Renting a house with a pool, help me get it squared away

[vulturesrow]

Hi all,

Been browsing here a couple days and think I read just about every article in the pool school section. Here is the background on "my" pool.

I just started renting this home and since I've never had to maintain a pool before I had a local company come out to do a one time cleaning and show me what I needed to do to maintain it. The pool itself had a fairly decent covering of what the tech told me was mustard algae but otherwise appeared to be in pretty good shape. She did some tests, told me the salt was low and a couple others (can't remember now). She also vacuumed the pool to waste. A couple days later the algae appeared to making a comeback so I vacuumed to waste again (dreading the coming water bill) and took a sample to the local pool store for testing. This is what the results were:

FC - 1.0
TC - 1.0
CC - 0.0
pH - 7.8
TA - 75
CH - 150
CYA - 50
Salt - 2500

So based on that (and before I knew it could it cheaper from reading here) I bought some more salt, TA increaser, and CYA. I added all that a couple days ago. It appears that the algae is not coming back but now the deep end of the pool (about 7.5ft) is pretty murky. The shallow end looks very clear. I am going to take a sample back to the store later today or tomorrow morning but I'm wondering what might be going on here. Should I just bite the bullet and shock the pool? I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the clarity issue since one end looks really clear and the other end is not. I will update later with the new test results (I have a test kit that "came with the house" but it doesnt test CYA). I need to figure this out soon since I will have company this weekend and need to figure out if I can do what needs to be done in time.

 

[harleysilo]

What is your SWG set on?

You need to shock per what u read in pool school!

 

[Butterfly]

Welcome to the forum

First you need to order a good test kit like the TF100 or Taylor 2006 (see link in my sig) to put you in control of the pool.

Second, [shock:8f9ol3q0]you need to shock your pool.[/shock:8f9ol3q0]

 

[vulturesrow]

Here are the levels I got today:
FC: 2.0
CC: 0.0
pH: 8.0
TA: 135
CH: 145
CYA: 60
TDS: 4,400
Salt: 3000

 

[harleysilo]

How does the deep end look?

 

[Butterfly]

Here are the levels I got today:
FC: 2.0
CC: 0.0
pH: 8.0
TA: 135
CH: 145
CYA: 60
TDS: 4,400
Salt: 3000

oops, in my previous post I recommended that you shock because I thought I read a CC of 1. You may or may not need to shock, but you do need to increase FC.

You also need to lower to the pH to 7.4ish.

How does the water look?

See recommended levels here: pool-school/recommended_levelsSee

 

[harleysilo]

How many hours per day have you been running the filter?

 

[vulturesrow]

Deep end is pretty murky, shallow end looks very clear. I have the timer set to 900 am to 500 pm every day. I also run the polaris on average about 3 - 5 hours a day, maybe a little more.

edit: Is it possible the murkiness could be caused by the solid stabilizer I added the other night? It was about 1.75 lbs worth.

 

[harleysilo]

If you want to get it clear by sat afternoon I'd run pump 24/7.

I also don't think it's been shocked properly. If you did an OCLT tonight tomorrow you would have some answers.

Unfortunately you can't test FC levels where you need to be able too....

 

[vulturesrow]

I think the OCLT is a very good idea, unfortunately the test kit I have doesnt have that level of granularity, as you noted. Its going to be a tough sell to the wifey for an expensive test kits so if you have any suggestions for doing it on the cheap just to get an idea please fire away!

 

[jblizzle]

~$50 for a test kit is on the cheap ... in the long run.

Or you can try a pool store's suggestions and spend a few $100 ... and still not really know what is going on in the pool.

If you can accurately test, you can accurately know what your pool NEEDS and not what someone is trying to sell you.

EDIT: Although the TF100 is a better value for the amount of reagents you get ... but that is a little more expensive.

 

[harleysilo]

Looks like u need to add like 4 gallons of 6% bleach if pool store nums are accurate to bring it to shock level. But after that u won't know what to add or when.... Might help might not....