You should keep your outdoor pool or spa's Cyanuric Acid level at 0-30 parts per million (PPM).
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.
What happens when CYA in a pool is too high? – CYA Levels exceeding a threshold of 70 parts-per-million of cyanuric acid can reduce the effectiveness of the chlorine in a pool. The amount of time it takes to kill bacteria lengthens as the concentration of CYA increases. The ideal level for CYA is 30-50 ppm.
Although there are no known adverse health effects associated with high CYA concentrations, most health officials usually limit CYA levels to 100 ppm. Some states recommend a lower level for spas, and some jurisdictions ban the use of CYA altogether.
The effects of high cyanuric acid aren't a concern for your health particularly. The main issue when cyanuric acid is too high is chlorine becomes less effective. The higher the levels of cyanuric acid, the more free chlorine is needed to maintain the same level of protection.
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.
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.
When Is It Safe To Swim After Adding Cyanuric Acid? As a general rule though, you can swim in your pool within 20 minutes of adding cyanuric acid. Make sure you have the pump on when you add it so that it mixes in the water. It's always best to check the manufacturer's instructions though.
All alkaline materials are buffers. Cyanuric acid happens to be the most common buffer found in pool water. In effect, cyanuric acid helps stabilize both chlorine and pH. It binds with chlorine to prevent photolysis and it keeps pH elevated.
The half-life of chlorine—when exposed to direct sunlight—is about 45 minutes. That means half your chlorine is gone in 45 minutes. Another 45 minutes, another half of your chlorine is gone.
Cyanuric Acid (CYA) is a pool balancing product used to help chlorine last longer. Chlorine, in its natural form, is unstabilized—which means it degrades when exposed to sunlight. Adding Cyanuric Acid reduces the sun's impact on chlorine loss.
You should only add stabilizer if your levels are below 30ppm. Usually, all you have to do is check the level of stabilizer (cyanuric acid) in your pool every week to judge whether it's doing the job or not. What is this?
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.
You may swim immediately if Stabilizer was added through the skimmer, otherwise wait 12 hours to swim until all product in the pool is dissolved. For pools with bleachable surfaces, such as colored plaster or vinyl, do not allow product to sit on the bottom of the pool.
For this reason, it is essential that all outdoor pools using cyanuric acid as a stabilizer maintain the required free chlorine residual of 2.0-10.0 parts per million (ppm). both chlorine and cyanuric acid so it is not necessary to add cyanuric acid to the pool water.
But if the cloudy water persists long after you've shocked the pool, you're likely having an issue with water balance, circulation, or filtration. Heavy use of a calcium based pool shock (cal-hypo) may increase Calcium Hardness over a period of time, increasing your odds of cloudy water.
If the chlorine smell is very strong, however, you may soon spot “red-eyed” swimmers emerging from the pool. That's when the pool water is assumed to have “too much chlorine” in it. Ironically, a strong chemical smell around the pool and “swimmer red eye” may be signs that there is not enough chlorine in the water.
We also found that cyanuric acid is denser than water so it sinks to the bottom of a body of water.
Just make sure that you wait at least 20 minutes after adding chlorine stabilizer (and that it's completely dissolved into the water) before you go swimming. The same rule applies to all other swimming pool water chemicals including adding alkalinity increaser, chlorine, algaecide, and more.
If your CYA levels dip too low, your chlorine will be completely gone in a few hours and your swimming pool will become susceptible to bacteria and algae growth. If the pool stabilizer levels get too high, however, it overpowers the chlorine and makes it less effective.
Shock does not contain any cyanuric acid, so after 24 hours, the elevated amounts of chlorine are no longer in the pool. as 90 percent of the chlorine in the water in two hours.
Baking soda is the best way to raise total alkalinity with minimal effect to pH and cyanuric acid.
When cyanuric acid is added to the pool, it increases the total alkalinity, but not the carbonate alkalinity, which is the alkalinity that matters in water balance.
At ideal pH (7.4 to 7.6) and cyanuric acid levels (30 to 50 ppm), the cyanuric acid/cyanurate system will not significantly contribute to the buffering of pool water. However, as the cyanuric acid levels increase, they will have an effect on the total alkalinity test result.