New Pool Owner - High CYA after two partial drain and refills

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B

bbaker901

0
Apr 24, 2018
7
NEWPORT NEWS
Hello All!

I came across this site like many others, looking for answers on maintaining a new pool. My wife and I purchased a new home on March 30th with a pool and we just opened it last weekend. I researched as much as possible to start off in a strong position, but because of lack of funds, I had to start off with test strips. It showed very high CYA. I took it to Leslie's and they tested high as well (100+).

After a lot of deliberation with my wife, we decided to do partial drain and refills to lower the stabilizer. We drained 1.5 feet of our 4 feet deep pool, refilled and tested, still high. Repeated that process, tested, still high. I bit the bullet and bought a test kit and tested it myself (dilution method) and after 2 partial drain and refills our CYA is still at 200. That was very discouraging since we are now in fear of both our electric bill and water bill.

Lastly, after more deliberation, we decided we can't handle another drain and refill without seeing a bill first for the current damage. We do have an algae situation, but it's a light green and we can see the bottom. According to Pool Math, to shock we would need to be at 80ppm of FC and maintain it for a pool with 200 ppm CYA and the minimum is 15 and recomended range is 21-23.

My question to the experts is, is that realistic and will shocking at that high of FC damage my vinyl liner of my above ground pool? I know drain and refill is spoken a lot on here. I'm just wondering is it safe to move forward with the SLAM at the current level model possibly (I understand it's not recommended, but wanted to inquire if anyone tries despite that)? Thank you in advance for your assistance! Below are my first test results from test kit I bought from Leslie's (R8070 and R8071 are in the mail now)

FC - 0
CC - 0
pH - 7.8
TA - 160
CH - 80
CYA - 200
 
:wave: Welcome to TFP!

Following three SLAM Process that high will not cause damage, but it is not very realistic to tru to maintain it that high, although I think some members have done it.

Remember that the pH test is not valid when FC is greater than 10ppm.
 
Thank you for the reply!

I feel like I'm stuck between multiple rocks and a hard place. I don't know if I have the courage to do a 3rd, 4th, and 5th 1/3 partial drain and refills with the "hope" it will dilute it enough for the chlorine to be effective. At the same time, the weather is getting warmer and I feel the algae will just get worse if I don't do something about it now.

It feels like my only options are to either 1) SLAM in it's current state until the green is gone, maintain the chlorine at that high level to compensate for the high CYA or 2) Close the pool until we understand what the true cost has been and will be and deal with whatever algae will develop between now and when we open again.

Any insight on this or other available options would definitely be appreciated!
 
you dont have to wait. check your last water bill for the rate and calculate the volume of water you added. Also, contact your water utility and tell them you are filling a pool and dont want to be charged the sewer rate, just the water rate. Not sure how your utility handles it, but here we have separate water and sewer rates.

Someone else can chime in on how low you can safely drain AGP, but the drains and refills will be more effective the more you can drain out each time. Is it possible to completely drain AGP? I dont know.
 
If $$ is the only reason for not draining again, its a choice between spending now on water or a lot as you go on chlorine. If you do drain again, drain much more in one shot if possible. If your CYA is as high as 200 you probably want to replace around 75% of your water in one go. Draining 1/3 at a time isn’t enough and will cost much more in the long run as you’ll have to do it over and over. If thats a structural issue with above ground pools, maybe someone else can offer advice.

and I also second the advice to look at your water bill for the rate. You dont need to just wait for the bill to arrive.

I and a lot of others on here found this site after hearing we had too high CYA, doing some research and then having a panic attack about draining the pool. Its a bad intro to your new house and pool but once you do it and then follow the advice on this site, your pool wont be that expensive and confusing.
 
Well, we are still pretty early in the home ownership world as we haven't recieved our first water or electric bill, so I don't really have an average to go off of. Being that we just have estimates on pretty much everything, the unknown of it all is making my mind kind of race at what the possibilities of the bills will be.

Above ground pools, from what I've researched need that structural integrity the water offers and going lower than a third opens the door to not only that danger, but the liner heating up and shrinking. That would be a costly repair as well. I may be wrong in my assumptions of what an above ground pool can take though.
 
You should be able to find the water rates on the utility’s website, or at worst a phone call. Good luck with it. I am sure someone on the site has some more info for you on draining the A.G.
 
Yeah, I went to our local waterworks website for my city and saw the rates and I estimated it might be roughly $40 for just the water alone to refill. I called and they don't do the writing off of the usage for filling or sewer. It's all calculated in. So, I'm thinking that after doing it twice it would be roughly over $100 on top of what we already used, but I don't even know our base yet. I know $100 doesn't sound like a lot and it's not.....but I'm terrible at math apparently and don't trust my calculations and probably WAY off base. lol!!
 
Can someone explain more as to why all the draining that has been done so far in this example hasn't had much of an impact on the CYA?
 
One thing I said to my wife this morning when we talked about it, is that we probably did actually lower the CYA, but it apparently wasn't enough. Maybe it was something like 400 or 500ppm before the draining and when we did the dilution test it showed a more solid number than what Leslie's test showed us, which was just 100+ each time. That's hopeful thinking at least.
 

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Your cya was likely through the roof. It may still be as a 200 CYA with the dilution method is still just saying “really high”. I.E. you’re still measuring 100+ at 50% dilution. Two rounds of draining 1/3 of the pool will definitely leave about 45% of the original CYA concentration. But then consider measurement error both in testing and draining ( did you really go down 1/3 or was it closer to 1/4?) and you start to realize how off the mark you can get.
 
The best I could do with measuring, given my inexperience, was using the skimmer pole. I'm pretty sure, not 100% of course, that the top of the water before the drain was about about 4 ft (all same level). After about 9 hours of draining, I put the skimmer pole, with the rake attached and measured the from the tip of the rake to the line of water remaining on the pole, and it was 2.5. So, I suspected I draining 1.5 feet of water from pool. And I refilled it to the same level. I think that's the best I could do as far as accuracy without jumping into the green water with a measuring tape. lol!
 
We went ahead and started the slam anyways. Hopefully the high CYA will have minimal impact. Plus, since we had low hardness, we used 65% cal-hypo to do double duty of sanitation and hardness increasing and we will be monitoring as it grows. We added 8 bags and it got it blue for now. My R8070 and R8071 hasn't come in the mail yet, so I'm going off of what I got to measure, so, all I an say is that the FC is high without accuracy. I hope the FC drop off won't be too significant, but it will be a sunny day today, so I'm thinking it will be. We are just going to see if the CYA will lower from the back-washing, vacuuming, and splash out over the time, the best we can.

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