brand new pool startup--help!!

[Reedus]

Originally Posted by Roger427

No it's not end all, all the chemicals need to be balanced. But CYA gets out of control too fast and you'll get so high you have to keep a higher level off free chlorine or risk algae. Keeping it balanced will reduce scale buildup. Yes pucks are easier but with that convenience comes a price and that price is Too high CYA. Or you could put together a stenner pump have not manually add every day. I was going through about 4 gallons a week mid summer which was 1/2 gallon a day. I didn't go with salt because of corrosive nature and I've got travertine coping and deck along with swim-up bar top so I didn't want the salt to eat it away. With our high hardness, the salt cells take a beating. My older system required weekly cleaning but I gear newer systems are better in that they reverse polarity regularly to help reduce the buildup on the cell.

Do me a favor and test your salt now in the pool and then again after the season is over after using bleach to chlorinate. You'll be surprised. You will have successfully added enough salt through use of bleach to run a SWG. Bleach is nothing but sodium hypochlorite and it separates when you dump it in the pool. Hypochlorite ion does the sanitizing and the sodium ion gets left behind as salt.

[CheyDee]

Originally Posted by Reedus

Do me a favor and test your salt now in the pool and then again after the season is over after using bleach to chlorinate. You'll be surprised. You will have successfully added enough salt through use of bleach to run a SWG. Bleach is nothing but sodium hypochlorite and it separates when you dump it in the pool. Hypochlorite ion does the sanitizing and the sodium ion gets left behind as salt.

[Bolded emphasis mine.]

Actually, bleach is not just sodium hypochlorite. It's sodium hypochlorite + a small amount of sodium hydroxide.

ALL sources of chlorine will have salt. For every 10 ppm of FC you add, you are also adding 8.2 ppm of salt. (This happens when the chlorine is used up, since it gets converted to chloride, which = salt.) Bleach and liquid chlorine add an additional 8.2 ppm of salt, whereas pucks do not. However, bleach and liquid chlorine do not add CYA, which pucks do. Cal-Hypo doesn't add CYA either, but in addition to adding salt it increases the CH, (which the other forms do not).