msbudheavy

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msbudheavy

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Apr 28, 2012
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Do not post your questions on anothers thread. It is impossible to carry on two conversations at once.

I just got around to opening last weekend due to bad weather as well. Here are my numbers:

FC 9
CC 1
pH 7.6
TA 150
CH 30
CYA 50

I did add 5 boxes (380 oz?) of Borax but I don't have a borate test kit.

Any light that can be shed on the sort of whitish cloudy water will be greatly appreciated as it's all of a sudden 90 degrees & I wanna get in my pool!

Thanks!

p.s. will try to add photo later if needed
 
I do apologize for that. I just figured you guys got tired of answering the same questions over and over in new posts. But thank you for your response. I have been adding copious amounts of bleach, and had been prior to my first post, every few hours of every day for days now. Last year I had a huge overabundance of CYA and I'm trying to avoid that this year. I would like to keep it about where it is right now. I have not put anything other than bleach in it since 6/13. I have been to pool school and have read the shocking process. I even managed to graduate from college since opening my pool last year (although granted it was not a chemistry degree) but it does not seem to have helped me at all in the pool department. I don't want to spend another week pouring bleach in my pool, I want to swim in it. Please help. I am about to give up and just call someone from the dreaded pool store to come out here and do whatever they want to it. My CYA may have been over 100 last year but at least it was clear and sparkly and it didn't look so bad that I didn't want to get in it so I didn't think about the bad numbers. Here are my numbers today:

FC 13
CC 0.5
pH 7.4
TA 140
CH 30
CYA ~45

What am I doing wrong???

Thank you...
 
Whitish cloudy water indicates it's full of dead, bleached-out algae carcasses, so it's actually a good sign.

If you reread the article on the shock process, you will find a short blurb about using diatomaceous earth in your sand filter to help clear it up. There's a separate article in the how-to's explaining how-to. Ask around. If a neighbor has a DE filter, they should have a bag of it, and all you need is a coffee can's worth. Or you can look at the pool or hardware store and buy the smallest package of DE or DE-substitute (cellulose) they sell.

What it does is lay across the sand bed and filter things out that are way smaller than the gaps in the sand filter. So watch it! The pressure will climb surprisingly fast. Each time you backwash, you'll need to recoat it.

This method doesn't add any sentence-long chemical compounds to your pool, like the flocculents or clarifiers they'll push on you will.
 
What does the water look like?

Are you following the Shocking Your Pool PROCESS?
According to this (pool-school/chlorine_cya_chart_shock) the shock FC level for your CYA is around 18ppm ... your FC is too low.

All the pool store will do is throw a massive amount of chlorine in the water (possibly with CH or CYA in it) and maybe fading the liner. And probably sell you some expensive algaecide or phosphate remover that is totally unneeded and as an added bonus maybe it will add copper to your pool and result in staining and green hair :mrgreen:
 
Thank you for the concern over my expensively bleach job, but obviously my IQ drops significantly as a blonde. :) Last year my mother died while I was in the process of opening my pool using your newly found website. My husband was trying to do me a favor so he called his drinking buddy's pool guy who was too busy to come so he sent 2 non-English speaking dudes who salaciously eyeballed my English bulldog until I informed them she no puede producir hijos. I watched distraught as they poured ~5 bags of shock directly into the skimmer. Of course the water cleared up right after that so darling hubby thought he'd done a good thing. I forbade him to touch it this year but he is growing impatient with me and thinks he knows best (I must mention he's a natural blonde, though). In fact, he's gone to the store now to buy several bags of shock to pour into the skimmer, so time is of the essence here. I am trying desperately, in my blondeness, to follow the shock process but clearly I'm doing something wrong. I did toy with the DE idea but the smallest quantity I can find anywhere is 25 lbs. I don't know anyone else with a DE filter and I hate to buy so much.
 

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Walmart usually sells smaller quantities of DE called "Filter Aid" I think.

Do NOT let him add any dichlor or trichlor powder!!!! Your CYA is already on the high side. Send him over to talk to me :rant:
And Cal-hypo, will add calcium which could result in making the water more cloudy ... would be nice actually if you could guarantee that so you could tell him stop touching things :lol:
 
OK, so DH did pour only one bag of shock into the skimmer the other day, but the constant vacuuming seems to have staved off the CYA rise. We've been running the filter 24/7 during this whole ordeal, brushing the heck out of it every day, and yesterday DH even got into the pool and vacuumed it TWICE. Nothing else is coming out of the vacuum into the skimmer. DH also said he doesn't feel anything else on the bottom and that the liner does not feel slimy. FC has been holding at 16 for a few days now and CYA is 40 (or less, I can never decide when I can't see the black dot anymore). It's not losing any chlorine in the OCLT and there is no CC, I haven't been bothering to measure anything else since my understanding is that it won't be accurate anyway. My water is still cloudy! How much longer is this going to take?!?!?! I just bought some of the DE substitute (cellulose) because none of the WalMarts in my area sell the 10 lb pkgs of Filter Aid and I didn't want to buy 25 lbs of DE (although it says that 3 lbs of this stuff replaces 25 lbs of DE) but I'm scared to ask DH to put it in there and I don't have a clue how to do it myself. Ugly crying has begun...
 
msbudheavy said:
OK, so DH did pour only one bag of shock into the skimmer the other day, but the constant vacuuming seems to have staved off the CYA rise. We've been running the filter 24/7 during this whole ordeal, brushing the heck out of it every day, and yesterday DH even got into the pool and vacuumed it TWICE. Nothing else is coming out of the vacuum into the skimmer. DH also said he doesn't feel anything else on the bottom and that the liner does not feel slimy. FC has been holding at 16 for a few days now and CYA is 40 (or less, I can never decide when I can't see the black dot anymore). It's not losing any chlorine in the OCLT and there is no CC, I haven't been bothering to measure anything else since my understanding is that it won't be accurate anyway. My water is still cloudy! How much longer is this going to take?!?!?! I just bought some of the DE substitute (cellulose) because none of the WalMarts in my area sell the 10 lb pkgs of Filter Aid and I didn't want to buy 25 lbs of DE (although it says that 3 lbs of this stuff replaces 25 lbs of DE) but I'm scared to ask DH to put it in there and I don't have a clue how to do it myself. Ugly crying has begun...
Click to expand...
It's easy.

Clip just a corner of the bag open so you can fold it over and reclose it with a bulldog clip {or a potato chip bag clamp, whatever).

With the filter running, look at the pressure gauge and note the reading. This is your initial reading. Then scoop/pour about a half a cup of the powder into the skimmer. The stuff is light and fluffy and will get all over, so don't wear dark colors. :wink: Stir it around, whatever it takes to get the stuff to sink and get sucked away.

Watch the gauge. If it hasn't risen in 3 minutes, add another half a cup. Repeat until the gauge has moved 1 psi. Now go inside and do something useful for an hour and then look at the pool and the pressure gauge. If the gauge has gone up 25% from the initial reading, it needs to be backwashed and recoated with more cellulose. If it's not any higher, go do something else again.

Most people report significant improvement in clarity and frequent backwashing.
 
Oh. OK. Thanks. I thought I had to take the valve thingy off the top of the filter. Duh! Blondeness showing. Don't worry, I have a t-shirt with nice white spots all over it from the constant splashing of bleach into the pool. :) that does sound easy enough for me to do alone. Will do first thing tomorrow & let you know! Hopefully I'll be able to blow up the floating beer cooler soon. Thanks again!
 

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Um...how much of that stuff is too much? I ended up putting the whole bag in over the course of an hour or so. It barely went up 1 psi and it's only gone up maybe 2 psi all day. There's so much bleach in that pool it's bleached the color out of my vacuum pole. Does this mean there's something wrong with my filter now??? DH says I want to backwash too much. How often should I be doing it. And what else now?
 
Yes I read that. But I have read so many things so many times that I guess it's all running together, thus missing the part about putting it into the skimmer. But I started that process at about 11 this morning and finished a little after 12 and, like I said, the pressure barely went up 1 psi and maybe 2 psi by 6:30 this evening. Then we backwashed & the pressure only dropped about 2 psi. There isn't anything in the skimmer. I don't think there's any debris left in there. So, does that mean it is the filter, God forbid. And no, the water is not getting any clearer that I can tell. I keep reading and reading and I'm more and more embarrassed every time I post. I'm ready to just give up and drown myself in the dadgum thing. Somebody please come and shoot me in the head with a POP arrow or something.
 
For reals...do you guys think it's my filter? Brushed and vacuumed. Skimmer sock in place. Backwashed and DE alternative added with no monumental psi increase. Here are my numbers today:

FC 20
CC 0
pH 7.4
TA 140
CH 30
CYA ~50

Am I missing something? Please help.
 
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