just moved into new home with inground pool..drain?

[blkmonday]

HI! I bought a house in Connecticut last june that has a inground pool that hasnt been open in at least 2 years. I didnt have all that much time to work with it last year since i moved in halfway through the season and had a lot of other things to take care of on the house. I did however manage to get the pump up and running and tried shocking the pool and some algecide with not much luck. the pool had and has a lot of old leaves in it. after my initial shock i was able to get the pool to a very cloudy whitish/blue color but never able to get it clear or swimmable. i tried a few other chemicals that the pool supply store recommended without much luck. pretty much ran out of money and season. i should also mention its a salt water pool...currently with a ver low level of salt in it. i also noticed when taking the filter apart for winter, the cartridge was really dirty and probably not doing much (its a DE filter) anyways....
my question is...do you think i should drain the pool and start over from scratch? is this the a cheaper alternative to just dumping tons of chemicals in hopes it will clear up? i have a feeling the bottom of the deep end still has a lot of old leaf material and its keeping the pool from getting clean. also its a salt water setup but ive been told by a few people its cheaper to just get it running as a chlorine pool for now and bypass the salt generator? and then other people say those people just never had a salt pool before. ive had an above ground chlorine pool before and ran it myself for a few years so im not completely clueless just a little overwhelmed by this giant inground beauty. i def want to get it running early this spring so we can enjoy it.
thanks for any suggestions in advance

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

Neither draining, nor "just dumping tons of chemicals in hopes it will clear up" are a good idea. Take a look at the article Turning Your Green Swamp Back into a Sparkling Oasis.

One of the key steps you didn't mention already doing, is removing all of the leaves and other debris from the pool before starting the shock process. Another point that occurs to me, if you got the water blue/white last time but it wouldn't clear up, there could be something wrong with the filter.

If your salt system is working then it is far less expensive to continue using it. Salt systems, we call them SWG, are roughly the same cost as using bleach in the long run, but a SWG gets paid for mostly up front, while bleach gets paid for as you go. You will still need to add bleach manually during the initial cleanup.

 

[jblizzle]

Just to clarify what Jason said,

It is generally a good idea to clear the pool up (like in the link he provided) using just bleach and turning off the SWG until the pool is clear and all levels are in the recommended range. Then you start the SWG and dial it in for you pool's FC needs.

I also wonder if the filter was having a problem if you could not clear the white pool. Have you had a DE filter before? Wondering if DE was not added to the filter after every cleaning and that is why the pool did not clear up.

Realize too that a key to clearing to the pool is understanding of the chemistry and the use of one of the recommended test kits. With these 2 things, maintaining the pool become easy.

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