallons liquid chlorine and 2 cap fulls of trichlor granule (above) per week. Seems to be working great. I know the trichlor has cya in it. So I will cut down on trichlor as the hot summer ends.

My pool is about 11,000 gallons. It depends on the heat, amount of sunlight, and how clean (how many times people bath,etc) your pool is, to know how much chlorine your pool needs. People use my pool every weekend, it's always in direct sunlight, and the pool temp. is between 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit on average. I like to super-shock my pool on Monday nights with 2.5 gallons of liquid chlorine, since at night there's isn't any sunlight and/or very little heat---so the chlorine can last longer or work more efficiently. Note: 1 gallon of liquid chlorine is the recommended dose for 10,000 gallons of pool water, while 1.5 gallons of liquid chlorine is enough to shock 10,000 gallons of pool water; 2 to 2.5 gallons is "super-shocking" your pool for extreme cases, in which chloramines are abundant in the water (you smell "bad-chlorine") or there has been less than 1 ppm of chlorine (using CYA, the ppm level may affect you differently) for more than 2 days.

In your case, 1.5 gallons of liquid chlorine plus the 2 cap fulls of trichlor granule should be equivalent to at least 2 gallons of liquid chlorine, which seems to be enough as a regular shock treatment; but, since your adding cyanuric acid, you have to add more chlorine if your adding that amount of chlorine (above) for shocking purposes. Chem Geek should have the right answer/explanation for this situation...