Another new pool owner thread and I'm pretty frustrated with my new pool at this point. So my backstory - we bought this home at the end of August last year from a family in financial distress. I had seen the pool mostly clear during the inspection. They blew the date on the inspection by weeks. They claimed it was due to a bad filter and they installed a totally new sand filter. When we inspected there was a tiny bit of clouding at the bottom. It appears that they basically got the pool clear for the inspection and never touched it again because upon closing we got the pool very green; as luck would have it it also was just before we were scheduled for a vacation. I tried to clear it but I couldn't keep the water level high enough to run the pump even overnight and we believed there to be a significant leak somewhere. We closed it up as is to tackle in the spring. At that point we learned the mesh cover was in a pretty bad way and had holes/many patches. Then Sandy came and removed a decent chunk of those patches as well as dumping who knows what into it.
Fast forward to 5/3. We opened up to diagnose the leak as early as possible. Come to find out that a pool enclosure that got destroyed during Sandy was concealing a major leak in the Hayward chlorinator. If the return setting was only to the stair returns the back pressure was spraying water out the top. We also had a suction side leak in the Superpump and in the pipe directly attached to the inlet of the Superpump. We fixed those issues all up.
I netted out about 3 or so garbage backs of leaves and crud from the bottom of the pool.
At the time the TF-100 results were:
CYA 20
pH 6.8
TA 40
CH 50
FC 0
CC 0
I adjusted TA up to 130 and pH to 7.2. I put some trichlor in the Chlorinator and dialed it up to max and added liquid bleach to get it up to shock of about 16 FC and measured until CYA rose to 40 then dialed the Chlorinator to Off. I have maintained that FC level or higher since. Between backwashing the filter, adding water and a few heavy rain storms I had to dial up the Chlorinator for a few days to get the CYA level back up to 40 range (30 - 40 as I get results fairly consistently in that range).
The pool went from green to light blue in about 3 or 4 days but has not significantly improved since then. I have been brushing every day and trying to net leaves. I don't really pull up much and when I brush I can see small pieces of leaves but they just settle back to wherever and it is not in really significant amounts. I can't see the bottom of the shallow end except the vague shape of the brush head. I can barely make out the blue of the liner bottom.
At sunset last night I read the following results:
FC 22.5
CC 1.5
CYA 30
and this morning at 5:30 read
FC 18
CC 2
CYA 30
I have periodically dropped in a Dolphin Dynamic including about a 24 hour total of repeat sessions over the last weekend and it didn't really come back with much in the way of debris. I'm dumping in about 2-3 gallons of 12.5% in every day and running the pump 24/7 but not seeing significant improvement so I'm wondering what the issue is.
I'm a wondering about poor circulation at this point. The only drains are from two skimmers. One near the stairs and one on the opposite corner of the pool (deep end). There is an eyeball return on the wall opposite the deep end skimmer and the main drain is plumbed as a return as well. There are two return jets opposite each other over the 2nd step from the bottom in the shallow end.
So I have a couple of questions after all that: 1) I should continue this routine of brushing every morning, maintaining shock correct? and 2) I have to go away and will be gone from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon. Should I just dial up the Chlorinator, leave the pump running and deal with the CYA ramifications? I hate to think at a run rate of about $12 a day in electricity and bleach so far that I'm going to have to start over.
Fast forward to 5/3. We opened up to diagnose the leak as early as possible. Come to find out that a pool enclosure that got destroyed during Sandy was concealing a major leak in the Hayward chlorinator. If the return setting was only to the stair returns the back pressure was spraying water out the top. We also had a suction side leak in the Superpump and in the pipe directly attached to the inlet of the Superpump. We fixed those issues all up.
I netted out about 3 or so garbage backs of leaves and crud from the bottom of the pool.
At the time the TF-100 results were:
CYA 20
pH 6.8
TA 40
CH 50
FC 0
CC 0
I adjusted TA up to 130 and pH to 7.2. I put some trichlor in the Chlorinator and dialed it up to max and added liquid bleach to get it up to shock of about 16 FC and measured until CYA rose to 40 then dialed the Chlorinator to Off. I have maintained that FC level or higher since. Between backwashing the filter, adding water and a few heavy rain storms I had to dial up the Chlorinator for a few days to get the CYA level back up to 40 range (30 - 40 as I get results fairly consistently in that range).
The pool went from green to light blue in about 3 or 4 days but has not significantly improved since then. I have been brushing every day and trying to net leaves. I don't really pull up much and when I brush I can see small pieces of leaves but they just settle back to wherever and it is not in really significant amounts. I can't see the bottom of the shallow end except the vague shape of the brush head. I can barely make out the blue of the liner bottom.
At sunset last night I read the following results:
FC 22.5
CC 1.5
CYA 30
and this morning at 5:30 read
FC 18
CC 2
CYA 30
I have periodically dropped in a Dolphin Dynamic including about a 24 hour total of repeat sessions over the last weekend and it didn't really come back with much in the way of debris. I'm dumping in about 2-3 gallons of 12.5% in every day and running the pump 24/7 but not seeing significant improvement so I'm wondering what the issue is.
I'm a wondering about poor circulation at this point. The only drains are from two skimmers. One near the stairs and one on the opposite corner of the pool (deep end). There is an eyeball return on the wall opposite the deep end skimmer and the main drain is plumbed as a return as well. There are two return jets opposite each other over the 2nd step from the bottom in the shallow end.
So I have a couple of questions after all that: 1) I should continue this routine of brushing every morning, maintaining shock correct? and 2) I have to go away and will be gone from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon. Should I just dial up the Chlorinator, leave the pump running and deal with the CYA ramifications? I hate to think at a run rate of about $12 a day in electricity and bleach so far that I'm going to have to start over.