I've been reading up on pool water chemistry, sanitizers, chlorine, ORP and CYA.
This of course _after_ opening up my pool (new pool owner) for the first time. And of course after a visit to my friendly neighbourhood pool store, who sold me all these chemicals to balance the water. What gets me is that you never buy Cyanuric Acid you buy a product called "Protect 20", you never buy baking soda you buy "PH+", you never buy borate (still haven't figured that one out) you buy "Optimizer Plus" and so on. This bugs me, I want to know what I'm buying, and this is what got me reading.
So it seems that the "Protect 20" bottle I bought was indeed CYA, and the whole bottle went right in (I forgot the bottle size) to my 18ft above ground pool, per the Pool Store's instructions.
In my readings I've come to the conclusion that by regular use of stabilized chlorine, one sees the sanitizing effect of chlorine go down and down as the level of CYA increases (and there's some already in there). Note that we're somewhat 'lucky' here in my region in that we get to flush out 2/3 of the pool water when we close 'em down for the winter, so out it goes in autumn.
Now this was before I got educated. I plan to get the CYA level tested sometime today.
For chlorination, I'm manually feeding granular chlorine to the pool after dissolving it in a bucket of hot water. This I do when the OTO reading falls below 1.5 ppm. (Yes, the DPD test kit I bought online is on its way to me soon.) This routine works well for me, however I'm open to suggestions on better ways.
This granulated chlorine I bought late last year does not mention anything about being stabilized, and no mention of "dichlor". It just says "Calcium Hypochlorite, oxygenated". What exactly is in there? There are no other indications.
Also, the "Cyanurics, Benefactor or Bomb" article mentions 20 ppm as a level for manually treated pools. This seems a bit high, what are people's thoughts on this. I'd say 5-10 ppm.
Had I known about CYA before opening my pool, that "Protect 20 " thing would never had gone in there.
I've also noticed some really conflicting information on chemistry, the document from the Missouri of Health mentions no adverse affect of CYA on CA. Interesting...