Pool Chemistry and Maintenance From a Backyard Pool Owner
Nadia Caldwell · July 10, 2026
Suppose you’re dosing shock at 20 ppm and your CYA reads 110 ppm. That’s the moment people start screaming “chlorine lock” online. They’ve dumped chemicals, nothing visibly improves, and panic sets in. The chlorine won’t budge on the test kit. They’ve absorbed the cyanuric acid chlorine lock myth wholesale, treated it as settled fact, and … Read more
Nadia Caldwell · July 3, 2026
Dose 20 ppm of calcium hypochlorite shock at a CYA level of 50 ppm, and your free chlorine will oxidize contaminants efficiently. Miss either variable, and you’re wasting money on a treatment that won’t work as intended. That’s the essence of what I want to cover in this guide — the specific numbers, the reasoning … Read more
Nadia Caldwell · July 1, 2026
Two competing pieces of advice circulate constantly around pool decks and online forums, and they directly contradict each other. One says “pH drops naturally over time, so you shouldn’t add acid unless it gets above 8.0.” The other insists “high alkalinity causes everything, lower it first and pH will follow.” One of these is wrong … Read more
Nadia Caldwell · June 24, 2026
Across years of chasing water chemistry on my own pool and half the neighborhood’s, one pattern showed up without fail: the instant someone pulls out a test strip and squints at its color chart is precisely when the chemistry management process starts deteriorating. The scenario unfolds predictably. You submerge the strip, observe the blue-green shift, … Read more