Clarifier Used Too Soon After Metal Free

[Shellie]

I have an 8500 gallon above ground vinyl pool. After years of opening the pool to crystal clear water, it was cloudy this year when I took the cover off because debris was able to get in at the ladder over the winter. (We built a deck around the pool and can't take the ladder out anymore. I will have to devise something better next year so debris can't get in the pool.) Anyway, I used Natural Chemistry's clarifier to clear it up, but I used it too soon after using Natural Chemistry's Metal Free when I opened the pool yesterday. What do I do now? Will the situation resolve itself? If so, how long will it take? Thanks for any help!

Shellie

 

[chem geek]

Welcome to TFP!

If you keep the pump circulating 24/7 it should clear up faster. Yes, you created a precipitated mess because generally clarifiers have positive charge to attract negatively charged surfaces of cells so that they clump while metal sequestrants are generally negatively charged so that they bind to positively charged metal ions. These two products generally do not work well together and produce a precipitated mess, but it will get caught in the filter that you can backwash/clean.

You should put details about your pool in your signature so we can know it's type (vinyl, plaster, fiberglass), size, location (indoor/outdoor), filter (cartridge, DE, sand), gas and/or solar, etc.

Start reading the Pool School and you'll learn that you don't need to use clarifiers to clear a pool. Chlorine alone plus circulation/filtration is usually enough though with sand filters one can Add DE to a Sand Filter for finer and faster filtration.

Get yourself a proper test kit such as the TF-100 or Taylor K-2006 you can test at TFTestkits (you can read a comparison of the kits in Test Kits Compared. Then post your numbers. You might need to shock your pool to a higher chlorine level if the cloudiness is associated with algae or organics that may need to get killed or oxidized.