Inadvertent SLAM

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Sorry to hear of your trouble. If you are going to drain and refill, I would abandon the Slam for now. Because you are "blue, cloudy" the algae should be dead. Refilling with water again will likely drop your FC below 10 and allow for pH adjustment. Be sure to retest copper to acceptable levels, then re-commence your Slam and filtering.

This "downtime" may allow some of the dead algae to settle out and let you vac to waste. Please note my post assumes that you are draining a significant portion of your water.
 
Thanks for the extra tips. Since I'm a vinyl liner, I can only drain about 2.5 feet before I have to fill again ( shallow end is 3.5 deep).

Is there a way I can test for copper myself? The store has been unreliable at best.


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There's no point in putting bleach in just to drain it right back out. Drain and refill first, then slam. You won't loose any progress doing it this way, unless it takes days to drain the pool. The rise in pH during a slam is usually temporary, but we recommend lowering pH to 7.2 before starting a slam and then adjusting pH if needed after the slam is completed.
 
Your pH test is unreliable when the chlorine levels are high while SLAM'ing the pool, unfortunately, so I would not worry about it much while doing partial replacements.

I dealt with high copper for an entire summer, spending a LOT of money on chemicals to keep it in solution. Ultimately I would have been cheaper to drain and refill the pool, and spend $70 or $100 on the 27,000 gallons of water. Like others have said, you can do it by draining a couple of feet, adding back, and do that several times. You will gradually get the copper level down.

My steps ended up permanently stained from the copper, and when I replaced the liner last year, I ended up painting them while I had the pool drained, with some sanded epoxy paint from a pool store that was NOT cheap ($120 a gallon I think it was!), to get them white again.
 
Thanks again for the replies. I'll start draining tonight. I got so close to crystal clear water! I was really trying not to go back to the pool store for testing anymore, so I splurged on my own copper test:

API Copper Test Kit Amazon.com: API Copper Test Kit: Pet Supplies


I also had a sand filter leak last year I just fixed at the start of this season, so I had the family exfoliating their hands and feet rubbing the sand off the sides of the pool while they were in.

How many times should I drain and refill? I'm reading the 300 posts in the linked thread, but I haven't found that answer yet.


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Just looked and my bill was $230 for 30k gallons in June. So I can probably expect about the same or more after these drains.
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doc8404 said:
$100 for water?
is that delivery or from municipal plumbing?

$800 to fill my pool.
Click to expand...

I filled when I replaced the liner myself last year (much easier than you think) using a hose that is on my sprinkler meter. The sprinkler water rate is $2.88 per 1,000 gallons, for a total around $78 to fill. The prior time the liner had been replaced it was done by two off duty firemen who were in the business of liner replacement on their off days, and they hooked up a fire hose to the hydrant across the street and "flushed the lines" for the city for a few minutes.... ;-) Took almost 24 hours with my 3/4 inch hose - the firehose did the same job in 20 minutes.
 
I definitely need a fireman friend or two.

I managed a drain and refill over night and was surprised to still see cloudy water. I was under the impression that 3.5 feet of new water would make a difference on that end.

I'm letting it circulate a bit and then I'll take another sample to the store so they can tell me I don't have copper when I still do, lol. My copper testing kit gets here tomorrow.


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Here are my own testing results from my TF-100 today:

ALK 80
PH 7.4
FC 0.5
CC 0.5
HRD 250
CYA 0

Now, with my pH okay and no chlorine in the pool, my CYA and pH measurements should be accurate, right? I'm having the wife take a sample to the store for Copper testing. Hopefully one dilution was enough (though I bet it wasn't).
 
No change in copper levels. Tested at 1.0 ppm again.

I realized I have copper piping in the solar heating system too, but I've never had a copper problem before to my knowledge. Is it possible it's coming from that system as well as the copper based algaecide?


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Couple of points.
- High FC (<10 ppm) only affects the pH test. All others still accurate unless way over Slam target levels.
- Copper should only leach out of piping if pH is under 6.8 for a period of time I believe. Fortunately your testing should be more accurate. Too bad you didn't (or weren't asked to) save a sample of your pre-drain water to compare the refilled water too. Everyone's heaters are copper and they won't add copper unless the water conditions are not managed properly. I think your piping is just fine, but good reason to manage pH well ;)

I imagine you will want to retest copper tomorrow with your kit before you add anything, but if it is cloudy you might consider adding a gallon of bleach tonight after dark. May not help, but won't hurt anything but a few bucks.
 
I was thinking the same thing. I was really nervous having a pool with no FC in it all day yesterday while I was at work, so I added a little before drain/refilling again.

This is the second day, and the second 7000 gallons I will have removed. Hopefully my test kit will make me feel better about losing all this water.


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Testing results this morning. Me:

FC 1
CC 0.5
pH 7.6
Alk 80
Hardness 225
CYA 0

Store:
Alk 100
CYA 0
Copper 0.6 - 1.0 ppm

So again there has been no real measurable change in copper levels.

Probably due to it being tested by strips by the pool store, and likely because 1.0 is their highest reading. They also mentioned that high FC levels could release copper from the solar heating system. Could the SLAM I was doing have contributed to the copper levels?

My copper kit can't get here soon enough and I'm regretting using Amazon Prime, as it feels like tftestkit.net would have had it in my hands by now. (They have one too).


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The only way copper gets into the pool is by physically adding copper through mineral packs, copper based algaecides and other products that contain copper. If you have a heater with a copper heat exchanger or copper pipes supplying the pool that have degraded they will add copper to the water also. If you were slamming with only plain, unscented bleach or liquid chlorine you were not adding copper to the pool. It is possible that the original copper level was off the charts high.
 

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