Well a pretty productive day in pool land. I drained pretty close to 75% of the water today. I'm glad I didn't return the pump early 5000 gph also takes a lot of green stuff and dirt out of the pool. I got the broom out and kept sweeping stuff up in the water and toward the pump.
When I had the water down low I started adding bleach. I estimated the gallons and dosed it to get it to shock level. As I added water, I kept the shock level going. Toward this afternoon it was loosing very little chlorine every hour or two. I should have it full late tonight and tomorrow I'll run all the tests again.
This afternoon the pool is a nice sea foam green. Still a bit cloudy but I think still dirty. There is more and more dropping out. I have cleaned the filter 3 times so far. The first time was pretty nasty, the second and third times were mostly dirt and stuff. I have been cleaning the pump strainer basket every few hours and pulled quite a bit of stuff out. The last time I cleaned it after dinner there was basically nothing in it.
All in all really happy with the results. It is soooo much better than yesterday morning. I took some pictures but not figured out how to post them quite yet. So testing in the am, I can get back at lunch, and we will keep plugging away. I am hoping to see around 50 or so for a CYA tomorrow.
If I only get it down to 60-70 I can let my little sump pump work over night and get it down and keep chipping away at it.
I did go to the pool store today and asked him to test my CYA. He used a test strip and said it was around 120. I told him what was going on and he recommended a whole bunch of things. I said I'd think about it but not right now. His solutions sounded expensive with algaecide at 29.00 a quart, and something else. So far all I have added was some muratic acid to lower the ph to 7.2 and $25.00 worth of Bleach I bought at Costco. I can't even imagine what the old pool guy we used last year would have charged to clean this thing up. I can easily see $400-500 based on what he charged last year for stuff. Cleaning the filter was $70.00.
Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
Phil