Slowly making progress...at a standstill with my water...

[CoffeyGal]

Hello guys! I recently (about a month ago) bought an 15x4 AGP by Intex. Upon filling it up with water, the water turned green immediately. I am on well water, and I'm not sure if that had something to do with it, as I have had water discoloration problems in the past with my well. Anyhow, long story short, I have YET to get in the pool. So I finally ended up adding flocculent to get the green stuff to settle to the bottom, and vaccumed it on waste 3 or 4 times. The algae appears to be gone, and there are no particles floating in the water like before. Here are my values from yesterday (the pool store was already closed, and I don't have one of the highly spoke of test kits yet)

Hardness 400
Total Chlorine wouldn't even register
Free Chlorine 3
Bromine 6
pH 7.0
TA 140
Stabilizer 20

I then used my test kit with the drops to test the Chlorine, Bromine and pH again..
Chlorine 5
Bromine 11
pH 7.0

I then added pH increaser, 20oz liquid bleach, 1 cup stabilizer, and 1 oz clarifier. I let it run over night...here are my values for this morning. The water still appears hazy, but the bottom is visible, although it still has a slight green tint to it...no algae seen with the naked eye. But I can definitely tell it's getting better. I'm just not sure what steps to take next.

Hardness 250
Total Chlorine 2
Free Chlorine 10
Bromine 20
pH 7.6
TA 120
Stabilizer 25

My drop kit showed
Chlorine >5
Bromine >11
pH 7.6

Any ideas on what I should do next? I've read all of the pool school stuff and tried to make sense of the Pool Calculator, and I'm still somewhat confused.

 

[rsharp]

Re: Hazy light green tinted water....HELP!

hello. first off Intex pools have the worst pump/filters....i would sugest to not buy an intex pool. take the leap and get a real AG pool.... to me it sounds like you need to shock your pool. shocking is a process. go to the Pool School section and scroll down to the HOW TO catagory... u will see the section "how to shock"... i would reccomend to start here. also i would bring my stabalizer up to around 40 or so. this will prevent your chlorine from being burned up from uv rays.. (stabalizer is Cyanic Acid... u can use poolcalculator.com to measure out the amounts)!!! good luck!!

 

[anonapersona]

Since your well water would have no chlorine in it at all, unlike city water which would, and it could have some nitrates assuming you are near any sort of farming areas, then I'm not surprised that it could turn green as soon as it is exposed to sunlight.

So, you are on the right track with adding chlorine and stabilizer. With stabilizer, you can assume that whatever your goal was for that addition has been reached even if that is not what you see upon testing. It will show up later, it is there now however.

Now with the chlorine number at the top of the range for your test kit, you will need to dilute the water with distilled water to get an idea of where it really is. Add one part distilled water to one part pool water and multiply the test result by 2. You lose accuracy doing this so you may want to get a better test kit to give you values over 5 ppm. I use the TF100 and they also make a kit for smaller pools like yours. You may only need certain parts of that kit, get in touch with Duraleigh for help.

So, based on the CYA number for what you added, go the to CYA chart and find what your chlorine level range is for normal operation (min to target is normal range), and what is the target for shocking. You need to go to shock level until all the green is gone, the FC level declines less than 1.0 ppm overnight, and the water is sparkling.

Then you just keep the FC level in the normal operating range. Use the Pool Calculator to find what amount of chlorine bleach it takes to go from the bottom of that range to the top of the range, make a note of that volume. Now, add enough bleach to get to the top of the range, and test at the same time each day to find out how long it takes for the level to fall to the bottom of the range, then add bleach again. you may be adding bleach every day or every other day, it will depend on the usage of the pool and the weather.