Cloudy pool

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pattycoop65

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Jul 21, 2008
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I have had trouble with my intex quick set pool this year..I can't seem to get the chlorine up in it..here are the numbers th 0-100 fc 1/2-2/4 ph 7.8 ta 120-180 cya 0-30/50

I shocked it last night to try and increase the chlorine, but now it is cloudy, ubtil a few days ago it was chrystal clear..it started to get a tad bit cloudy now I can hardly see the bottom and it is only 3-4 feet deep!

What should my next step be?
 
First, you have no cya - which will let the sun eat your chlorine up almost as soon as the sun hits it! It is no wonder you can't hold chlorine. You need to get some stabilizer in there or use stabilized chlorine (like trichlor pucks) right away. Stabilizer doesn't show up right away in the test (you should get a test kit and not count on test strips). You can put stabilizer in a sock and let it dissolve. I recommend that you read the pool school posts on this site. You need to shock the water - take the chlorine up to 10ppms and let it drift back down. Until you get some stabilizer in the water you will have to add chlorine whenever it gets below 3ppms until you have enough cya (stabilizer) in the water to hold the chlorine. Your water is cloudy because it is on the brink of an algae outbreak, and by adding chlorine you have kept it at bay - it was just not high enough to kill all of the algae, that is why you have to shock the water.
 
I have read the pool school, and I understand that I should be using the BBB method but I have a bunch of pucks already, so I want to use them before going to the BBB..if I use pucks will I also need to add stabalizer? Or should that be enough?
 
If you are using trichlor pucks and have the pump running during the day there is not normally any need to add stabilizer (CYA).

It is very difficult to guess what might be going on with only approximate test results from test strips.

I am assuming the water turned cloudy and you had trouble maintaing chlorine levels before you shocked.

Killing algae requires maintaining high FC levels for a couple of days. A single addition of chlorine will only work if you catch it very early.
 
You'll hear it here in every thread like this and they're exactly right. Get a good test kit that lets you test high chlorine levels. With that, you can start shocking the right way and not just blindly dump bleach in there. I wasted 7-10 days before I got the test kit. Once I had it, I killed what was in there in about 4 days and had the water clear within a few days after that. Took me two weeks overall but should've only taken one.

Once you get the test kit, shock the heck out of it. Keep it at shock level or just above. Don't let it drift below -- get it there and keep it there until you stop losing chlorine overnight.

Steve
 
ssmith1627 said:
You'll hear it here in every thread like this and they're exactly right. Get a good test kit that lets you test high chlorine levels. With that, you can start shocking the right way and not just blindly dump bleach in there. I wasted 7-10 days before I got the test kit. Once I had it, I killed what was in there in about 4 days and had the water clear within a few days after that. Took me two weeks overall but should've only taken one.

Once you get the test kit, shock the heck out of it. Keep it at shock level or just above. Don't let it drift below -- get it there and keep it there until you stop losing chlorine overnight.

Steve
Click to expand...

:goodjob:
 
I shocked again tonight, as well as added a big puck, (3") I will check it in the am to see where the levels are. I know I should get a good test kit, and I will but for now I am going to have to rely on the test strips. I also ordered a bigger filter, I am using the one that came with the pool, and I just don't think it is big enough..I went for the 2500 GHP modle from intex.
 
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