Water full of dust help

[ochartier]

Hi!

I have a 15 feet above ground pool with a salt system.

I'm an idiot and I plugged my pump backwards this year and it ran for about 48 hours. So the result is the water is full of debris and sand dust from the filter.
The water is gray and cloudy, and yesterday, I couldn't see more the 12 inches down the water. Now I did an Alum treatment and it seems to have done some good (though the debris stick to the walls and I have a hard time flushing them, think I'll have to vacuum manually). But I still can't see passed about 2.5-3 feets down. It seems like there is grey dust stuck to every solid wall / stair / plastic pieces of the pool.

SHould I do an other Alum round after vacuming the pool? AM I screwed and I have to empty it and put all fresh new water?

What are the thoughts from experienced peeps?

THanks!

 

[ochartier]

Also, now that my first Alum round is done, I've put the pump on drain/waste for about a minute, hoping it would clear the residues, but it hasn't. Should I vacuum it? If I do should I set the vacuum to waste/drain or filter? Can I just turn the pump on to filter and hope the Alum residue will be collected by the sand filter?

 

[jaduck]

One of the experts will be along shortly to help get you out of this mess! Gosh, it sounds like a nightmare, so sorry! Can you post a picture? Can you give us some info on the size of your pool (gallons), type of filter, etc? Alum floc needs to be vacuumed to waste, I'm almost certain...

 

[Texas Splash]

Well, first of all ... welcome to TFP! Secondly, OOPS! No worries, we've all done things like that before. It might take a few days to regain your crystal clear water, but just because you essentially backwashed your dirty filter right back to the pool is no reason to get too crazy with products. Here at TFP we don't normally rely on coagulants and other such products, but you've already used it. At some point you might consider a good sand deep clean if any of that alum got to the sand. So before you try adding anymore, I would suggest giving you water time to settle continue filtering and letting the sand do its job. Perhaps increase your FC by a few ppm and see how things progress over the next couple days. Nice to have you with us.

 

[ochartier]

Thank you! I'm glad to have found this place, the kids at the pool store don't seem so coherent all the time!

So If I understand correctly step 1 is to drain as much alum smudge as possible to avoid it get filtered in my sand tank. And then what, just get my water to good PHJ/alk/ch levels and wait for the filter to clear the dust over a couple of days?

Also I have just replaced the filter's sand (after the fiasco).

I have no idea whatsoever what incresing my FC means lol. (english is my second language, sometimes I,m missing some terminology)

Thanks again