Red and Black "Mould"

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The reasoning behind the chlorine soak is strictly for disinfecting. Hosing off gets rid of debris. Cartridge cleaners are meant for degreasing. I don't know how effective they are at disinfecting. I do know that chlorine is about as good as it gets when it comes to disinfecting.

I agree that there is not much of a need for CYA with an indoor pool.

If you aren't losing water, sealing the autofill from the pool, shutting off the supply, and sucking out the water might not be a bad idea.

I think it's likely that that was the source. The lack of use let the water stagnate.

Scott
 
The 1.5 ppm of chlorine, especially with high temps, and any amount of CYA seems awfully low for proper sanitation. Without knowing your CYA level you could possibly be running the levels way low for a long periods.

About the only product, that is safe and available for consumers to kill organics, in a pool or other applications, is chlorine, as I understand. Decontamination involves using extremely high levels of CL ppm. If high enough and circulated long enough through the whole system you can achieve full kill. When I decontaminated my spa I raised the CL above 100 ppm or above and ran all the filtration, and jets for several hours, turning the water bubbles on and off frequently. We had a neighborhood emergency so I didn't get home for several hours. By then it was late and I was tired but I panicked about the amount of time the whole system was subjected to so much chlorine. I did drain partially and refilled to bring the CL level down to 55 and them tackled it the next morning. I did keep the circulation going all night. I, also, keep circulation going 24/7 anyway. Actually I'm glad I did let it work longer than suggested because after a few more hours I could see the film disappearing in some of the clear tubes. After several months, post decontamination, I've had no sign of slime or slippery in the spa even when I go a few days with bromine too low.

Last night I was trying to remember where I've seen the pink bioslime around my place. I remember now. We've essentially closed down our upstairs. There are two bathrooms that are virtually unused. If the toilets go for too long without being flushed pink film will develop in the bowls and tanks. The other is the stainless steel outdoors doggie water buckets. We have city chlorinated water but the chlorine in tap water is much lower than what it needs to be for a pool or spa. During the summer if I don't replace the water in buckets every day and don't swish it with my hands and don't do a weekly scrubbing with chlorine the pink film develops in those.

Wish I knew where to get the water/organics tested but don't; sorry. One place to try might be your local water treatment facility. You might be able to sweet talk someone to do it for you or maybe even no need for sweet talking. You might have to talk to several people though. The cultures from your son might not tell the whole story about the pool water as opportunistic bacteria in his system might be different than what is in the water.

gg=alice
 
There doesn't appear to be any backflow prevention in the equipment room. Hopefully you have a properly operating backflow preventer elsewhere. If not you should immediately dissconnect the fill line.

The use of improperly connected auto fills in swimming pools is becoming a huge risk to municipal water supplies across the country and its just a matter of time before a serious accident occurs that affects a lot of people. This situation is only a couple of conditions away from such an occurance.

The only truly safe auto fill is one that has a suitable airgap in the fill line. Any backflow prevention device that is based upon checkvalves or reduced pressure zones have the potential to fail and very few are checked frequently enough to ensure proper operation. Because of the large volume of water in a pool it is considered by most backflow codes as a high hazard and should be treated accordingly.

I hope that all of those builders and DIYers hooking up auto fills directly to potable water systems or irrigation system backflow preventers don't become a cause of a major accident but I fear otherwise. Whats growing in this autofill line may be perfectly safe but it sure looks ominous and is a perfect example of the potential danger of auto fills as they are frequently installed.
 
Why not simply shut the autofill off and isolate it from the pool and remove all the water in it?

Incidentally, your pool numbers look fine. Lowering pH down into the mid 7's with muriatic acid is a good idea. It's ok @ 7.9 but you don't want it any higher. The pH is unrelated to your mold issue. (which I think is due completely to inadequate circulation).

Renovxpt makes an excellent point.......If the autofill does lack backflow prevention, that's all the more reason to remove it from the system.
 
If you look at the photos, the last photo in the first row shows a small white plastic insert above the waterline. We think that's the overfill. We're still getting junk out of that spot, even when the water is clean around the float.
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Is the overfill connected to your sanitary sewer drain line? :shock: Vapors venting from there could be making your pool VERY unsanitary!!! I'd get a health department expert/scientist, and building code inspector to look at it and see if it is OK to block it off.
Good Luck, and Best Wishes!!!
 
If the overflow is directly connected to the sewer with or without a Ptrap it becomes a vent for the sewer and a cross connection to pool and in this case the city potable water when the pool is over full. It is not uncommon to see raw sewage come out of a broken sewer cleanout from an overloaded sewer line. Those same conditions could push raw sewage into a swimming pool.
 
For an indoor pool, if using 20 ppm Cyanuric Acid (CYA) you'd want the Free Chlorine (FC) to be at least 2 ppm, but probably closer to 4 ppm since there isn't any sunlight with UV to help with oxidation. This is particularly necessary in a pool with poor circulation.

PoolGuyNJ, the reason for a small amount of CYA in an indoor pool is to lower the effective chlorine concentration which would otherwise be too strong. One cannot usually maintain 0.2 ppm FC with no CYA consistently yet the active chlorine level in most outdoor pools with an FC that is around 10% of the CYA is equivalent to around 0.1 ppm FC with no CYA. If you use 1-2 ppm FC or more with no CYA in a pool, you have over 10 times the active chlorine level and that oxidizes skin, hair, swimsuits faster and potentially causes more nitrogen trichloride to be formed.

In a pool with good circulation, I don't think the 1.5 ppm FC with 20 ppm CYA would have been a problem even though it's lower than one would want, but in this pool it was (both poor circulation in an area of the pool and a filler area which obviously has virtually no chlorine) and getting the FC higher has cleared up the main body of pool water (apparently).

[EDIT] Normally in a fill water compartment, the new water coming in replacing that removed from evaporation (or splash-out) will be chlorinated (either chlorine or monochloramine) though this may not last very long. Is your fill water chlorinated? Also, do you normally have a cover on your pool thus preventing evaporation? [END-EDIT]

Richard
 

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For the cartridge, you want to clean the cartridge with a water spray as usual, then soak in one cup of automatic dishwasher detergent for each 5 gallons of water. Soak the filter overnight and then rinse it off throughly. Only then should you try a disinfecting soak.
 
JasonLion said:
For the cartridge, you want to clean the cartridge with a water spray as usual, then soak in one cup of automatic dishwasher detergent for each 5 gallons of water. Soak the filter overnight and then rinse it off throughly. Only then should you try a disinfecting soak.
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Yes right. Also, aren't you supposed to use auto washer powder/granules and not liquid or gel? Seems I read that somewhere.

Look for auto washer product that is less than 4% phosphorus; better for the environment.

And please give us a report on your son. Surely hope he is over this bout.

A friend (sometimes employee/granddaughter of my best friend) has a severely immune compromised brother (congenital), 12 yrs old. Asthma had been a constant, on and off, life threatening issue for him. He does some kind of regular infusion treatments that are helping immensely with immune issues. Summer swimming, outdoors, especially with his friends over, is one of his best therapies, psychological and physical, as long as he doesn't get chilled. His mother has had a recent (past year), somewhat tragic, medical problem that started months ago with a lacerated ureter during robotic gyn surgery. She has been in and out of hospital, ER, and several surgeries, and is in constant pain. They are battling to save a kidney. Brother's asthma has been especially bad past month with four visits to ER. My friend and I are suspecting the emotional stress on him is probably the biggest factor in his severe attacks that had virtually stopped when he started the infusions. I know you know this but keep things as smooth and calm as possible for your son. I'm streaming lots "positive" your way. :)

gg=alice
 
My son has been released from the hospital, but he has not gone back to school yet. He's just not strong enough to last the day. Of course, now my husband and I have what Matthew had, so we're both working from home and caring for Matthew. It's exhausting! It's so hard to be as sick as we are and deal with a child with extraordinary special needs. He's non verbal, so he can't tell me if he hurts or if he's feeling better...I just run on instinct at this point.

We did have some progress finding out things with the water filler.
1 - the white hole in the filler cavity, that I thought was an overfill, is actually a drain from the dry-o-tron back into the pool. Our dehumidifier condenses back into water and puts it back into the pool. We've been able to clean the drip tray, and run a brush through the line, with bleach. It looks as though this was the source of the goop we found.
2 - we don't have an overfill into the septic system or any other location, so we don't have to worry about the sewage issues that might have existed.
3 - there is very low circulation in the area of the pool filler, so we're looking into getting one of those robotic cleaners to help with the circulation
4 - chlorine is currently sitting a 5, with no CC, and all my other numbers are the same as previous post, so it looks like we're good that way.
5 - we bought a plug for the filler, just in case we can't resolve this issue with sanitization.
6 - we did a thorough clean of both the filters and restarted things, so hopefully that will help too.

I want to thank all that contributed to helping me figure out this problem. You guys are great. And thanks for the concern for my son, it's much appreciated. :)
I'll post in a day or so with the water test results and the results of the changes we made.
Thanks again. :goodjob:

Sonya
 
renovxpt said:
Any backflow prevention device that is based upon checkvalves or reduced pressure zones have the potential to fail and very few are checked frequently enough to ensure proper operation. .
Click to expand...

What other kind are there? I grant you that backflow preventers are not created equally. A Reduced Pressure Principle Backflow Preventer or RPP is the standard for applications that could back up toxic water into the potable water. Standard PVB or double check preventers are not adequate of sprinkler systems or pool fills even though the majority of irrigation systems have the PVB type. If you know of a better preventer than an RPP, let me know.

At any rate, i would think an autofill on a pool should have an RPP type. They are double the price, but worth every penny not to contaminate the potable water supply.

Sorry for the hijack :oops:
 
What other kind are there?
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An air gap is the best backflow preventer you can have. With an electronic auto fill you can connect to the old fashion fill spout or a fitting in a raised bond beam or even a deck jet to achieve a suitable air gap.

Its been 15 years since I took the course required to inspect backflow preventers and at that time they allowed double check valves for irrigation systems. The reasoning was that the volume of potentially contaminated water from an irrigation system was less than a gallon compared to the potential of a pool. RPZ's are required for pools but most builders and homeowners hook up the autofills to irrigation lines or the hose bib on the side of the house. There are a lot of pond builders doing the same thing. Very few get the backflow preventers inspected annually and if there was no permit its unlikely that it ever gets checked. That course opened my eyes and put the fear in my head.
 
Yea, an air gap works,but i dont know of a back flow preventer that only uses that. Have a reference or a link to the device you are talking about. The RPP's they have today are both anti siphon and anti backflow. Nothing is 100%, but the RPP is the closest thing to perfect. Thats what anyone who has a sprinkler system needs. IMO, any autofill needs to be connected to an RPP preventer.
 

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