Brownish staining on pool liner?

Oct 19, 2016
41
Huntsville, AL
For the first time since buying the house in 2016, I may have an issue with algae. I can see little spots on the pool floor that are still bright blue, but the majority is a "film" that will not come off with heavy brushing and vacuuming.

I followed my normal procedures to SLAM the pool just as we do every year. The water was fairly clear when we uncovered because I will add liquid chlorine during the winter at times to try and keep FC around 5-6ppm and use a small drop in pump to circulate the water from the shallow to the deep end while the main pump is winterized.

My current process was to SLAM. I brought the FC levels to 18 ppm and maintained until it would only drop 1 ppm overnight. That took about 3 days and I had to add about 3 gallons per day. Then i allowed it to drift down to 8 ppm and that's where I normally maintain it. Yesterday I realized that there is actually something on the liner, so I shocked the pool and brought the FC back to 16ppm and am currently holding it there. Tested 10 minutes ago, and CYA level is at 60ppm, Alkalinity is at 70 ppm (slightly low, but i plan to bring that to around 90 ppm this evening), and pH is 7.4. I tried scrubbing again, but it did not yield any results.

To note: my pump runs 24/7, and during the SLAM i backwashed the filter every morning and evening. It was pretty nasty for the first couple of days. I backwashed again last night after going 4 days and the water remained pretty clean.

The pool looks really clean and blue until you get close to the liner and can see the actual (what I assume) algae. Any suggestions on what we can do to remove it? I assume that it's likely an algae, because the walls and floor are slippery to the touch. Do I need to bring the chlorine levels up even higher than 16ppm?
 
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For your CYA level at 60 you need to be at FC 24 for a SLAM, the more you keep it at 24 the better... Brush, brush and brush some more, get into ladders and lights :)

FC/CYA Levels

SLAM Process

Overnight Chlorine Loss Test
Thanks! I bumped it up to 32ppm yesterday and have been holding it steady. I'm brushing morning and evening and testing twice per day to adjust as needed. I haven't put the ladder back in yet so at least I don't have to fiddle with it.
 
Don’t know how well this will show up in the picture but this is the issue that I noticed. You can see the blue spots where whatever this is hasn't taken hold, but by and large it covers the large majority of the pool liner.
 

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Do you have iron in your fill water?
Also, any copper containing algaecide or pucks/granular chlorine used?
 
Do you have iron in your fill water?
Also, any copper containing algaecide or pucks/granular chlorine used?
No iron.

I have never used algaecide.

I did use pool stabilizer (HTH) this year because my CYA was almost non-existent when we uncovered the pool this year (lot of winter rain) but the coloration was already there. I did use some granulated shock (HTH Super Shock) this year because no one locally had liquid chlorine in stock when we initially started to SLAM. I will use a puck here or there (Clorox pool & Spa) to try to help keep CYA levels up during the summer due to adding water from evaporation, but sparingly. I haven't used any this year, and might have used 7-8 over the entire summer last year.
 
Thanks! I bumped it up to 32ppm yesterday and have been holding it steady. I'm brushing morning and evening and testing twice per day to adjust as needed. I haven't put the ladder back in yet so at least I don't have to fiddle with it.
Not sure why you're holding at 32 if slam is 24. The extra high FC doesn't help more for the slam and is just wasteful.
 
Not sure why you're holding at 32 if slam is 24. The extra high FC doesn't help more for the slam and is just wasteful.
It was a slight miscalculation when i put it in. I had my son helping me pour and he put in a couple of extra gallons of liquid chlorine before I realized what he was doing.

Since the cost is now the same to maintain 32 as it would be to maintain 24 (I lose about 1 ppm per day currently) I just held it at 32.

I will add..... that brushing twice per day is still kicking loose a greenish brown "dust" every time I do it. I backwashed this morning and it was pretty nasty.
 
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It was a slight miscalculation when i put it in. I had my son helping me pour and he put in a couple of extra gallons of liquid chlorine before I realized what he was doing.

Since the cost is now the same to maintain 32 as it would be to maintain 24 (I lose about 1 ppm per day currently) I just held it at 32.

I will add..... that brushing twice per day is still kicking loose a greenish brown "dust" every time I do it. I backwashed this morning and it was pretty nasty.
Not great for the vinyl at the given CYA.
 
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FC loss due to UV impact is typically between 10-20% of FC level. So a loss of only 1 ppm per day is very odd.
 
I dropped 4 ppm last night. It's possible that I misread the initial results. We've got a lot going on (full house and yard renovation, working from home, etc...) and I am past exhausted.

I noticed when brushing again this morning that I am still kicking up a greenish/brown "dust" every time I brush. Some of the clean blue spots "seem" to be getting a little larger but I can't confirm that just yet.
 
I think iron may be the culprit. I dropped a couple of vitamin c tablets in. Anywhere they touched immediately turned blue.
Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?
 

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I'm gonna double post! I wrote most of this up this morning for another post and I don't want to retype it.

I don't think you are going to be able to do just a localized cleaning and have the stains removed permanently .. the iron is in the water and you really need to deal with it at the level of the whole pool. The staining is the sign that tells you that there is Iron in the water at a high enough concentration to cause stains. So I think you should prepare yourself to treat the whole pool and here's why. Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C or AA as we refer to it around here) will remove the stains from the vinyl and other surfaces, but it only changes the iron to another form so it will go into the water. Eventually it will change its form back and restain unless the iron is removed from the water. (I'm really trying to not dredge up high school chemistry, its painful for some;)). You can

1) Use AA on the entire pool to remove stains from the surfaces then drain and refill with iron free water
2) Use AA to remove the stains and then use a sequestrant that will bind with the Iron in the water...eventually you will have do it again, because the sequestrants will break down and the iron is released. Some people do an AA treatment followed by the sequestrant followed by a drain and refill to be assured of getting it all.
3) Use AA and then use a sequestrant that can be filtered out.. and to my knowledge there is only one product that will do that called Metal Magic.
4) Get the iron to go into the green form (your water turns green) and then setup a polyfil filter to filter the Iron out.

Then afterward you need to figure out where the iron is coming from. If you are on a well its likely in your fill water and you can set up a filter for that, or I have seen owners set up cistern systems that allow them to use rain water to refill their pools.

Let me send you down these rabbit holes for your information on how these work.

Here is my recent-ongoing thread on treating Iron:

And another one:

The often referenced polyfill filter thread:
 

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