Cloudy Water/Fine Particulate

[hjgrimm]

About a week ago our water started to get a little cloudy, similar to what we battle with pollen earlier in the year. Typically I throw a skimmer sock on and after a few days all clears up. This time things seem to be so fine I can not get them out for anything. Fearing an algae bloom Thursday I decided to run a SLAM to see what would happen. CYA is about 35. PH is between 7.2-7.5. Typically keep FC around 4-5. Took FC up to 13 for two days. It really took almost nothing to keep the chlorine that high, which indicated it was not an algae problem. Saturday night things seemed to be clearing up, so I ran the dolphin over night. Sunday morning, as cloudy as can be again, with almost nothing in the filter of the dolphin. Pool filter looks as clean as when I cleaned it Thursday. Skimmer Sock is only catching typical bugs and the like, not clogged with particles as I would expect. Vacuumed through the filter and no change again. When things settled again I tried the pool blaster battery vac we have used for a quick touch up with a microfiber bag. You can literally see the dust blow right through the vac and cloud things up as you run it. I left the pool uncovered for the past 36 hours just so I could see the entire thing a little easier. Last night I did a FC loss test and we lost around .5 or less of FC over night. I will let FC drift back down to 5 now I guess. I doubled up the skimmer sock for kicks just to see. Any ideas at all? I have no idea where to go from here.

 

[jaduck]

Could it be calcium clouding? Have you added anything other than bleach? What is you CH and TA? If you have a sand filter you could add DE to help clear things up.

 

[hjgrimm]

Sorry I left those out. CH is 210 and TA is 90. We battled high alkalinity when we opened this year but have it under control now. I use bleach only with the occasional tri chlor pucks when we are on vacation. (It has been 3 weeks dice they were in)

- - - Updated - - -

Oh and the filter is a cartridge filter.

 

[jaduck]

You could try lowering your pH to 7.2 with MA. If you have calcium clouding it will help to dissolve the CaCO3 formation. Do you have pollen covering furniture, cars, etc?

 

[pooldv]

Vaccuum, skimmer socks or pantyhose, run your pump more and add DE to you sand filter if you have a sand filter. Here's how, Pool School - Add DE to a Sand Filter

 

[hjgrimm]

PH has been lowered and kept to 7.2, filter running 24x7 and it just does not want to filter out. As a last chance I ordered a slime bag that I put on the return tonight. The morning will tell if that has helped or not.

 

[mrramsey]

Interesting.... I am having a similar issue. I slammed my pool a few weeks back and since them the monsoons came and dumped a boat load of rain. I had to drain water at least twice. Finally had some clear weather so I opened it up yesterday to what looked like algae visibly. Only on the bottom of the pool. The Water column was visibly clear. I feared the worse thinking I would need to slam again but my water tested just fine meaning there should be nothing alive in there. I threw the pool cleaner in there and it immediately sucked stuff off of the bottom. I did this for hours yesterday cleaning the filter multiple times. Its a light green color on the filter when I clean it off. It has been cleaned up for the most part but it seems to be a very fine particulate and now the water is cloudy due to it being in suspension. It does very much resemble pollen. The water was clear as you can see in the pic but after the vac got things stirred up it got cloudy.

I use a 150SF cartridge filter and thought these filtered out better than sand and DE. Is there anything else that can catch the fine stuff?

hjgrimm what part of Ohio are you in? I am in the Cleveland / Akron area.

 

[hjgrimm]

We are in the Akron/Canton area. I am wondering if one of the last rains that came through brought something with it. This is almost the exact problem. Same filter here as well, looks like I only have the single speed pump. I have never loved the filter, does anyone here have a recommendation for a better cartridge filter?

When we have pollen in the spring it is much more yellow, where this does filter slightly it is more of a greenish tint to it. Vacuums easily, just stays suspended and the pool is cloudy again. I ran the Slime bag last night on the return. It filtered quite a bit out, the bag was visibly dirty. I cleaned it this morning and ran the standard return for awhile, to see things start to settle again, so I ran the vac and switched back to the slime bag for the day. I got in to stir the water up as well and brush the walls (they were not dirty at all, just trying to think of everything.) I'm going to check on it when I get back from work tonight and clean the slime bag and run the standard return tonight. I don't like how the water doesn't seem to circulate with the slime bag on it. I brought the FC back up to 13 last night just to see, lost about .5FC over night so I feel like this is not organic at all. Would love anymore advice anyone can give.

 

[mrramsey]

We are in the Akron/Canton area. I am wondering if one of the last rains that came through brought something with it. This is almost the exact problem. Same filter here as well, looks like I only have the single speed pump. I have never loved the filter, does anyone here have a recommendation for a better cartridge filter?

When we have pollen in the spring it is much more yellow, where this does filter slightly it is more of a greenish tint to it. Vacuums easily, just stays suspended and the pool is cloudy again. I ran the Slime bag last night on the return. It filtered quite a bit out, the bag was visibly dirty. I cleaned it this morning and ran the standard return for awhile, to see things start to settle again, so I ran the vac and switched back to the slime bag for the day. I got in to stir the water up as well and brush the walls (they were not dirty at all, just trying to think of everything.) I'm going to check on it when I get back from work tonight and clean the slime bag and run the standard return tonight. I don't like how the water doesn't seem to circulate with the slime bag on it. I brought the FC back up to 13 last night just to see, lost about .5FC over night so I feel like this is not organic at all. Would love anymore advice anyone can give.

I searched online all morning for a replacement and there doesn't seem to be much out there that I found. Best o can tell the cartridges only filter down to 20 microns. Did you get your slime bag locally?