How to clear your pool, aka Taking one for the team!

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zea3

zea3

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Jul 10, 2009
14,785
Houston, Texas
image.jpg
This is my personal backyard swamp! There is a huge oak just to the right of this pool that manages to drop every single leaf it possesses into the pool. I would like to say that I allowed my pool to go swampy as an altruistic sacrifice to demonstrate how easy it is to take your pool from swamp to sparkling using the TFPC method, but the truth is I got busy and lazy and allowed my pool to end up in this state. But as long as I have the opportunity I'll turn this into a teachable moment. I started yesterday by scooping out all the leaves.
 
Following!!

You really neeeeeed about 15lbs of dichlor, some copper & bromine based algacides and about 25 lbs of Alk-Up. Just dump it all in and swirl that around a bit. Give it a day or two and you should be good to go!

If you run into anymore problems just post back and I'll give you lots more "helpful" advice :stirpot:
 
image.jpgI will say in my defense that I tore the meniscus in my left knee last September and things kind of went downhill from there. But time to move forward! Yesterday after scooping leaves for an hour I added the first couple of doses of bleach (total of 6 jugs) efficacy was questionable since the bleach is left over from the fall and as swampy as my pool is I did not expect to hold chlorine anyway. Pump has been running 24/7 on low, and due to life and prior commitments I have not been home all day. I'm about to test, then go dump some more old bleach in before I have to go to another commitment and hopefully pick up fresh bleach on the way home. I'll add today's water picture from my phone when I get the chance. I must say, scooping swampy leaves is a smelly business!
 
zea3,

Don't forget, you're going to need to change your filter sand since it has gone "bad" and make sure you get some floc in that pool ASAP!! Oh, and you shouldn't use "dirty" bleach because it will raise your TDS. The bleach isn't working because you have "chlorine lock". Get some cal-hypo instead...a 25lb bucket should be all you need. Just dump it all in at once and let it sit at the bottom so you can create a "slug" of chlorine to defeat all of the "chlorine lock" you have.


(Hehehehe ... playing "pool store" is fun....)
 
JoyfulNoise said:
zea3,

Don't forget, you're going to need to change your filter sand since it has gone "bad" and make sure you get some floc in that pool ASAP!! Oh, and you shouldn't use "dirty" bleach because it will raise your TDS. The bleach isn't working because you have "chlorine lock". Get some cal-hypo instead...a 25lb bucket should be all you need. Just dump it all in at once and let it sit at the bottom so you can create a "slug" of chlorine to defeat all of the "chlorine lock" you have.


(Hehehehe ... playing "pool store" is fun....)
Click to expand...



Matt: You failed Pool Store 101, as you forgot to use scare tactics to make a sale of Phos-Free! They'd fire you on Day 1!
 

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JayBauman said:
Matt: You failed Pool Store 101, as you forgot to use scare tactics to make a sale of Phos-Free! They'd fire you on Day 1!
Click to expand...

That was going to be in my next post after zea3 has gone on for another day with the SLAM. You gotta rope them in real gentle like, you see? You give a few chems, the cheaper stuff, on Day 1. Then when they come back with a little more frustrated you hit them with the next shelf up on the chemicals. You keep that going and you up-sell them each time.

Don't worry, I've got method to the madness. I'll drain his HER wallet in no time.
 
zea3 said:
View attachment 50193I will say in my defense that I tore the meniscus in my left knee last September and things kind of went downhill from there. But time to move forward! Yesterday after scooping leaves for an hour I added the first couple of doses of bleach (total of 6 jugs) efficacy was questionable since the bleach is left over from the fall and as swampy as my pool is I did not expect to hold chlorine anyway. Pump has been running 24/7 on low, and due to life and prior commitments I have not been home all day. I'm about to test, then go dump some more old bleach in before I have to go to another commitment and hopefully pick up fresh bleach on the way home. I'll add today's water picture from my phone when I get the chance. I must say, scooping swampy leaves is a smelly business!
Click to expand...

Despite the old bleach I do note some improvement from inky black to olive khaki. My test results are....drumroll please: FC 0, pH 7.5, TA 60, CYA < 20. CH was not tested. I'll have to go pick up some CYA tomorrow.
 
zea3 said:
Sorry, I had to correct an error in your post!
Click to expand...

My bad :foot:

zea3 said:
Despite the old bleach I do note some improvement from inky black to olive khaki. My test results are....drumroll please: FC 0, pH 7.5, TA 60, CYA < 20. CH was not tested. I'll have to go pick up some CYA tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Wait, you have 0 FC and your CYA is low ?!?!?!? You know what that means ....

A M M O N I A

Quick, get 15 buckets of water and add varying amount of bleach to them so we can determine the exact amount of ammonia you have and get into complicated arguments about exactly how much FC is needed to perfectly eliminate the ammonia.

Also, when you add more CYA tomorrow, which you should before neutralizing the ammonia as per pool store methodology, you should just toss it all into your skimmer. Oh, and just for good measure, make sure you add a couple of bags of dichlor too...

Did anyone check your phosphate levels yet...
 
On a more serious note....Zea, I see that you're in Houston. My pool hit 90° today. I should imagine that you've got your work cut out for you dealing with the kinetics of algae multiplication at these water temperatures. Maybe you should convert to Baquacil.
 
JoyfulNoise said:
Following!!

You really neeeeeed about 15lbs of dichlor, some copper & bromine based algacides and about 25 lbs of Alk-Up. Just dump it all in and swirl that around a bit. Give it a day or two and you should be good to go!

If you run into anymore problems just post back and I'll give you lots more "helpful" advice :stirpot:
Click to expand...

You forgot the floc, ha ha.

Dang, see you had that covered later. Lol.
 
I did get a little over confident/lazy last summer and got some algae and had to SLAM last summer. But, the water stayed clear and we swam through the whole SLAM. First SLAM since 2012! It was scandalous! :)
 
JoyfulNoise said:
My bad :foot:



Wait, you have 0 FC and your CYA is low ?!?!?!? You know what that means ....

A M M O N I A

Quick, get 15 buckets of water and add varying amount of bleach to them so we can determine the exact amount of ammonia you have and get into complicated arguments about exactly how much FC is needed to perfectly eliminate the ammonia.

Also, when you add more CYA tomorrow, which you should before neutralizing the ammonia as per pool store methodology, you should just toss it all into your skimmer. Oh, and just for good measure, make sure you add a couple of bags of dichlor too...

Did anyone check your phosphate levels yet...
Click to expand...

Ha! I have an ammonia test and it is clear. 0 Ammonia! Phosphate remover is the one thing I have not had the local pool store try to rope me into buying.

Stopped by the HEB for a night's supply of bleach. There were only about 3 jugs of the plain stuff left! People must be swimming in the stuff!
 
zea3 said:
Ha! I have an ammonia test and it is clear. 0 Ammonia! Phosphate remover is the one thing I have not had the local pool store try to rope me into buying.
Click to expand...

Well, all the cool kids in The Deep End are using phosphate removers...you wanna be cool, right? You want everyone to like you, don't ya? Huh, huh? Come on, everyone's doing it...you don't want to be the ONLY ONE not trying PhosFree...just a little won't hurt you....
 

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