Day 3 of SLAM

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J

JosephBarker

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Jun 17, 2016
22
Ozark, MO
I'm in day 3 of my slam. I haven't had any overnight chlorine loss and my CC level is always at .5 or below. But my water is still cloudy and doesn't look like it's changed. Is my sand filter just not good enough?

FC: 20
CC: .5
TC: 20.5

pH: 7.5
CYA: 50
Alkalinity: 100
 
Stick with the slam - it will work. My SLAM was 2 weeks - that last one was waiting for the water to clear. Totally worth it, though, when you get the sparkly water! Just hard to wait on a hot weekend perfect for swimming. :/
 
JB, while each of the 3 criteria helps to give us a picture of your water, neither one by itself is absolute in every situation. For that reason, a TFP SLAM is not complete until you have successfully met all 3 objectives - clear water being one of them. You are still very early in the SLAM at just 3 days. While it's encouraging that you are not losing any FC overnight and CCs are low to zero, cloudy water tells us you have a lot of residual organics still in the water that require filtering. We hope it's just dead algae, but we don't know for sure yet. For that reason we maintain the FC level until the water clears. It's also possible that the cloudiness is (new) dead algae produced from somewhere else in the pool. You probably don't have a light niche, but what about cake steps or a ladder perhaps? Those are notorious for hiding algae. If in the next day or so if the DE alone works, you know it was just residual junk suspended in the water. If the DE doesn't work, then somewhere more live algae is being sanitized by the chlorine.

By any chance have you experienced any odd psi readings with your filter gauge? Backwashing at 25% increase going okay?
 
Texas Splash said:
JB, while each of the 3 criteria helps to give us a picture of your water, neither one by itself is absolute in every situation. For that reason, a TFP SLAM is not complete until you have successfully met all 3 objectives - clear water being one of them. You are still very early in the SLAM at just 3 days. While it's encouraging that you are not losing any FC overnight and CCs are low to zero, cloudy water tells us you have a lot of residual organics still in the water that require filtering. We hope it's just dead algae, but we don't know for sure yet. For that reason we maintain the FC level until the water clears. It's also possible that the cloudiness is (new) dead algae produced from somewhere else in the pool. You probably don't have a light niche, but what about cake steps or a ladder perhaps? Those are notorious for hiding algae. If in the next day or so if the DE alone works, you know it was just residual junk suspended in the water. If the DE doesn't work, then somewhere more live algae is being sanitized by the chlorine.

By any chance have you experienced any odd psi readings with your filter gauge? Backwashing at 25% increase going okay?
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I'm sticking with the SLAM, In the bright sun this afternoon while vacuuming I could finally see the vacuum at the bottom! So I guess it is clearing up some. Now that I was able to see the bottom there were areas of brown that i cleaned up. It looked like dead algae, maybe that's what was clouding it up so bad. Cleaning is much easier now that I can see somewhat through the water. I'll be able to clean it better and better the more it clears up. My filter gauge hasn't really gone over 20% increase but I have backwashed once since I started just because. There is nothing in the pool yet, no ladder or steps. The only place it could be hiding would be in the liner, I don't see any bubbles though and hopefully that isn't the case.
 
What does the extra chlorine do in this case to clear up the water.
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Time after Time after Time, we see people stop the SLAM too early and algae returns. You might want to think of the SLAM as two phases......an algae killing phase and a filtering and cleaning phase.

However, Those two phases cannot be separated. There is no CLEAR point where you can drop the chlorination and just filter.

So to simplify our process, we teach to simply maintain the SLAM value right to the very end of crystal clear water and passing the OCLT and .5 ppm CC's or less.

You may consume a LITTLE BIT of extra chlorine but it is the insurance you need to make sure algae cannot get back in your pool.

I am not sure if that's the scientific answer you are seeking but that is why we designed the SLAM to be effective in every case.
 
duraleigh said:
Time after Time after Time, we see people stop the SLAM too early and algae returns. You might want to think of the SLAM as two phases......an algae killing phase and a filtering and cleaning phase.

However, Those two phases cannot be separated. There is no CLEAR point where you can drop the chlorination and just filter.

So to simplify our process, we teach to simply maintain the SLAM value right to the very end of crystal clear water and passing the OCLT and .5 ppm CC's or less.

You may consume a LITTLE BIT of extra chlorine but it is the insurance you need to make sure algae cannot get back in your pool.

I am not sure if that's the scientific answer you are seeking but that is why we designed the SLAM to be effective in every case.
Click to expand...

I can understand why people would stop, it can make you feel like you aren't making progress and just dumping money into the water. I will trust in the SLAM and continue, it is exciting to be able to see the bottom now even if just a little. It's only eating about a gallon and a half of 10% a day so that's not too bad. I assume once I'm finished and let it drop back down to 6-7 ppm that it'll consume less during the day?
 

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That's correct. Once the pool is algae-free you should not lose any more than about 4 ppm per day - ideally around 2-3. The tail-end of any SLAM can be the most frustrating because you are so close you just want it to be over. Being that it's summer now and the water looks refreshing doesn't help either. But remember, you can still swim as long as you don't exceed your SLAM level. So hop-in! :splash: Give everyone a brush and let them scrub while they're at it. :p
 
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