Welcome to TFP! this place totally helped me recover a foreclosure swamp that you see in my profile pic
youre in good hands here!
You mentioned testing -- do you already have either the TFT 100 or Taylor K2006 recommended here? (See
http://www.tftestkits.net )
If you have the Taylor, order some more reagent 0871 now because you will rely heavily on it and use a lot during your SLAM -- you don't want to run out in the middle
If you have the tft100, you're set.
If you have a different test kit, you'll want to upgrade to one of the recommended ones because they're the only ones that can read a slam-level FC.
Next question...can you post a pic? It helps us know just what you're dealing with, and its useful to see color-change to know if you're staying ahead of the algae.
It would also be good to add you pool details and filter type etc. to your profile signature.
Re pump out or slam -- this is a personal decision, but if the water is BLACK and you have a LOT of debris, you may find it slightly easier to rent and use (sparingly) a trash pump on the bottom while also filling with fresh water at the same time -- you never want LESS than a foot of water in the shallow end with vinyl, and if you have a high water table, then draining at all is riskier.
In mine, I couldn't risk it (water table issues and unknown well capacity).
Either way, its critical to manually remove all the heavy debris, even though you're working blind.
For this part, you'll want a good heavy duty leaf rake.
In addition, a "leaf gulper" will help save your back a bit -- you use ths with a garden hose and it helps "suck up" leaves:
Amazon.com : Universal Leaf Gulper Pool Vacuum : Swimming Pool Pressure Cleaners : Patio, Lawn Garden
In the beginning when you start filtering, you may want to keep the drain valve only a "bit" so you don't get clogs when the debris load is heavy. You will also want to kep a close eye on the filter and backwash whenever its 25% above clean pressure.
I will post the large size pic of my on swamp recovery to give you an idea about progression and color change over a 12 day period. My recovery was in spring, so the temps were lower, which was in my favor-- you will be working against warmer temps where algae grows back faster. I was stuck at "brown" until I had my test kit and TFP help
Then things moved fast daily.
We chlorinated and filtered while removing debris for several days, btw, to knock down the putrid smell and get sanitizing, in all, we used about 60 gallons of liquid bleach, but before TFP had also used 12 bags of shock. You will see that we also hadn't gotten everything on the bottom either
We were not really able to use the vacuum without clogging until the final two pics.
Hope that helps you get a plan together -- I'll try to keep an eye on this one!
One last note before you get deep into a slam:
Post up your TA and PH levels even if you don't have a recc kit yet -- while TA usually doesn't matter (eg last thing you worry about), sometimes it can crash in a swamp and you want to make sure there's some TA there. PH in my case was down in the 6s, and you want to adjust that to 7.2 for slamming -- makes the chlorine work better. (Since you've already added chlorine, ph isn't accurate at slam levels...you'll need to test when the FC s below slam levels.)
Lastly, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get a strong sense of where your CYA is at -- that number really dictates what your SLAM level of FC will be. So test it a few times to get the hang of the test. Without the cya reading, you're winking in the dark -- the precision of the sustained kill zone is what turns a swamp sparkly
and the "maintain" part is what does the work -- dosing frequently enough, and a few ppms higher than target so youre not spending time below slam value, is what keeps the algae on the run
Cheers to clear!