Been in my house for a couple of years and have had a pool service since I have never taken care of a pool before.

But recently, we had our pool converted from salt to chlorine and had a CMD PowerClean Automatic chlorine inline feeder installed.

It seems that with this device I should be able to handle the maintenance myself. From reading the manual it seems I just need to put chlorine tabs in about once a week and it will balance it for me.

I also bought a kit to test the chlorine level and Ph.

So, I would put in the chlorine tabs once per week, test the levels and maybe shock it periodically?

Is my thinking correct on this? Would love to get rid of the service. . .

you should have kept the salt chlorinator, the inline feeder and pucks will eventually raise your cya to lock out level. also i my inline chlorinator got blocked a lot and my chlorine levels varied a lot which led to algae issues.

actually just signed up with pool troopers, 49$ chem service and free installed breeze salt chlorinator. from what i have found online its a $900 piece of equipment.

if your go to trouble free pool they recommend liquid chlorine/bleach or salt chlorination because of cya level concerns

troublefreepool is great. definitely check that site out for tips on how to do things yourself.

if you read there you will learn about what they say above using the pucks. bleach is definitely the way to go instead to add chlorine.

Great site! Thanks,

I had been using trouble free and doing it myself, but as I've gotten busier and busier I decided to finally have a company come out.

They - of course - use pucks. I'm wondering how they handle rising CYA, or will they eventually just tell me I need to refill it?

check out pool troopers if they are in your area. i pay $140 all in with a salt chlorinator installed. every other company i looked at wanted 175 to 200 per month

i would ask them that. because one day they will probably tell you something is out of whack then try to charge you to "fix it"

I have zero desire to have a salt pool.

In 4 years I've had to do a partial drain on my pool for CYA levels one time. So to me, it's hard to beat the "set it and forget it" of the tablets.

I just go get the water tested once or twice a month when I think about it and do minor adjustments to it as needed. I however don't do much as far as their recommended treatments. Usually all they say is to add acid.

My pool was a salt system since we bought the house. I know I am in the minority probably but I really prefer the regular chlorine style and use the pool 2-3X more than I did. Plus I didn't have to pay for that salt cell.

Just my opinion, though.

I'm paying about $210 a month so I think I'll give it a go. I have an engineering degree for A&M so hopefully I can figure it out!

We have a SWG & the overall cost for me to manage it runs about $10 a month. Mostly just need to add acid but other than that few other chemicals unless we get a heavy rain. It's very easy. The thing I hate is brushing the pool once a week.

You should be able to do it yourself. We have had a pool for 20 years. When we had it built we had the salt system but they also installed the equip to run w/chlorine pucks. We ran as salt for about 16 years & when our 2nd salt system quit we switched over to chlorine. Have not had any problems. We had our pool completely renov 4 years ago & the chlorine is saving our stone coping.

I'll second that brushing the pool is the worst

When we bought our house three years ago my wife became the pool guy. She swears by Leslie's Pools and the people who work there. She'll run by, take a sample of water, get what she needs and does what they tell her. Our pool has been crystal clear for three years no matter the season.

So long as you're constantly turning over the water through filter media change-out and evaporation, CYA levels should stay reasonable. If you continue to have algae when everything else remains the same, just drain half the water and you should be fine.

Alternatively you can use liquid chlorine or bleach and you won't have the CYA issue. Either way, chlorine pools aren't really a problem to manage.

You'll need to brush and vacuum the entire pool about once a month or more... are you taking that into account?

PeekingDuck said:

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So long as you're constantly turning over the water through filter media change-out and evaporation, CYA levels should stay reasonable. If you continue to have algae when everything else remains the same, just drain half the water and you should be fine.

Alternatively you can use liquid chlorine or bleach and you won't have the CYA issue. Either way, chlorine pools aren't really a problem to manage.

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Huh? Evaporation does not lower CYA. The only way to lower CYA is to replace water proportionally. CYA 100 and want it at 50? Drain half the pool and refill.

A note on pucks. For you standard 99% trichlor pucks, for every 10ppm of chlorine you add to the water, you are adding 6ppm of CYA. With dichlor, for every 1ppm chlorine you add 0.9ppm CYA.

For those going or on the bleach route, get a Stenner pump and thank me later. Fill the tank with 15 gallons of bleach, set your timer and let 'er go.

it's not hard. it's intimidating going into leslie's and seeing all the products. use the BBB method (bleach, borax and baking soda (and acid to drop ph). trouble free pools is an awesome website. bookmark poolmath.com. lots of good advice on this thread especially on CYA levels (the above poster is correct that filtration/evaporation does not lower CYA; only draining and refilling will lower CYA) i ran into that problem using tablets and switched to liquid bleach.

also, spend the money and get a taylor FAS test kit. not cheap but it's better than the test strips that REALLY do not give you an overall picture of your water balance.

it is really not hard. spend a few hours reading and you'll figure it out.

Bottlerocket said:

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it's not hard. it's intimidating going into leslie's and seeing all the products. use the BBB method (bleach, borax and baking soda (and acid to drop ph). trouble free pools is an awesome website. bookmark poolmath.com. lots of good advice on this thread especially on CYA levels (the above poster is correct that filtration/evaporation does not lower CYA; only draining and refilling will lower CYA) i ran into that problem using tablets and switched to liquid bleach.

also, spend the money and get a taylor FAS test kit. not cheap but it's better than the test strips that REALLY do not give you an overall picture of your water balance.

it is really not hard. spend a few hours reading and you'll figure it out.

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FYI in case you missed it, TFP has put out a mobile app version of Pool Math. I highly recommend it!

Thanks for all the advice! It's been great. I have been studying up and think I should be able to get there. I think I am going to run tests in parallel with the pool company before I let them go though.

My last test came back that the free Chlorine and the combined chlorine were both 2.5 but my PH was 8.0. I think going by the card that means about 3 pints of muratic acid for my size pool. Total alkalinity was 200.

Not sure I have a CYA test in the kit I bought so will need to research that a little more.

Cepe said:

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Thanks for all the advice! It's been great. I have been studying up and think I should be able to get there. I think I am going to run tests in parallel with the pool company before I let them go though.

My last test came back that the free Chlorine and the combined chlorine were both 2.5 but my PH was 8.0. I think going by the card that means about 3 pints of muratic acid for my size pool. Total alkalinity was 200.

Not sure I have a CYA test in the kit I bought so will need to research that a little more.

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Did you mean free chlorine and TOTAL chlorine are 2.5? If your combined chlorine is 2.5 you have something growing in the pool and will probably see an algae bloom soon.

If you get the Pool Math app that troublefreepool just released you can set up your pool and it will calculate how much of what chemical you need to add and if you pay for the upgrade it will keep logs of your test results. Also you can use https://www.troublefreepool.com/calc.html if you don't care about logging results.

Re test kits...I have the TF100 from tftestkits.net and love it. It has every test you need for your pool including CYA.

the TF100 test kit is the way to go for sure

Troublefree pools is a great site. It provides a lot of valuable information.

The TF100 kit is the way to go. Doing the testing yourself is a lot more accurate than pool stores. I still take my water to the pool store once a month to make sure I have documentation for warranty, but the pool store numbers are all over the place. They also screwed me up on my Calcium Hardness number. They told me my numbers were low and I added some chemicals blindly - my fault for not double checking. Now, my Calcium numbers are outside the recommended range.

I have a Stenner pump and a 30 gallon tank, and that thing is awesome. I only keep about 5-6 gallons of bleach in there at a time, but I don't worry about getting splashed. It's tied into my automation and works great.

Also, my neighbor has been listening to the pool store and he has been battling algae and high CYA. He doesn't want to listen to me, so he has been buying tons of shock and algaecide. Eventually, he'll learn.

When I calculated it last, replacing a salt cell every 3-5 years is about the same cost as all the chlorine pucks you have to buy (if you go the puck route).

I run a salt water generator and augment with bleach if/when I have to shock (big pool party, etc).

My setup is 10 years old and I've replaced the salt cell once.

Going to Leslie's and doing "whatever they tell you" is a good way to blow money.

dlance said:

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PeekingDuck said:

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So long as you're constantly turning over the water through filter media change-out and evaporation, CYA levels should stay reasonable. If you continue to have algae when everything else remains the same, just drain half the water and you should be fine.

Alternatively you can use liquid chlorine or bleach and you won't have the CYA issue. Either way, chlorine pools aren't really a problem to manage.

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Huh? Evaporation does not lower CYA. The only way to lower CYA is to replace water proportionally. CYA 100 and want it at 50? Drain half the pool and refill.

A note on pucks. For you standard 99% trichlor pucks, for every 10ppm of chlorine you add to the water, you are adding 6ppm of CYA. With dichlor, for every 1ppm chlorine you add 0.9ppm CYA.

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I'm thinking he may have just meant that as water evaporates and you replaced it with fresh water.

I know last summer, going into the summer, my pool CYA was very high. I lamented over draining it and then decided to give it some time to see if it came down. Once the summer hit and I was having to refill at a pretty regular rate, the CYA took care of itself rather quickly. Much easier solution than renting a pump to do a half drain and refill.

This year I've offloaded it to a local company. I just don't have the time to mess with it - as much as I love the trouble free pool method, you have to be willing to adjust every few days or it will get out of whack quickly. I had too many times where I needed to add chlorine but didn't have any on hand and just didn't feel like messing with a run to the store to get some. I still have my test kit, so here soon I may go and run the numbers and see if they're keeping it in good shape or if it is way out of whack (they've been managing it since the first week of May).

That still doesn't make sense. CYA does not leave with the evaporated water. Your concentration just goes up as water evaporates. Then it goes back down when you fill up.

Splash out will lower it slowly over time because the water with the CYA in it is removed from the pool. The only way I see fillups having an effect would be if you have an overflow drain that keeps the pool from being overfilled. Then you'd start flushing CYA with the overflow.