My husband wanted to be helpful last fall and did what he could to help me get the pool closed for the winter. I had done all the research up to that point (brand new SWG pool, so huge learning curve!) and was too overwhelmed with the start of school to research how to do a proper closing so I asked him if he'd take care of it. He looked around on Amazon and bought what sounded good to him....he bought a semi-permeable cover! 
All my hard work to get salt and CYA levels corrected last summer were washed away - literally - by the rain and snow water. Then as we were taking off the cover, it slipped and all the junk it had trapped on top wound up in the pool. :grrrr:
So now I essentially have an above ground pond in my back yard. I did all the water tests anyway and everything came back pretty much the same as I would have expected with pond water. There's no salt, there wasn't any FC (obviously!), pH was 7.0, TA was less than 70 and CYA was less than 30. (that one made me most frustrated as I spent so much on that darn chemical!) We went ahead and dumped a bag of shock in there just to kill the bugs and see if it would help with the water at all. It did raise the FC to 1ppm and it did lighten up the color and turn it more blue than green, but you can't see the bottom at all. We're having a hard time getting the junk out of the pool, as the filters keep getting clogged. (lots of issues with the sand filter mainly)
So all that to say/ask: is there any hope to save what we have or should we just drain and wash the pool out and start all over? It's an 18' round Intex 4' deep. Our water is fairly cheap, so I'm not super concerned with the cost of refilling it. I'm just wondering if there's anything worth saving in there? (my husband's preference at this point - but he's not the one who's done the chemical homework, although he's the one willing to manually clean it out with the net) Or if trying to save what's there will cost more in the long run because we're fighting and uphill battle with organic matter? (my preference at this point.)
All my hard work to get salt and CYA levels corrected last summer were washed away - literally - by the rain and snow water. Then as we were taking off the cover, it slipped and all the junk it had trapped on top wound up in the pool. :grrrr:So now I essentially have an above ground pond in my back yard. I did all the water tests anyway and everything came back pretty much the same as I would have expected with pond water. There's no salt, there wasn't any FC (obviously!), pH was 7.0, TA was less than 70 and CYA was less than 30. (that one made me most frustrated as I spent so much on that darn chemical!) We went ahead and dumped a bag of shock in there just to kill the bugs and see if it would help with the water at all. It did raise the FC to 1ppm and it did lighten up the color and turn it more blue than green, but you can't see the bottom at all. We're having a hard time getting the junk out of the pool, as the filters keep getting clogged. (lots of issues with the sand filter mainly)
So all that to say/ask: is there any hope to save what we have or should we just drain and wash the pool out and start all over? It's an 18' round Intex 4' deep. Our water is fairly cheap, so I'm not super concerned with the cost of refilling it. I'm just wondering if there's anything worth saving in there? (my husband's preference at this point - but he's not the one who's done the chemical homework, although he's the one willing to manually clean it out with the net) Or if trying to save what's there will cost more in the long run because we're fighting and uphill battle with organic matter? (my preference at this point.)
