Another Noob!

[poolnoob42]

Hey guys,

Got myself a little above ground pool for some summer fun and have actually enjoyed learning the science behind it all, but I am clearly not a jedi yet. Ran into trouble last week after discovering what CYA is (whoops!). Had a ton of it in my pool from using dichlor and/or trichlor rendering my free chlorine levels, well, pretty much un-free. Switched to using bleach but alas it was already game over - had to use a ton of it just to keep minimum FC levels and one day of neglect was all it took. Hello there big time algae bloom, how are you today? I knew I was done for. Went ahead and drained the pool - not completely, the drain plug is a few inches above the bottom of the pool, scrubbed the algae from the floor (miraculously the walls remained untouched from the outbreak), which made for a nice four inches of swampy pea soup, and refilled to get the CYA to a manageable level.

How many things have I done wrong so far? Beats me ... but wait, there's more!

After the pool is filled and I have a nice watered down pea soup swamp, that's when I blast it with some PoolTime Shock XtraBlue. Seems to be working too. Green starts turning to blue, water begins clearing up. Free chlorine drops in a hurry eating up all that pea soup though, so over the course of three days, I zap it with that shock treatment two more times - once a day in the evening after the sun's done working its own wonderful magic on my precious chlorine.

But then I notice the ingredients on the packet of shock treatment ... dichlor! Oh noes, not going there again! So I run to the store to grab more bleach.

So this is where I'm at now - I've got a blue pool water, but it's hazy. The haze is milky white and it appears to increase in thickness towards the bottom of the pool. I make sure my FC gets bumped to at least 10 every evening and my TC is mirroring my FC. TA, pH, CYA are okay. I can't give you numerical readings on any of that because these test strips aren't that precise (and yes, I know you all will tell me to order the good kit - I'm about to do it as soon as I'm done typing this). It's the until my kit arrives part - if you guys could give me a temporary strategy to keep me where I'm at now (would hate to have to start all over) I would be most grateful.

Thanks in advance

 

[Texas Splash]

Good morning and welcome! Since your pool is under 3K, have you been to this page yet: Pool School - Guide for Seasonal/Temporary Pools. It's designed specifically for smaller pools. But yes, you definitely need something better to test your water other than test strips. Based on your latest water description, you still have algae in there, it's just in different phases. The only way to defeat it is with regular liquid bleach (generic is fine). But until you get the proper test kit where you can verify your CYA and FC levels accurately, it will always be a guessing game. So definitely checkout TFTestkits.net to get the right test kit.

In the meantime, the best you can do for now is add about 1/2 gallon of bleach to your water each evening. That won't clear-up everything, but hopefully keep the algae from getting worse. Of course you have the option of draining again, at least as far down as you can go with that drain plug, but the bleach will still be required to kill the remaining algae. Either way, having a good test kit, or at least what is recommended on the seasonal pool page must be something in your (pool) toolbox. Hope this helps. Have a great day!