New house with pool - starting to go green!

[Keebert]

Hello everyone. We just moved into a house with a pool and I'm slowly learning all about it. I went through pool school with a local guy so I now know all the plumbing etc and how the equipment works. Unfortunately this happened after we had been in the house for a couple of months and now the pool is starting to turn green. The water is still mostly clear but it has a green tinge and there is definitely some build-up on the bottom.

I did a test last night with strips (I have a Taylors K-2006 on the way) and these are the results:

Salt 1100 (Aqua Rite says 1400)
FCl ~0
Alk 80
pH 7.8
CyA ~0

I have shock & chlorine tablets and have stabilizer on the way. I will be picking up salt and acid tonight. The instructions on the Aqua Rite door says that the salt should be around 2500 so I'm sure I need to add salt - I estimate 125lbs to get to 2500ppm and I can imagine that the free Chlorine is zero since there is no stabilizer and the SWCG is not generating Chlorine.

So is it worth me adding salt and shocking the pool without having any stabiliser? Or should I just leave it until the stabilizer arrives (probably early next week)?

Thanks for the help! My pool details are in my signature.

 

[duraleigh]

Welcome to the forum.

You will need to SLAM the pool. (See the article in pool school) I wouldn't start until I had everything I needed in hand and had a thorough understanding of what each parameter means. Please read "The ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry" at the same time as the SLAM article.

Secondly, there is not much need in starting the SLAM until you get your test kit.....it is an essential part of the SLAM process.

Ask lot's of questions....we'll help.

 

[pwrstrk]

Welcome to TFP !
Good job on getting the good test kit. It will come in very handy.
The test results from the strips we won't trust.
Since we don't have a good accurate test on your CYA level yet I don't want you using the powered shock as it contains CYA. So what you can do is add 2 jugs of regular house hold bleach 2X a day to your water. Once during the day say around lunchtime and again at night. At night just add 1 1/2 jugs to stay on the safe side with your FC. This will bring your FC up to 10 which is shock level FC for 0-10 ppm of CYA. This should hold things off from getting worse. Just pour the bleach slowly in front of a return with your pump running. Let your pump run for 30 min to mix well. If you want to since the test strips are junk, you can take a water sample to the pool store and have them test for FC so it doesn't get too high. Don't let them test anything else. No swimming until we get things fixed up !
When your test kit arrives post up a full set of test results and we can get things in order from accurate test results. If you use bleach now and your FC is 10 or more let it drift down to test PH. The PH test is invalid with FC levels of 10 or more. We need a good test on the PH.
Don't worry about adding salt now. Let's get the green to go away first. You can read the articles on SWG in Pool School to get familiar with the water balance for it.

In the meantime until the kit comes I would like you to read a couple of articles from Pool School.
ABC'S Of Pool Water Chemistry
SLAM Process
Recommended Levels
Also take a look at Pool Math. This is what you will use to figure out your dosing of chem's. Plug your pool water volume in and play around with it.

 

[Keebert]

Thanks for the responses - very much appreciated. I've been reading a lot and the pool maintenance seems straight forward but getting out of a mess means a lot larger quantities of chemicals than I was preparing for!

I have Doheny's Super Pool Shock which is 68% Calcium Hypochlorite but I don't know what the "other" ingredients are - I assumed they were inert.

I bought 9lbs of stabilizer (100% CYA) which should arrive next week. If the CYA is really 0 then I'll need 11lbs according to the PoolMath calculator so should I order some more just in case?

 

[pwrstrk]

Yes you'll need the stabilizer, but not all of it in the beginning. Later on you'll use it all.
Don't use the super shock. We don't what know your CH level is.
Do all the reading you can till your kit arrives and you can hold things off from getting worse with the bleach. Make sure your SWG is turned off. No reason to run it now.

 

[jcowart]

The K2006 is a good kit, it's one of the recommended kits. The only problem is the amount of regents it comes with. Pool stores sell a product they call "shock", that's how they make money. TFP teaches that it is a process. With that said you will need to test multiple times a day. The process is maintain shock level. You will quickly run out of the FAS-DPD regents that came with that kit. I would go on and order the XL refill from tftestkits. If you work Monday-Friday then start the slam process Friday evening. If it takes testing every 2 hours then you can stay on top of it. If you stick too it then it should not take that long. I would do what the others have said, feed it bleach to try and keep it at bay till your kit comes in with the refills. Hold onto the cal hypo. It could be useful after a good test. It could also add to the problem if blindly used. Take it in small chunks and Welcome to the group.

 

[Divin Dave]

Hi Keebert,
No need to order CYA unless you just want to.

you can get granule CYA at Walmart in the Pool Section
Its called Stabilizer. Cost about 14$ for a 4 lbs container.
Also available at pool stores but costs more.

Use Pool Math and Get your CYA up to 30 asap. Then SLAM it hard hard hard. The more you check teh FC and keep it at SLAM level, the quicker the process will go. You have to be diligent and follow the SLAM instructions. If you try and cheat or get lazy, the algae will come back on you again.

Good Luck!

I bought 9lbs of stabilizer (100% CYA) which should arrive next week. If the CYA is really 0 then I'll need 11lbs according to the PoolMath calculator so should I order some more just in case?

 

[Patrick_B]

Welcome to TFP Keebert!

If you want to learn to do this yourself, you came to the right place. You've gotten all the advice you need right now, so enjoy the forum!

 

[Keebert]

Thanks for all the advice. I went out and bought a couple of jugs of bleach and poured one in on Friday. The water went from green to blue overnight although I can still see some green on the steps so I have been scrubbing but it's not all gone yet.

I was worried that the FCl levels may drop before I get my test kit so I put in another jug on Sunday and had the amusement of discovering the difference between regular and "easy pour" bleach. A quick search on the forum and I was glad to see I wasn't the first to make this mistake!



Anyway, pool is still blue and the bubbles are gone and my test kit is in on a truck in Arkansas so almost in Texas. I should get it in the next couple of days. There is still some green on the steps and scrubbing with the brush is not getting it all off. The water is too cold to get in to so I'm hoping that shock levels of FCl will kill this and make it easier to remove.

I'm slowly understanding the plumbing of the pool. Some of the valves are on actuators and they move depending on the pool mode settings. I was a little frustrated with the suction from the spa not being active on default so this means that when the pool is on clean mode (pump, filter and cleaner), there was no suction from the spa so any solids that settled on the bottom would not be sucked to the filter but floating stuff would fall over the edge into the pool and be dealt with there. So I switched the suction to be both from the pool and spa and then was wondering why the spa was practically empty when I would check the pool again in the morning. Then I realised that since the spa was above the surface of the pool, the water was just draining out by gravity. The default for the pool is to have 100% suction from the weirs and main drain and 100% return to the spa so if I want to have suction from the spa, I need to do that manually.

Another problem is that there is air getting into the system, I suspect through one of the valves so I have a valve rebuild kit on the way and will be replacing the seals soon. All good fun!

 

[robdac]

Another problem is that there is air getting into the system, I suspect through one of the valves so I have a valve rebuild kit on the way and will be replacing the seals soon. All good fun!

Another common location for an air leak is the pump basket O-ring and the O-ring on the pump drain plug. A thin coating of silicone based lube around the O-rings, such as Magic Lube, also helps.

 

[Keebert]

I'm pretty sure the leak is in the valve that controls suction from the spa. With suction from the spa on, the filter bleeds air almost immediately. When I switch the spa valve to off, some water leaks out from around the valve until it is in the full off position.

I was surprised last night to see no air in the viewing window above the pump basket - usually you can see the churn. I was initially worried that the pump was running dry but when I switched the spa valve to on, air appeared in the window so it was actually completely full with water. After a short time running with the spa valve off, the air all disappeared from the pump window.

I also think there is a leak in the multi-way valve on the back of the filter but this is only apparent when switching the valve. When set to filter mode, there is no air coming in nor is there any water coming out.

In any case, I have a tube of magic lube and am waiting for the seals to repair the spa valve. I will definitely lube the seals and also lube the seals on the pump basket opening next time I open it.

 

[kimkats]

You are on the right track! You are SO far ahead of most newbies in that you have ordered your test kit! SWEET!

Keep putting bleach (plain like you found out LOL-yeah most of us have made that mistake) in every day to keep it where it is for now.

Once you get your test kit shoot us your numbers and a good picture of your steps or a place where you/we can look down and see the progress of all of your work. There will be days where it does not look like anything is happening BUT if you take a picture of the same place every day you will be able to see that it IS just a little bit clearer than the last time so.........

Kim

 

[Keebert]

So after a two week trip to Abu Dhabi, I have finally gotten around to testing the pool!

Free Chlorine: 0 (I put two scoops in 10ml and it didn't go pink at all)
pH is 8ish (one drop of R-0005 took it to 7.6 and another to 7.4)
Total Alkalinity 110
Calcium Hardness 250
Cyanuric Acid around 35
Salt around 770 at first reading (left the strip in for a bit longer and it went to 1000)

I switched off the SWG while I was away since it wasn't doing anything with the low salt level and it's been raining quite a bit so I'm not surprised that the salt has gone down.

So what first? Get the CYA up to 80 then add chlorine or get the salt up to 3000 first and get the SWG working? Worry about the pH first?

The water is crystal clear (while I was away, I asked my wife to chuck in a jug of bleach every 3-4 days. She chucked all three jugs in one go about 10 days ago. It's very sunny now so I'm not surprised that there is no free chlorine. But is there a chance that the reagent is off? The expiry is 01/16.