Hello!
I first want to thank everyone for the amazing knowledge and resources being shared to help us all care for our pools better. I’m new here, but not, it’ll all make sense
Quite a few years ago we had an above ground pool, just an intex 15’ x 30”. I originally came to pool school then and with your help was able to balance and care for our pool. Fast forward to today. We live in a new state (thank you US Navy) and we recently bought a home with a an above ground 30’ round pool that’s 4’ deep. Whole different ball game from our intex, in a way. I’m mainly thinking of our pump/filter differences along with natural water composition.
Husband is currently deployed and my father-in-law got a bit antsy and took our pool cover off about a week and a half ago. I didn’t have tests and chlorine on hand, so here comes green pool. Green pool came, and about a week after we ‘opened’ but didn’t open properly, I made it to the pools store. I know I know I know . . . Just hang with me. I’m drinking the kool aid and have a TF-100 on the way.
Anyways - we were given a slew of chemicals, which I treated the pool with. Scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed every day - upwards of 5x a day. Went back to the store because pool wasn’t ‘clear’. Was given more shock and algecide
Treated the pool again. Still not clear.
After the second pool store trip I said forget this and jumped knee deep in TFP. My questions started with the difference between sodium-dichlor vs trichlor vs calcium hypochlorite etc. but I was able to gain even more foundational knowledge on water balance, algae and SLAMing.
I’ll attach some photos. First will be a picture of the pool after initial treatment and before 2nd treatment. Filter has been running 24/7 since taking the cover off. Second pic is this morning, about a week and 3 days after opening and all the treatments (the shadow is from the sun rising behind the trees, it’s not piles of debris). I also picked up some testing strips so the algae won’t overtake me again, the test I did this morning is posted too. I’m grateful the CYA is showing 50 but completely understand it might actually be higher. We’ve only been adding liquid chlorine after I ditched the store. there is still plenty of work to be done but I feel like I’m in a better place than I was. Yesterday I realized i missed something in all the incessant scrubbing of the walls and floor, we had a massive amount of algae under our stairs (removable steps), so out they came out for a scrub down. Today was the first day we had a detectable amount of chlorine left overnight. Woohoo! Though I don’t think this rules out needing to SLAM once I get my testing kit.
This won’t be shocking to many of you but other than the shock the pool store didn’t give me any chlorine. She said when I came back she would give me a weekly shock treatment to continue using the rest of the summer.
. Blows my mind based on what I know now.
Like I said, I’m here now and ready to actually get my pool balanced and maintained the right way. I think the biggest help thus far has been reading through other peoples stories and the help this wonderful community has offered. I think Numb’s post from 2016 was probably most helpful (I think that was his name).
This brings us to our game plan, which is where I’d really appreciate if you’d be willing to lean in and help. I feel like the cloudiness is likely because there is still algae that needs to be filtered out. Other than using pool math app to keep up on chlorine, what else would you suggest I do as I bide my time? Is it worth raising the PH up to 7.2 before I likely have to slam?
I first want to thank everyone for the amazing knowledge and resources being shared to help us all care for our pools better. I’m new here, but not, it’ll all make sense
Quite a few years ago we had an above ground pool, just an intex 15’ x 30”. I originally came to pool school then and with your help was able to balance and care for our pool. Fast forward to today. We live in a new state (thank you US Navy) and we recently bought a home with a an above ground 30’ round pool that’s 4’ deep. Whole different ball game from our intex, in a way. I’m mainly thinking of our pump/filter differences along with natural water composition.
Husband is currently deployed and my father-in-law got a bit antsy and took our pool cover off about a week and a half ago. I didn’t have tests and chlorine on hand, so here comes green pool. Green pool came, and about a week after we ‘opened’ but didn’t open properly, I made it to the pools store. I know I know I know . . . Just hang with me. I’m drinking the kool aid and have a TF-100 on the way.
Anyways - we were given a slew of chemicals, which I treated the pool with. Scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed every day - upwards of 5x a day. Went back to the store because pool wasn’t ‘clear’. Was given more shock and algecide
Treated the pool again. Still not clear. After the second pool store trip I said forget this and jumped knee deep in TFP. My questions started with the difference between sodium-dichlor vs trichlor vs calcium hypochlorite etc. but I was able to gain even more foundational knowledge on water balance, algae and SLAMing.
I’ll attach some photos. First will be a picture of the pool after initial treatment and before 2nd treatment. Filter has been running 24/7 since taking the cover off. Second pic is this morning, about a week and 3 days after opening and all the treatments (the shadow is from the sun rising behind the trees, it’s not piles of debris). I also picked up some testing strips so the algae won’t overtake me again, the test I did this morning is posted too. I’m grateful the CYA is showing 50 but completely understand it might actually be higher. We’ve only been adding liquid chlorine after I ditched the store. there is still plenty of work to be done but I feel like I’m in a better place than I was. Yesterday I realized i missed something in all the incessant scrubbing of the walls and floor, we had a massive amount of algae under our stairs (removable steps), so out they came out for a scrub down. Today was the first day we had a detectable amount of chlorine left overnight. Woohoo! Though I don’t think this rules out needing to SLAM once I get my testing kit.
This won’t be shocking to many of you but other than the shock the pool store didn’t give me any chlorine. She said when I came back she would give me a weekly shock treatment to continue using the rest of the summer.
. Blows my mind based on what I know now. Like I said, I’m here now and ready to actually get my pool balanced and maintained the right way. I think the biggest help thus far has been reading through other peoples stories and the help this wonderful community has offered. I think Numb’s post from 2016 was probably most helpful (I think that was his name).
This brings us to our game plan, which is where I’d really appreciate if you’d be willing to lean in and help. I feel like the cloudiness is likely because there is still algae that needs to be filtered out. Other than using pool math app to keep up on chlorine, what else would you suggest I do as I bide my time? Is it worth raising the PH up to 7.2 before I likely have to slam?
First thing is to relax and not do much anything right now until the kit arrives. You can add about 1/2 gallon of liquid chlorine or regular bleach each day and that's about it. Nothing else. Once you get the test kit, post a full set of results and we'll go from there. You can read-up on the 
