- Jun 13, 2013
- 224
I'll spare everybody the story, but suffice to say that I slacked on my maintenance last week and while checking the pool on Friday morning (before heading away for a long weekend) I found it a wondeful shade of green. Yep, algae bloom. It was a bit unexpected after an entire summer of crystal-clear water with minimal maintenance (thanks TFP!) but my CL levels must have crashed at some point and I didn't catch it in time.
Anyhow, I hit the pool pretty hard with shock (12% liquid) on Friday but unfortunately I was going to be away for the weekend so I had a friend enlisted to come and do some of the maintenance for me Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning. The challenging part was of course getting somebody who wasn't overly familiar with pool maintenance to do things on my behalf (over the phone) and I think the long and the short of what happened was that the chlorine levels where not quite sufficient to fully kill the bloom – I came home last night to a still light green murky pool.
I backwashed and then SLAM'd it last night as well as adding a hefty dose of poly, as well as refilling with fresh tap water. Yes, I've read the negatives around here about Poly, But the more I read over the weekend it seemed to be a mostly "nothing to lose" (except for perhaps the cash out of my wallet) proposition, so I went for it. My filter has been running full time since Friday morning, and after finishing with the pool last night I crossed my fingers and went to bed.
This morning I woke up to beautiful blue water again.
So, it appears that I'm ahead of the game now – but how long should I maintain the SLAM CL values for before starting to reduce the chlorine levels? I've read in some places that once the green tinge is gone (and the water is just milky/cloudy from the suspended dead algae) that you've won the battle and can start to reduce chlorine levels, but I've read the opposite here in places that they need to be maintained high for a day or so afterwards. I want to avoid a re-bloom, of course.
I had had my stabilizer levels comfortably around 30 all summer, relying mainly on liquid chlorine vs pucks. All other levels are smack on, and have remained that way all summer thanks to what i learned here. PH was a bit low this morning (7.0'ish) but I've read that such can be somewhat beneficial in this situation so I'm reluctant to worry about it at the moment.
So...when's it safe to start bleeding down my CL levels so I can hopefully get things back to normal?
Thanks all.
Anyhow, I hit the pool pretty hard with shock (12% liquid) on Friday but unfortunately I was going to be away for the weekend so I had a friend enlisted to come and do some of the maintenance for me Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning. The challenging part was of course getting somebody who wasn't overly familiar with pool maintenance to do things on my behalf (over the phone) and I think the long and the short of what happened was that the chlorine levels where not quite sufficient to fully kill the bloom – I came home last night to a still light green murky pool.
I backwashed and then SLAM'd it last night as well as adding a hefty dose of poly, as well as refilling with fresh tap water. Yes, I've read the negatives around here about Poly, But the more I read over the weekend it seemed to be a mostly "nothing to lose" (except for perhaps the cash out of my wallet) proposition, so I went for it. My filter has been running full time since Friday morning, and after finishing with the pool last night I crossed my fingers and went to bed.
This morning I woke up to beautiful blue water again.
So, it appears that I'm ahead of the game now – but how long should I maintain the SLAM CL values for before starting to reduce the chlorine levels? I've read in some places that once the green tinge is gone (and the water is just milky/cloudy from the suspended dead algae) that you've won the battle and can start to reduce chlorine levels, but I've read the opposite here in places that they need to be maintained high for a day or so afterwards. I want to avoid a re-bloom, of course.
I had had my stabilizer levels comfortably around 30 all summer, relying mainly on liquid chlorine vs pucks. All other levels are smack on, and have remained that way all summer thanks to what i learned here. PH was a bit low this morning (7.0'ish) but I've read that such can be somewhat beneficial in this situation so I'm reluctant to worry about it at the moment.
So...when's it safe to start bleeding down my CL levels so I can hopefully get things back to normal?
Thanks all.