How To Lower CYA Levels in Your Pool

Have you ever walked into a pool store and they told you that your Cyanuric Acid (CYA) levels are too high and that you need to drain your swimming pool? If you use chlorine tabs in your swimming pool, be prepared for this but instead of draining your swimming pool we want you to consider recycling your pool water instead.

What is CYA

CYA is also known as stabilizer/conditioner for your swimming pool and it is a chemical that is necessary to help retain chlorine in your swimming pool. In this blog post, we want to highlight what CYA is, what it does, how it affects chlorine usage, and what you should do when the levels get too high! Please note, most pool professionals in the industry will recommend draining your swimming pool and starting over but at Pool Water Recycling, we want to show you why recycling your residential or commercial swimming pool water with our Reverse Osmosis (RO) mobile filtration system is a much better solution.

Ultimately, the conditioner protects the Free Chlorine (FC) from being destroyed by the ultraviolet rays of the sun. Because of this, Cyanuric Acid can help reduce the cost of maintaining a safe and clean swimming pool. Depending on whether or not you have a salt system, the normal ranges for CYA in your swimming pool is 30 and 80 parts per million (ppm). But, what happens when those levels are higher than 80 ppm? The biggest issue would be the effectiveness of the chlorine to act as a disinfectant in your pool. When you have higher levels of CYA it will actually bind with the chlorine, making it slower to kill bacteria and other microorganisms and prevent algae from growing. Higher levels will also increase cloudiness in the pool water; making it very susceptible to algae growth. It could also increase the amount of chlorine you will need to use to keep it clear and free of algae growth. With that said, it isn’t uncommon for us to pull up to swimming pools with CYA levels as high as 100, 200, or even 300 parts per million (ppm) or higher! When this happens it can be much more challenging to keep free chlorine working optimally in your swimming pool because the factor to establish the level of FC needed to combat algae is the level of CYA x .075. So, if you had 150 ppm it would take approximately 11.25 ppm (free chlorine) to keep your pool algae free and that can be challenging especially when the water is warm.

At this point, you can either choose to drain and refill your swimming pool which is never recommended unless you have structural damage or recycle the water using our mobile filtration trailer that comes to your residential or commercial swimming pool and recycles the water onsite. It’s equipped with Reverse Osmosis (RO) filtration that lowers Calcium Hardness (CH), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Cyanuric Acid (CYA), phosphates, nitrates and so much more without draining the swimming pool. The filtered swimming pool water that returns to the pool is drinkable water, which is obviously much better than tap water. By using our service, you will also conserve up to 85% of the existing water in the swimming pool, we never expose the interior finish and you can actually swim in the pool while the process is being performed!

If you’re dealing with high CYA, Calcium Hardness, or TDS levels and someone recommends a water change, please contact us first to learn about all of the benefits of using our service because you will be much happier with the end product and you will also be saving water too!