Okay, here's the pic from this a.m. Yes, that's the bottom you see. A little more stain scrubbing, another vac, etc. and we're almost there on the Swamp rehab part. I post this for posterity, should another poster google "foreclosure swamp/ black water" etc. BBB works!

RECAP for posterity:

Here's what 12 days (would have been shorter if I hadn't coasted for a while awaiting test kit) 58 gallons of bleach, testing and filter supervision/backwash can do:

Great sequence of pictures!

That is a great set of pictures. Thanks for doing that work!

Thank you all for the hand-holding! I'm sure there's volumes more I'll need to learn over time, but it's a good feeling to have a clue what to do to regain control. Better living through science, right!
Cheers!

Next phase begins - passed overnight test twice now, vacuumed again and hAve crystal clear water and have removed or faded vast majority of leaf stains.

I need to clean up the stairs, which are orange tinged from I suspect well iron. Will use a metal sequestrate right on them and then et the residue treat pool.

Maybe I should start a new thread, but here are my phase 2 questions:

This am FC was 11.5, cc .4, ph 7.5, TA 180. No real cya showing up -- and still cya in sock -- my tester doesn't do well under 30 ppm, I let the cya sample warm overnight this time and while colder, can still see dot with water all the way to the top.

There was only 2 lbs for 20 ppm in the sock to begin with, so these are my options re cya -- a) add 20-30 ppm more via liquid plus put sock in filter now or b) use the evil pucks to maintain for a while (there is a puck feeder) though this may be habituating.

With respect to the high TA (liner is vinyl so not panicking yet) what should I do? Leave it for now if the ph holds once I reduce the chlorine?

I also wanted to add borates for water condition sometime over the next month as I suspect it will also help with my eczema, which may be aggravated.

Can anyone suggest a reasonable plan so that I don't go off half-cocked and net unintended consequences?
Thanks in advance!

Dave, you mentioned in this post not to add DE yet to the filter. I have a DE filter and I believe I read that you should never run the filter without DE powder in it. So whenever I backwash, I always begin the DE powder refill process within a couple minutes of turning the pump back on.

Are you saying that it's OK to run the filter without DE powder in it - especially when first opening the pool and trying to get all that winter "junk" cleared out of it? This year when I opened the pool I was fortunate to have fairly good looking water already (thanks to the BBB method!!), but there definitely was some stuff in there that needed to be filtered out and within the first 24 hours I had to backwash already - obviously losing all the DE powder I had added the day before. It obviously would have made more sense to run the filter for the first day or so without DE powder just to get the big stuff out of the water, but again, I thought I had read that you should never do this.

Thoughts? Anyone else care to weigh in on this topic?

Thanks!

Swampwoman has a sand filter. Sometimes DE is added to a sand filter near the end of the shocking process to speed up clearing the water once the stuff is dead. In your case since you have a DE filter, then you are always using DE in it or it would not work.

Indeed, I was just referring to a boosting trick I read. I didn't end up needing to do it at all - time, chlorine and the slow but steady sand did her all

Just an update for the benefit of other newbies/posterity, I have been reducing my TA from 190 using the aeration/acid method -- dropping the ph, then aerating it back up, then adding acid this week. I am using a little fountain from swim line. It's working nicely. I am down to 90 right now. I am adding borates likely on sun after my next drop/raise this a.m. But opted for the ph neutral option of pro team supreme plus.

In case you're wondering how I got to 190 TA from a low range, as a newbie caveat to others I will tell you it was because in the beginning of my quest I was merging info inaccurately from the pool store and this board and hadn't yet fully grasped why wise posters say that you need to pick a source. Pool stores ignore (deliberately or inadvertently) the finer points of BBB, so if they tell you "add 4 lbs of ph up" they're not accounting for the fact you may then have to lower the TA. It's because they're ASSUMING you're going to be using the trichloroethane puck, which reduce ph and TA, while I believe unstabilized chlorine raises ph.

So when you're tring to truly troubleshoot a pool problem, you do really have to pick and stick with an approach because there are interrelated and unintended consequences otherwise.

Hope this is helpful to someone somewhere down the line. I cannot tell how much the info shared on this board has helped me, so thanks again!

Got it...thanks! I missed the fact about this being a sand filter....makes sense now!!

I also share Swampwoman's sentiment of how much info I have learned from this site. And the proof is in the pudding....or should I say "in the pool"? I opened the pool this season to a fairly clean pool (a bit of algae) and just overnight after starting everything up, I had a blue pool already!!

Ah! That looks fantastic! What a great job.

Swampwoman, just wanted you to know that I found this post and website from a Google search of "foreclosure swamp of a pool how to handle," so thanks for thinking of posterity!

I went from planning on renting a pump from Home Depot the first day we move into the house to drain the entire pool, refill, and figure out what to do from there to thinking that it might even be possible to work with the swamp I currently have in my soon to be backyard. I see you are in Michigan and I'm in Central Texas, so I might be kidding myself. The pool has been neglected for, at least, 9 months and this central Texas weather is perfect for creating a backyard swamp.

I have no idea how many gallons my pool is, whether it's concrete, fiberglass, or any other material I've never heard of, so I plan on making a trip to the house today to at least write down pump name, measure the pool, and figure out what all to determine from there, but wanted to thank you for your post and helping other newbie swamp owners figure out what to do. Since my husband would simply prefer to fill it with dirt, I'm somewhat on my own to figure this all out and salvage what I think is a pool under all that thick, green algae!

This site will take me days to research. Good thing I enjoy researching.

Thanks for letting me know. I will assist any way that I can.

Key in determining the best approach to the battle is what type of pool you have and what type of water source. If it is a vinyl liner and you have a high water table, while you might want to use what they call a trash pump on the bottom to get leaves/debris and take it down a bit, you will not likely want to risk a wall collapse by draining ALL the water...so in that case, it might be a partial drain. Or no drain

If it was left uncovered and there are a lot of trees nearby, you may have a lot of leaves and resulting tanin stains. In that case, get a large mouthed leaf rake and a wheel barrow and a place to dump same so they can dry out to be burned/disposed of.

If you smell sulfur/amonia (kind of **** and brimstone smell and have no CYA on opening, there's a good chance that your CYA has been converted to amonia and will need a SUPER big load of initial chlorine to bust it down and make the chlorine start to hold.

If you are in a locale where people winterize (likely not in Texas) you *might* want to get a pool guy to at least SHOW you how to open/unplug and get your equipment operations or test your pump/filter etc. I found that part of pool service very valuable.

Note that if you also purchased a home warranty with your home (eg. FreddieMac sells em with HomeSteps) that your warranty supposedly covers your foreclosed pool equipment as well. So if your pump or skimmer are not properly operational, it should be covered by the warranty. Just thought you might be interested in knowing that -- in my case, did not need to exercise warranty. Now, that said, the warranty may be ****. Just speaking theoretically!

When you are rehabbing and preventing your H. from dumping bags of concrete into the pool remember NOT to use my bleach consumption as a guideline because YOURS will have a lot more HEAT and SUN to combat this time of year (my water was very cold and outside temps cool during my recovery, just FYI.)

At any rate, keep me posted and I'll hopefully be able to help you through it. My h. also did not want a pool (aka did not want to worry about/maintain a pool). Funny thing is now you can't keep him outta it I am betting you'll have the same experience once you're up and running.

I will be requiring quite a bit of assistance since, at the present moment, everything I read on the forums seems like a foreign language.

We had a pool guy come out last week to just give us a cursory/inexpensive assessment of the pool since we are just in the 7 day inspection period. He said the the equipment was running fine, BUT he said that he didn't run it too long because the smell was horrendous. It's a bank owned foreclosure and the agent already mentioned that the neighbor kept coming over to turn off the pool equipment because of the smell, so it's been sitting for a very long time.

I want the pool taken care of from day one because I can't stand the sight of it and don't want to worry about my kids or dogs getting into that water. We will be gutting the inside of the house and trying to get as much done inside before we have to move out of our current home, which is why my husband wants nothing to do with the pool. I plan on doing as much research as possible to figure out what will be the best approach. I think in order to get the inside ready for move-in, I just need to get the pool clean and not necessarily ready for swimming, which won't go over well with the kids, but necessary at this point.

I found out a few things when I went by the house today and will add them to my signature. Your pool looks great and gives me hope.

Le -- when you get ready to tackle your pool just post all your info and questions in your own thread. That way we can keep up with what's going on and what's been done before. You've already made a big step in adding what you know to your sig.