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Eighth Day Update:

I'm over a week into the SLAM and I can't get it to look any better than this cloudy state:







There were a couple days where the FC drastically dropped while I was at work, and I would have to come home and empty 3 jugs of bleach to get it back up to 16 FC, but other than that I've kept emptying jugs based on PoolMath to keep it at 16 FC and jumped in + brushed every piece of floor and wall in the pool. The filter's PSI isn't high enough to backwash, and the CYA level (while I thought was going to be at 40 after adding enough in to get to that point) ultimately ended up reading at 20 after a week of letting it dissipate, so I'm going to top that off to get it to 40 but other than that, I'm not sure what else I can do.

Any suggestions to break this barrier?
 
wow I just read through all 5 pages of this thread. The pics in the first few pages are missing.... That white cloudiness is the final stages of rescuing your pool. You have to keep on the SLAM until the water is clear- and keep the pump running 24/7. All that white stuff is dead algae. With the FC dropping, that means it's "working". When the FC starts to hold, you know you are almost done. Keep it up- any bit of leaves, sticks and **** really consume the chlorine.
 
1-2 weeks is common from what I've seen so far for pools that are pretty far gone.

Deep cleaning and filter and trying DE additions can help speed the last phase where it's mostly on your filter to clear the fine debris.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
 
Dash Inc said:
zimm and karmabiker: I understand. Is it normal for a pool like mine to need so much SLAM-ing when it used to look like a swamp? Sorry the pics aren't there, I arranged them in photobucket after I posted them and it must have broke the link.
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It can be. 3 days is silly, 1 week is fast, 2 seems pretty average and 3+ weeks can happen with real swamps but is usually some organics hiding somewhere.
 
I am at week 7, Dash. The Pool People wasted 5 precious weeks doing it their expensive, ineffective way. Cost me $1,300. Granted our pool had been abandoned for almost 3 years and had more than a foot of sludge at the bottom on the entire pool. So if you are at week 2 only, you are doing great. I got to the cloudy stage and fired them and have been making massive progress by myself and with the help of TFP site and good folks. Our water is now almost crystal clear. Keep slamming and don't look back. Surely your bleach and test kit is much cheaper than lining the pockets of the pool store....
 
Jeniloohoo said:
I am at week 7, Dash. The Pool People wasted 5 precious weeks doing it their expensive, ineffective way. Cost me $1,300. Granted our pool had been abandoned for almost 3 years and had more than a foot of sludge at the bottom on the entire pool. So if you are at week 2 only, you are doing great. I got to the cloudy stage and fired them and have been making massive progress by myself and with the help of TFP site and good folks. Our water is now almost crystal clear. Keep slamming and don't look back. Surely your bleach and test kit is much cheaper than lining the pockets of the pool store....
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$1,300! That's awful! We threw away ~$600 ultimately until we finally gave up on the "Oh, really, this is what's going to work for your pool!" excuse. I'm not sure how much I've spent on bleach the past two weeks, but I hope it isn't that difficult to keep it maintained once the pool is normal again. I want to see a pic of your sparkly pool, give me something to envy.
 

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So I'm ten days into the SLAM and the water hasn't changed much at all from the pictures above, but they have changed just slightly. I wanted to get all the dead algae that had converted into sand from the bottom of the pool, so I hooked up the manual vacuum we have, jumped in and started sucking every huge buildup of dead algae sand up. Then something started to worry me: I walked over to the returns and felt a fair amount of that sand building right back up in my hands. Almost all the sand I sucked up ended up building right back up in front of the return jets. Could this mean that:

-The sand is too fine for my sand filter to catch, or

-That's the sand that's supposed to be in my filter and there's a problem with the filter?

Just some extra notes, it had been operating @ 10 psi accept for when I had to backwash it when it increased to ~13 psi a week ago. The pump is brand new, only been active ~month, if not less. Everything about the filter seems normal beyond that. Anyone have any idea what could be going on here, and what the most efficient way to check would be?
 
AFAIK dead algae feels noticeably different from sand... so that might be a filter problem. Maybe put something like a knee-high stocking over the skimmer to catch more of the algae before it gets to the filter. It would be an interesting experiment to put one over the skimmer, hold another in front of the return, and compare the catch to see if the return is really kicking out algae or sand.

Someone posted that they were able to rig a stocking in the vacuum and that really took the algae out quickly.

If it really is sand coming out of the return, that's above my pay grade and someone with an actual pool is gonna have to help ;)
 
That is interesting bridgman, I would like to try that. I'm worried trying anything at all right now would be pointless because of my filter possibly not working correctly at all right now. I'm not sure how to inspect the sand filter and spot any issues. I guess I can just open it up and see if I notice anything particularly unusual.
 
I'm just a noob here, but if you have sand coming from the return, then you've got a problem in your filter. That would explain why your filter pressure isn't rising, and why you still have cloudy water.

I'd remove the multi valve and see if the stand pipe is broken. You may also have broken "fingers" (I don't know what the proper term is) at the bottom of the stand pipe.

You may want to empty the sand out and inspect fingers.
 
GomezAddams said:
I'd remove the multi valve and see if the stand pipe is broken. You may also have broken "fingers" (I don't know what the proper term is) at the bottom of the stand pipe.

You may want to empty the sand out and inspect fingers.
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They are called laterals but we all know what you're referring to. And yes as they age they can get brittle and if they start to crack they can let sand get past and back into the pool.
 

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kiss4afrog said:
They are called laterals but we all know what you're referring to. And yes as they age they can get brittle and if they start to crack they can let sand get past and back into the pool.
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I understand exactly, I took the sand out a long time ago and looked at everything, so I'll do that tomorrow morning. The long periods of time in between posts = mucho work! Would you suggest any specific way to detect a broken lateral or will it be visually obvious.
 
+1 on Kimkats, it should be a piece of the grid that's cracked or missing on one or more. Check the upright tube out too as they can crack.
 

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