Hi y'all! I'm hopping on here to let you know what the last week of my life, and my sibling's lives has consisted of. During the spike of the pandemic, we couldn't get our hands on any bleach. I'm sure y'all all feel my pain when I say I would walk into countless stores, just to be greeted by empty bleach shelves, or a search on Amazon came up with "product out of stock". This turned our already dingy looking pool into a dark green, smelly swamp.
As you can see in this photo, its pretty nasty. The walls and floors were not only covered in green algae, but black algae (the bane of my existence). We had tried everything in the past to get rid of the stuff but it kept coming back. Razor blades to scrape off the slime layer, hockey pucks rubbed over it, but nothing worked. So, we decided to power wash the pool. We knew this was going to take forever since our previous pool drain and power wash (see here Two-year Swamp drained, now rehabbed and startup, with test results. ) we did when I was 15. So, we started draining our pool with a high powered pump connected directly to the sewer hole.
Here's my 13 year old brother, Joseph, ankle deep in the disgusting smelling water, getting the last of it out. Don't let the smile fool you, it was miserable. You can see how bad the black algae is in the background of this shot. We started power washing as soon as the pool was drained. One of us kept the walls of the pool wet to avoid cracking the plaster, another power washed, and the third took a break in the shade. The weather could not have been hotter. 105 with 90% humidity down here in south Texas. We worked all day for two days, power washing an inch at a time from morning until night.
This is the shot we took after we finished power washing our last section of the pool. We were SO incredibly sore and tired. The next day, we put gallons of 7.25% bleach into a watering can and bleach washed the walls and floor, making sure to cover every inch. We wanted to kill off whatever black algae roots still remained that we missed. Then, we started filling up the pool. Our cousin came to help finish off power washing the hot tub and filling the pool with all of our hoses. But she mostly came to splash around in our 2' pool
This is what it looked like post-power wash. We also took note to trim the palm tree haha. The pool looked better than I thought it would considering how old it is. Its a good 20-30 years old.
I can't tell you how nice it felt to actually be able to wade around in our finally clean pool. Rachel, our cousin, and my sister Lorien sat on the steps and watched it fill up slowly but surely. With three hoses running, it took about 14 hours to fill the 26,000 gallons. Just in time for my 19th birthday party! It turned out so pretty!
This last shot is after vacuuming and right before the party started! Suggestions for keeping black algae from coming back are appreciated!! We are dissolving CYA into the skimmers now and the FC is up to snuff.
As you can see in this photo, its pretty nasty. The walls and floors were not only covered in green algae, but black algae (the bane of my existence). We had tried everything in the past to get rid of the stuff but it kept coming back. Razor blades to scrape off the slime layer, hockey pucks rubbed over it, but nothing worked. So, we decided to power wash the pool. We knew this was going to take forever since our previous pool drain and power wash (see here Two-year Swamp drained, now rehabbed and startup, with test results. ) we did when I was 15. So, we started draining our pool with a high powered pump connected directly to the sewer hole.
Here's my 13 year old brother, Joseph, ankle deep in the disgusting smelling water, getting the last of it out. Don't let the smile fool you, it was miserable. You can see how bad the black algae is in the background of this shot. We started power washing as soon as the pool was drained. One of us kept the walls of the pool wet to avoid cracking the plaster, another power washed, and the third took a break in the shade. The weather could not have been hotter. 105 with 90% humidity down here in south Texas. We worked all day for two days, power washing an inch at a time from morning until night.
This is the shot we took after we finished power washing our last section of the pool. We were SO incredibly sore and tired. The next day, we put gallons of 7.25% bleach into a watering can and bleach washed the walls and floor, making sure to cover every inch. We wanted to kill off whatever black algae roots still remained that we missed. Then, we started filling up the pool. Our cousin came to help finish off power washing the hot tub and filling the pool with all of our hoses. But she mostly came to splash around in our 2' pool
This is what it looked like post-power wash. We also took note to trim the palm tree haha. The pool looked better than I thought it would considering how old it is. Its a good 20-30 years old.
I can't tell you how nice it felt to actually be able to wade around in our finally clean pool. Rachel, our cousin, and my sister Lorien sat on the steps and watched it fill up slowly but surely. With three hoses running, it took about 14 hours to fill the 26,000 gallons. Just in time for my 19th birthday party! It turned out so pretty!
This last shot is after vacuuming and right before the party started! Suggestions for keeping black algae from coming back are appreciated!! We are dissolving CYA into the skimmers now and the FC is up to snuff.
