CYA is a pretty strong acid on its own, so the best way to add it is to dissolve it in a bucket of warm water. Then go all around and pour the solution just inside the edges of the pool. For safety's sake, wear gloves and goggles when you mix it.
Solid granular stabilizer is best added by placing it in a sock or nylon and hanging that sock in front of fast moving return(s). Shaking and squeezing the sock while in the pool water will help the stabilizer dissolve faster.
Why You Have Low Cyanuric Acid
The most likely reason is that you've only ever used unstabilized chlorine in your pool. Heads up: Unstabilized chlorine, such as sodium hypochlorite (liquid chlorine), lithium hypochlorite, and calcium hypochlorite, is pure chlorine.
Saltwater pool manufacturers recommend maintaining cyanuric acid levels around 60-80 ppm. This is a bit higher than the 30-50 ppm range recommended for non-saltwater pools. And if you live in an area where your pool gets a lot of direct sunlight, you may even consider bumping your cyanuric acid up to 80-100 ppm.
2. Dichloroisocyanuric Acid: Also known as “dichlor,” this is another type of chlorine shock. Dichlor contains both chlorine and cyanuric acid and will, over time, raise your cyanuric acid levels.
According to Clean Pool and Spa, you should wait no less than two hours before swimming in a pool which has been treated with muriatic acid. According to the website, "If you pour muriatic acid in the pool and swim within 10 to 15 minutes you might get a 'hot spot' of acid that can burn you."
As mentioned earlier, it will take at least 48 hours and up to a week to fully dissolve. Powdered cyanuric acid is not so common and it may not be available to buy in your area. It's reported to not dissolve any faster than granular stabilizer.
Ideally you should keep CYA between 30-50, assuming you do not have a SWCG. If you do have a Salt Water Chlorine Generator, or your pool is exposed to lots of direct sunlight, you want to maintain a higher level. The recommended CYA level for SWCG pools is 70-80.
It also goes by the name CYA, pool stabilizer, or pool conditioner. The ideal range for cyanuric acid in your pool is between 30 and 50 ppm (parts per million). Anything significantly higher and you should be keeping a close eye on your water chemistry, as it may be compromised.
Answer: Cyanuric acid shouldn't be at Zero for an outdoor swimming pool because chlorine will deplete faster in hot and humid weather, leading to cloudy water. If your FC is at normal level of 3ppm, raise Cyanuric acid level to 40 ppm and you will reduce chloramine levels that make your water appear cloudy.
Open your pool under normal procedures, and let the filter run with its normal amount of chemicals. When all the other chemicals, such as chlorine. pH and alkalinity, are balanced, add the chlorine stabilizer. Add the stabilizer only after the filter has been backwashed to ensure it is cycled through a clean filter.
Clearly, when cyanuric acid is in the water, it overpowers pH in terms of controlling chlorine strength.
If you have a pH reading of 7.8 or higher, and an average size (15,000 gallons) in-ground pool, you should add 1/4 gallon (a quart) of muriatic acid, and re-test after the water has circulated for an hour.
We recommend adding Acid weekly! Adding a little and often is better for your water and can actually save you money overtime. Large doses over longer periods of time take a larger portion of your 'Total alkalinity' away.
Water with a pH that's too high also can cause skin rashes, cloudy water and scaling on pool equipment. Over time, scaling inside pipes can build up, restricting water flow and putting a strain on your pool circulation system that can lead to costly repairs.
Cyanuric acid is available as a granular solid and as a liquid (sodium cyanurate). Most commonly, however, cyanuric acid is found in stabilized chlorines dichlor and trichlor. These stabilized chlorines have about 50-58% CYA in their formulas.
To achieve the recommended amount of 30 ppm, add one pound of CYA stabilizer per 4,000 gallons of water. The chemical is a strong acid so wearing gloves and goggles when preparing the solution is well-advised. Once the required amount of stabilizer has been calculated, mix it in a five-gallon bucket of warm water.
There are two ways for preparing cyanuric acid from urea. One is by heating urea at high temperature (≥ 250 °C) without solvent, and the other is the trimerization of urea in a solvent, with or without a catalyst [6,7,8,9].
Yes both cyanuric acid and muriatic acid are both acids but they serve different purposes for the pool owner. Cyanuric acid has the chemical formula CNOH, whereas muriatic acid is a diluted form of hydrochloric acid, HCI.
We also found that cyanuric acid is denser than water so it sinks to the bottom of a body of water.
While shocking and adding algaecide is effective in getting rid of algae, it should not be done together. This is because when you mix chlorine and algaecide together, it renders both of them useless. Hence, you should first shock the pool and wait for the chlorine levels to fall below 5 PPM.