Metals in our water?!

[Salbailey]

Hi! We just did the "paper towel in the skimmer basket" trick and within a half hour, it was brown!

We fought with a green pool all last summer (first season with any problems of our 5 years with this pool!) and the pool store said it was algae so we shocked and shocked and shocked and finally just had to close it. (Our liner is almost white now BTW.) I just recently found TFP thankfully and opened a few days ago. The water was clear with a lot of fine debris on the bottom. Of course we had to fill in order to vacuum and the pool turned green again. We still were thinking this was algae...we added a gallon of liquid chlorine. So I just measured and my FC is 25. Oops. The water has turned green/yellow/brown. Thats when it occurred to do the paper towel test!
What should we do next? I just ordered Jack's Magic Pink Stuff and it will be here Saturday.

FC - 25
pH - 7.2
TA - 140
CYA - 40

 

[mknauss]

Welcome to the forum.
Stuff the skimmer basket with poly fill (pillow stuffing). Check it every couple hours and rinse it out. Get as much iron out as you can while it is oxidized (rust) due to the high FC.

Do not add the sequestrant until you have removed as much iron as you can.

Iron Fill Water Filter - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[Salbailey]

Ok Thank you! Will do!

 

[Salbailey]

Ok - we have been filtering through poly fill for about 18 hours now. We made a big filter also! The water is still very brown/green/yellow.

FC - 22
CC - 0
pH - 7.2
TA - Above 225
CYA - 40

 

[mknauss]

Is the filter capturing iron? It can take some time.

 

[Salbailey]

Yes. Should we be adding DE to our filter and vacuuming the bottom? What else can we be doing? We are antsy

 

[mknauss]

I would not do any DE right now. Your first focus is to clear up the iron in the water. Then deal with any other issues. Do not raise your FC above 16 ppm in the future (SLAM level for your CYA). You risk bleaching out your liner.

 

[AK-]

Do not raise your FC above 16 ppm in the future (SLAM level for your CYA). You risk bleaching out your liner.

I swear I read the OP saying the liner was already bleached.

 

[Salbailey]

My husband made a vacuum to go through the filter we had made before. Look at all that stuff on the bottom that is going through the poly fill!!

 

[Salbailey]

Still filtering! Water is now a yellow green and we can see the bottom when the stuff settles and then we vacuum. Still reading high chlorine.
We are still going!

 

[Salbailey]

Good morning! I took some pictures before I did anything this morning so you guys could direct me as to what to do next. We are still filtering for the metal and the sand is generally getting it out also. These pictures are looking like algae tho right :/

FC - 10
TA - 110
CYA - 30

 

[mknauss]

You still need to follow the SLAM Process

 

[Salbailey]

Ok thank you! - but we have not been doing anything but filtering for the metal. What would you do from here? Start slam now? What about the metals in the water?

 

[duraleigh]

Are you filling from a well?

 

[Salbailey]

Yes and we now know we have to filter the fill water next time! This is our first year with TFP and excited to learn it all

 

[Salbailey]

We had to add water last night (filtered of course!!) and still slamming.
FC - 19
TA -130
CYA - 60

Why does my CYA keep rising? Because then I keep needing to add LC!

 

[mknauss]

We had to add water last night (filtered of course!!) and still slamming.
FC - 19
TA -130
CYA - 60

Why does my CYA keep rising? Because then I keep needing to add LC!

CYA only increases if you add it. Are you?

 

[Salbailey]

Hi. No we are not adding anything except for liquid chlorine (according to pool math app). Nothing else happening here except that we added filtered water last night and it has been raining here. Water temp is 66*. We are still trying to filter for metals a bit too. Water is blue/green and cloudy. We can see the bottom a bit and we can see stuff on the bottom like in the pictures above.

 

[AK-]

Have you added stabilizer directly into the skimmer recently?

 

[Salbailey]

No we have not added anything but liquid chlorine. We just opened a week ago to a metals problem.