Dirt in pool

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adrob2

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Jul 9, 2014
40
Chapel Hill, NC
We had a flash flood here on Sat evening and a river of dirt/mud ran into my pool and turned my crystal clear water into this! I've read several posts here and decided to try and let it settle and vac to waste to try and clear it. Since Sat I've cleaned out the debris with a leaf rake, let it settle for 2 days, vac to waste 3x on Mon, added chlorine and ran the pump for an hour, turned pump off and let it settle again. It doesn't seem to be settling much or look a lot different since Monday and I still can't even see the bottom of the shallow end. I'm planning to vac to waste blindly again tonight.

If I don't see much improvement what would everyone recommend? I was thinking if it doesn't settle much that I probably need to start running the pump and try to filter it out. I added some DE Monday when I ran the pump and had to backwash almost immediately as the psi rose sharply within 45 min. Thinking of running the pump without DE for awhile until it's a little clearer and then adding DE to finish it off. Thank you so much for any advice!
 

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Do not run the filter without DE in it. You can damage the grids.

It looks from the pic that the dirt is gone and what you have left is an algae bloom. SLAM the pool. The article on how to do that is in Pool School.
 
My filter is a sand filter, so I was adding DE just to increase filtering effectiveness. I really don't think it's a algea bloom as it was crystal clear Sat afternoon before the flash flood. CYA levels prior to storm were at 60 or 70 (still have a hard time with this one sometimes and kept getting a 65 reading). Tested water on Monday evening and FC was 5.0, CC 0.0, I added 4 121 oz jugs of bleach to bring chlorine to estimated 16.0 and let pump circulate for 1 hour. I will test chlorine level again this evening. The appearance of the water has not changed much since Sun morning when I woke up. I can still see some dirt on the steps of the pool, so I feel like it's likely dirt and not algea. I'm not opposed to slamming the pool, but don't think it'll help much except for filtering the dirt while the pump is running.
 
Oh it will help... I just went through this. I was in the process of getting my pool reading in the right area since I was new to this. I had passed the OCLT test and had a cc of 0. I was getting close to having it crystal clear when I had a bunch of dirt water go directly into my pool due to the sprinkler guys. It was a busted pipe and was coming out of my skimmer into the pool. The pool had a ton of dirt in it. I ended up filtering 24/7 and vacuuming. It was coming along but kept finding piles of dirt on the bottom of the pool. I think I even passed another OCLT. I was told it was probably algae too but I didn't believe it because it looked like dirt. Some was dark brown. But everytime I brushed it would come off my entire pool floor and you could see the clouds of dirt moving in my pool due to me brushing. My pool got even more cloudy. I was filtering away but it wasn't working. When I brushed the specks on my steps, it look kind of orangey....like clay(which is what was left near my pool after the sprinklers being dug up) . After a storm, it got even worse. With lots of good advice from the wonderful people on here, I decided to SLAM. You can see my ups and downs in my thread. I was very frustrated because it didn't seem to be getting better, I was unable to find DE to help, every morning there were piles of "dirt" on my pool floor and keeping my pump running was making my electric bill go up.

But just this morning , it looked so much clearer . I know the SLAM is working. ...I don't know if it's algae or whatever ...but SLAM is working! So definitely do it!
 
Just wanted to provide an update to this post in case it's helpful to anyone else in the future. To recap, we had a flash flood two weeks ago that washed a river of dirt/mud into the pool. Prior to the rain the test results:
FC - 5.0
CC - 0.0
CYA - 70

I read several posts on this forum, the most helpful to me was: Pool flooded - sparkling oasis turned into muddy pond

It took me 2 weeks to clear the pool using the following method:
- ran pump 24/7
- added 1-2 cups of DE to sand filter using method described on this site (amount varied depending on how long I was going to be away from home)
- backwashed filter with about 25% rise in psi
- vacuumed to waste once a day for first couple of days, then vacuumed through the filter and backwashed as needed
- brushed pool daily after vacuuming to help filter dirt more quickly
- kept FC at about 10-15 just in case extra organics were present, SWG off, added 8.25% bleach daily
- performed OCLT about halfway through to make sure there wasn't any algae, passed first attempt
- did not use floc or anything other than about 12 lbs total of DE to help filtering
- tested water and added CYA, salt, etc to re-balance to pre-storm levels

Pic on the left was taken about a week after storm, pic on right taken today (2 weeks after storm). Hope no one else needs this info as it was not fun!
 

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MarianParoo said:
Here is the prescription for learning exactly how much your system needs: Pool School - Add DE to a Sand Filter
Click to expand...
I did use the recommended method to determine that my system needs 2 cups of DE to raise the pressure by 1 psi. In the early stages of filtering the dirty water adding 2 cups would require me to backwash in about 2-2.5 hours. I adjusted down to 3/4 or 1 cup initially so I could go to work and not worry about the pressure getting too high. As the pool cleared I started to raising the amount of DE to 1-1.5 cups and then finally to the full 2 cups even if I wasn't going to be around for awhile.
 
We had a wicked dust/thunderstorm Friday night and it made my sparkling pool a cloudy brown/green. My plan has been exactly as you detailed in your update yesterday. The last two days have shown significant improvement. I plan on my first OCLT tonight just to verify nothing is growing. But I really think it's sediment only.
 
I'm sure it will work for you as well Cinic. When I looked at the steps of my pool the first few days after the storm the water looked brown and I was pretty confident it was only dirt and no algae. The rest of the pool looked more greenish. I think because of the blue liner (thinking of the yellow and blue make green commercials). But an OCLT is a good idea to confirm.
 
It was crystal clear last night. I messed up my OCLT by back-washing after doing my test. But I really don't think there's excess demand. I'll try to do a good one tonight just to verify.

I forgot how sparkly the DE can make the water.
 
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