- Jun 17, 2013
- 29
...lived in the city in apartments for 10 years, never had a family pool...
...met a girl, moved to the suburbs, inherited HER pool...
Brief History:
Uncovered pool for over a year, previous filter broke, pool is green, cloudy, full of leaves
May 31 starting point
- me and another first timer put in a sand filtration system. I think it's working...
- we take a ton of leaves out, and she starts pouring 'mega shock' in the thing like it's nobody's business. Or so I thought...
- lots of leaves in the skimmer, we pull out when necessary
- we backwash the pool when we see the water flow slow considerably, I don't think the gauge is working that well, but I don't know
- still pouring shock in the pool periodically, not much change, I mean I guess pool a bit clearer, but certainly green
- she takes some water down to the local pool place they give her the following steps:
---- put three pounds of powdered shock in, wait four hours
---- if it's not blue, put three more pounds of powdered shock in, wait four hours
---- if blue, put superfloc in, there were some instructions in the there for the filter too, wait and then the cloud will form a gel at the bottom of the pool, then vacuum up
- Pool water finally turns blue! I screw up the vaccuum process. Water is green the next day
- We start the process again, I start hearing all sorts of opinions, shocking, baking soda!
- I do some research, find this site and a couple of others
- I decide to try BBB
- First I go nuts on Borax, 8 boxes to get the pH to the 7.0-7.2 range
- Then I start pouring bleach in, but clearly it's not the best bleach for this because the water gets sudsy.
- Pool water starts to clear you can see the steps on the ladder! You can see the big piles of junk on the bottom (well, shadows anyway)
- but pool water is still mostly cloudy, it's aqua blue and cloudy
I think this basically takes us to last Wednesday
I stopped adding chlorine because the readings were so high, I'm thinking I probably shouldn't do that, I had lost the head to the brush/vacuum, so we weren't doing that either
I'm back to using the MegaShock from Ocean State Job lot, it's 12% per gallon, and it's like $3 a bottle, and I can't seem to find great bleach. I got some from KMart (yeah, who knew they were still around), but it was 8% per gallon and $2 per bottle, and still had some suds, assuming from bleach additives
Moved good quantities of leaves over the past couple of days, I don't see the shadows at the bottom of the pool anymore, or, I should say these are a lot smaller
I gave the pool a thorough brushing this morning, I plan on doing that each day
I want to add three more gallons of shock tonight when it's dark?
The pool has never had stabilizer added, so I'm not sure if the readings are accurate? Right now it's saying 100 or so, but it's been lower
Can I assume that the CYA total is going to be warped by the shocking process like the pH?
Do you guys think I'm on the right track?
Current status is aqua blue and cloudy (milky white) I can see some shadows where I'm assuming there are leaves, waste product of some sort, but these are almost gone now. The pool starts to get clearer, but then when I move stuff around it gets cloudy again, I'm assuming that's from algae getting kicked up.
I'm putting more water in right now to get it half way up the skimmer, with all the backwashing and adjustments the water level was in the skimmer, but not that high.
Just looking for general feedback, thoughts, etc.
This is an above ground pool, 15,000 gallons
Thanks!
...met a girl, moved to the suburbs, inherited HER pool...
Brief History:
Uncovered pool for over a year, previous filter broke, pool is green, cloudy, full of leaves
May 31 starting point
- me and another first timer put in a sand filtration system. I think it's working...
- we take a ton of leaves out, and she starts pouring 'mega shock' in the thing like it's nobody's business. Or so I thought...
- lots of leaves in the skimmer, we pull out when necessary
- we backwash the pool when we see the water flow slow considerably, I don't think the gauge is working that well, but I don't know
- still pouring shock in the pool periodically, not much change, I mean I guess pool a bit clearer, but certainly green
- she takes some water down to the local pool place they give her the following steps:
---- put three pounds of powdered shock in, wait four hours
---- if it's not blue, put three more pounds of powdered shock in, wait four hours
---- if blue, put superfloc in, there were some instructions in the there for the filter too, wait and then the cloud will form a gel at the bottom of the pool, then vacuum up
- Pool water finally turns blue! I screw up the vaccuum process. Water is green the next day
- We start the process again, I start hearing all sorts of opinions, shocking, baking soda!
- I do some research, find this site and a couple of others
- I decide to try BBB
- First I go nuts on Borax, 8 boxes to get the pH to the 7.0-7.2 range
- Then I start pouring bleach in, but clearly it's not the best bleach for this because the water gets sudsy.
- Pool water starts to clear you can see the steps on the ladder! You can see the big piles of junk on the bottom (well, shadows anyway)
- but pool water is still mostly cloudy, it's aqua blue and cloudy
I think this basically takes us to last Wednesday
I stopped adding chlorine because the readings were so high, I'm thinking I probably shouldn't do that, I had lost the head to the brush/vacuum, so we weren't doing that either
I'm back to using the MegaShock from Ocean State Job lot, it's 12% per gallon, and it's like $3 a bottle, and I can't seem to find great bleach. I got some from KMart (yeah, who knew they were still around), but it was 8% per gallon and $2 per bottle, and still had some suds, assuming from bleach additives
Moved good quantities of leaves over the past couple of days, I don't see the shadows at the bottom of the pool anymore, or, I should say these are a lot smaller
I gave the pool a thorough brushing this morning, I plan on doing that each day
I want to add three more gallons of shock tonight when it's dark?
The pool has never had stabilizer added, so I'm not sure if the readings are accurate? Right now it's saying 100 or so, but it's been lower
Can I assume that the CYA total is going to be warped by the shocking process like the pH?
Do you guys think I'm on the right track?
Current status is aqua blue and cloudy (milky white) I can see some shadows where I'm assuming there are leaves, waste product of some sort, but these are almost gone now. The pool starts to get clearer, but then when I move stuff around it gets cloudy again, I'm assuming that's from algae getting kicked up.
I'm putting more water in right now to get it half way up the skimmer, with all the backwashing and adjustments the water level was in the skimmer, but not that high.
Just looking for general feedback, thoughts, etc.
This is an above ground pool, 15,000 gallons
Thanks!