DIYbanter - View Single Post

SMS

On 7/14/2011 5:34 PM, wrote:

We get enough rain to keep the stabilizer down. I haven't noticed any
sign of concentration of the chlorine around the floater. It seems to
test pretty consistently, wherever I take the sample.

LOL, that's what finally reduced my stabilizer low enough this past
winter. It rained so much that was pumping water out of the pool every
few weeks. This diluted the stabilizer and got in to between 50 and 80
(depending on the employee performing the test).

I'd say at least half the time I go in to get my water tested a Leslie's
employee is trying to explain to a customer that they have to partially
drain their pool to get the cyanuric acid down in order for the chlorine
tablets to be effective at algae control.

It's ironic because probably the biggest selling item at Leslie's is the
tri-chlor tablets which cause the cyanuric acid problem in the first
place. We normally don't get a tremendous amount of rain to dilute the
acid.

Sometimes Leslie's will grudgingly admit that the tri-chlor tablets
cause problems, and advise chlorine or try to sell you a salt system.
They only sell the weaker chlorine, to get the more concentrated (and
cheaper) chlorine I have to go another mile down to an independent pool
store.

One thing I found out is that the cyanuric acid test results are highly
dependent on the employee performing the test. It's not an easy result
to read. I could see an employee reading too low a result and the pool
owner adding cyanuric acid to bring it up when it's already high enough.

Leslie's also doesn't sell the more highly concentrated, and far, far
less expensive, phosphate removers, only Phos Free. Even the commercial
Phos Free they sell is not as concentrated as some other phosphate removers.