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
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