Green Pool - Not a lot of time on hands

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B

bruceglack

0
Jun 2, 2014
13
Indiana
Hey guys, first time poster here. Looks like a great place to get a lot of help. I read the Defeating Algae and the SLAM - Shock Level And Maintain guides. I also just purchased a TF-100 with the XL option and Borate Strips - used the UPS option so I hope it comes here soon. Here is the skinny on my situation. I'm a windower with 2 children and honestly I don't have much time on my hands. I work 60 hours a week on average, but to be honest I don't make a lot of money, its a pretty dead end job. So not only do I not have a lot of time, I also don't have much cash to just throw at a pool. A couple years ago I purchased a new winter cover for my pool, being a cheapskate I went ahead and got a thinner cheaper cover, and I think I'm paying for it now. I think it is the cause of my extremely green pool

See I've lived in this house all my life and was given it by my parents. My father always took good care of the pool and after opening it in the winter it was always sparkling clear. Now here I am screwing it up only after being here alone for five or so years. I'm honestly debating at this point just bulldozing it in because I *think* it might have a leak that I can't afford to fix. The water level seemed a lot lower than it was when I closed it. Do you think you guys can give me a rough estimate of how much it will cost to get it back to this crystal clear levels? Are we talking a couple hundred dollars? Or over a thousand.

Also if you can tell me the cheapest place to get the chemicals I need I'm all for it. I had just been buying bleach at Costco the last few years but they jacked up the prices a couple dollars it seems. Also where can I get D.E. filter in bulk on the cheap?

Just any guidance towards my situation would be awesome. If its worth saving (can't really spend more that 500 dollars), cheap places to get the best chlorine for my needs, etc. etc.

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I don't think it looks that bad. I can't imagine it taking even $500 to clean the water. $16/3 pack of bleach at Costco and maybe 3 or 4 rounds of that is only $64. Maybe some other chems, but not double that, even if I'm wrong. You won't be buying all the junk the pool store wants to sell you. No phosphate stuff, no algaecides, no snake oil of any sort. You might need some pH adjustment, up or down, but that is best done with Muriatic Acid or Baking soda or similar things per the Pool Math app. Way cheaper than pool store stuff. I don't see this costing a lot water-wise.

Not sure how long it was closed but I'd sure open it. If the cover made it without dumping leaves and rainwater in the pool, then there ought to not be any debris in there. Probably just a lack of chlorine.

Just thinking about it, my pool at 23,000 gallons gets about 4 ppm from a jug of bleach. The real question is what is the CYA level. You will know that as soon as the test kit comes in. Won't be long now so just sit tight.

How big is this pool? If you don't want to waste money, put the cover back on and wait for the test kit. To dump about 4 ppm of chlorine into it might be a waste of time, far too little or somewhat too much, depending on the CYA that we don't know yet.

I get my chlorine at Leslie's as Pool Shock at 10% strength which is identical to my price at Sam's by the 3 pack for regular strength, have not checked since they changed the %. I get baking soda to raise TA at Walmart. I get Muriatic acid and calcium increaser at Leslie's. That is all I use.
 
Well I already opened it, the cover is honestly shot. It has hundreds of tiny holes in it, not sure from what and I think it is a cause of a lot of the problem. There is a bit of debris in the pool, but it shouldn't take but a few hours to clean. The pool is 30,000 Gallon, Above Ground, Vinyl, DE Filter. Also I'm not seeing liquid chlorine on leslies (I'm probably searching wrong somehow).


Thanks for the help :D
 
There's two parts -- cleaning leaves & gunk out (where CYA doesn't matter) and then killing the algae, where CYA level is important so you know what chlorine level is required(both in Parts Per Million/ppm).

Once you know the required chlorine level, the PoolMath calculator (button near the top) can tell you how much bleach is required... post back here and someone will tell you if the number looks right ;)

You mentioned "buying bleach at Costco"... have you been using bleach, tabs or something else to add chlorine in the past ?

My thought would be to get a jug of bleach into it at minimum, but wait for the test kit to arrive before doing a serious SLAM.

Best place to buy bleach in volume seems to vary a lot -- three main options are :

- "pool chlorine" / "liquid shock" at pool store
- same thing at pool area of home reno stores
- laundry bleach - buy something that includes % sodium hypochlorite, 8.25% seems like generally best option, not scented or gel or anything

I would pick home reno store and big grocery store near to each other, check prices & percentages at both, and buy whatever is cheapest from those two for now. Don't buy pool chlorine that looks like it sat outside all winter ;)
 
I got my test kit today. my cya is at zero. i was at the pool store today (before they closed, but also before i got the test kit in the mail) and bought 16 gallons of 12.5 liquid chlorine for 2.50 a gallon. I have to buy 15 pounds of CYA in the morning. I already got all the leaves and gunk outa there.
 

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tim5055 said:
You went from "bought 16 gallons of 12.5 liquid chlorine for 2.50 a gallon" to "Thanks for all the help guys" in four days!! Gotta hear the story.....
Click to expand...

Ahh well honestly its kind of funny. So I didn't use nearly all the chlorine I thought I would, but it should be enough for the rest of the summer. The last post I made I mentioned needing to buy CYA. Well American Sale had it slightly cheaper than at Home Depot, so I had my kid go pick some up on the way home from school. Being a noobie here I learned a valuable lesson, after I had put all the CYA in socks to let run over night I realized that it it was 50/50 CYA/Baking Soda. The bad part of that was that my TA was already around 170. I didn't realize this till after I had it in there for a while. So I did some quick math and knew I needed at least three more pounds of CYA. So I ran to Ace first thing in the morning (since its right by my house) and low and behold they had 96 percent CYA cheaper than any other place around, at around 3.75 a pound. So I put 3 more pounds of that in another sock and had them in-front of the return all day that day. Throughout the day I would squish and squeeze the socks to get it dissolved faster, and this seemed to work pretty well. At night it was all dissolved. So I put in 4 gallons of liquid chlorine, and 2 packs of 53 percent cal-hypo.

I woke up the next morning in dismay because the pool color hadn't change in the least. I couldn't believe it and rechecked my levels. My FC was 12, my CYA was around 40 - so I didn't know what to do. I knew my TA was way to high at this point and didn't bother checking it. I backflushed, let it run for a few hours and that didn't help. So I thought well maybe a lot of the algae actually did get killed and I just can't tell a difference. So I did two things, first I went and got a 10 dollar fountain to fix the TA, and I took my filter apart to clean it out by hand. I had done this just last week before opening it so I figured it would be a waste of time, but low and behold the filter was absolutely gross with what I can only assume was dirt and algae. So I spent a couple hours fixing that, got it back in put in clean D.E. put on my fountain. Didn't bother with it the rest of the day because it was scorching outside.

Next day my FC was 11, but the pool actually started looking different, was more of a milky white than a green. I could actually start to see the bottom of the pool and I realized that I didn't do a very good job initially vacuuming (how could I could never see the bottom of the pool!). So I got that all vacuumed up, at this point I'm starting to get relieved. This is the day I kept re-shocking to 16 and vacuuming all day. After this I backflushed.

Finally the pool is now clean looking, just milky still. In a last ditch effort I take the dang filter apart, re-clean it put it back together with clean D.E. and just a few hours later I make the last post. :D
 
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