Help, Please

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NETWizz

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Aug 22, 2015
36
Columbia, SC
I have pool trouble.

Anyway, we have a small in ground cement pool that came with the home, but it is in poor shape... well at least the water is poor. The actual pool itself is in great condition.

My location is Columbia, SC

The pool holds 14,000 gallons and it is a little bit green. Well actually it is very green.


Any ideas how to fix it? I went to Leslie, and they sold me a bag of some power powder shock and more 3" pucks with the 90% active chlorine. They said the other chlorine choices are not active enough except their 99% grainuals, which they said I do not need unless my water gets worse... but to now stick with the puck, so I can put one in at a time and only have to test my water a couple times a week. Then they also gave me a special deal on some Perfect Pool+ PHOSFree and copper algacide (together for only $54) to take care of my problem.

Lastly, they told me that although their chlorine is stabilized to resist UV, that I really need to also condition my water, too, so they sold me a 4lb bucket of conditioner telling me to put in just over half the bucket to extend the life of my Chlorine 10 times!


The last thing they told me I really need is a great test kit, and they sold me one that is all I ever need; it tests everything.
 
Whoa! I'll assume they tested your water and you have those results to post for us here BEFORE you add anything they sold you? Welcome to the forum.

Oh yeah, please describe the test kit they sold you too.
 
It sounds like you got away cheap from being pool stored, don't worry we can help, but we need some information from you in the way of reliable test results first. (we generally don't trust pool store testing as it is so hit or miss, mostly miss) Also for you to help understand our methods I suggest you click on the pool school link in the upper right of any page here and read the ABC's of Pool Water chemistry so we will all be talking the same language. If you don't feel too overwhelmed you can go on to read some of the other articles. Either way post back with some test numbers and we can get you started on fixing things.

Ike

p.s. if you have not added the pool store magic potions, don't at least for now
 
Hi netwizz,
Welcome to TFP!

OMG. I hope you didnt add all that stuff. They are double dinging you on much of it. Take it back to Leslies and get your money back if its not too late.

We are only here to help you. We dont get paid like the people at Leslies do. Every piece of advice you will get from anyone here is only aimed at truly helping you fix the pool.

The reason the water turned green is because there isnt enough free chlorine in the pool to fight away the algae. The level of the chlorine is dependent upon the Stabilizer level (cyanauric acid). And there are other considerations too.

Before we can offer complete help, we need a reliable set of test results of your pool water. We (and you), need to know what the FC level is, and the CYA level, and the pH and so on before we can tell you how much of something needs to be added to kill all of the algae and then maintain the pool after the algae is killed.

The pool store testing is biased towards selling you something and frankly, its untrustworty, just like the people who work there advice.
IMO, it borders on down right unethical in the way that they take advantage of people who dont know about pool chemistry.

The best investment you can possibly make, is the purchase your own top notch test kit. The TF100 (preferred) or the Taylor K2006C are the only two test kits which provide repeatable, reliable test results. The TF100 is only available at TFTestkits.net
The taylor kit is available at lots of places online.

If you will order either of these test kits, then we can help more when it arrives and you post a full set of test results.
In the mean time, if you will add 1 gallon and no more, of 8.25% liquid bleach to the pool each day until the kit arrives, that should at least hold it off from getting way worse for now.

Also in the meantime, I would suggest reading up on how to SLAM a pool. Shock Level and Mantain. Its a process and not a 1 time fix. There is no such thing as a one time fix as the pool store would have you believe.
Pool School - SLAM - Shock Level And Maintain

hope this helps for now... please ask more questions if you have them.
 
Sorry no, test strips are only about one step up from using a Ouji board

Take a look at that CYA range, they go from 0 - 100 in one step, we consider anything over 100 a reason to drain to get under control, imagine if your car had a speedometer that went in those notches for MPH (we need to know CYA to within 10 ppm, not hundreds of ppm)
 
The test strips arent very accurate and dont measure all of the different water parameters needed to keep your pool healty.

The fact that your TH says 0 is evidence of the inaccuracy. TH is total hardness which is the calcium content (a.k.a. CH). Calcium is a naturally occuring mineral in all water, and its next to an impossibility to have zero Calcium without heavy reverse osmosis and charcoal filtering and that would in effect, result in a pool full of distilled water.

I belive you have zero chlorine because its used itself up trying to kill algae.

If your pH is anywhere close to right using those strips, it is wayyy low, but we can't be sure without reliable testing
 

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NETWizz said:
The last thing they told me I really need is a great test kit, and they sold me one that is all I ever need; it tests everything.
Click to expand...

I don't mean to sidetrack this thread, but holy cow. THAT is all you will ever need? Lordy.

Please order a recommended test kit and don't buy any more chemicals from those uninformed pool $tore people. Again, return as many of those chemicals that you can. If you can only get a store credit, use it for a nice toy.
 
To be honest, the strip didn't change color when wet. The Alkalinity is 40, which my test strip says is low... the PH is a tiny bit low at 6.4, and my calcium is showing 0.

I threw in my bag of shock. The pool store told me my Calcium doesn't matter because it isn't making my pool green that phosphates are the problem.

Leslie's test says:

My Free and Combined Chlorine are 0, and that it is good the combined is 0. They recommend I bring my chlorine up to 2 to 2.5 ppm.

Their test says my PH is about 6.5, and they recommend I add some a 5 lb container of Soda Ash after I get my pool clear.

They said my Total Alkalinity is 40 to 50, but that it was hard to tell because it changed color, but they recommend I bring it up either way by adding 10 lbs of Alkalinity Up

Their test did not check for Calcium; they said that is not important for clearing up a a pool that is green.

They said my Cyanuric Acid is at only 20, and it is critical I get this up right away to make my chlorine more effective.

They said my Phosphate is at 500, which is much too high. That I need to add about 32oz of PHOSFree to bring it down.
 
I don't want to sound grumpy, but you will have a hard time trying to mix pool store advice with TFP. They simply are not compatible. Phosphates & Phosfree are irrelevant when your pool is properly sanitized, but that will only happen when you take steps to get the right test kit and take charge of your pool. Otherwise, you will do as most of us did before you, traveling back & forth to the pool store for a "free" test, receiving a new printout with completely new numbers from the day before, and walking out $100 lighter in the wallet. Please check-out the links you see in all of our signatures - especially the TF-100. You won't regret it.
 
The 2005 doesn't have the FAS-DPD (powder & drops) you need to test the FC at levels higher than 5. You can order only that portion if you would like from the same web site we've mentioned. That's up to you. Others have certainly done it. It's very important.
 
I cringe on each bit of advice they gave, some of them for more than one reason.

Lets just take pH, first off many of the common tests read anything below about 6.5 -6.8 as the same, meaning it could be a pH of 5.3 and still read 6.5, second off even at 6.5 that can be a dangerously acidic level depending on type of pool you have and should be addressed right away before even worrying about the algae situation.

You will also find MUCH of our advice will not match up with theres, this includes the suggested levels for chemicals, this is why we all keep saying not to add all that stuff you bought from the pool store, remember the pool store is not your friend, they don't care if their advice destroys your pool and equipment as that just means they then have the chance to sell you new stuff. They live be the philosophy of sell you as much stuff as they can, and if your pool gets better, so much the better as you then come back in a couple of weeks when it turns green again, often as a side effect from the stuff they sold you to clear in up in the first place. We are on the other hand almost all fellow pool owners that have ourselves mostly experienced what you are going through now being pool stored, until we found a better way, it is also a cheaper way, and an easier way once you get the hang of it, and we just want to share it with others like yourself.

Ike

p.s. as others have said the K-2005 is not a substitute for the K-2006 or the TF-100 (the TF-100 is a better deal as it gives more of the reagents you use the most, instead of the uniform size bottles which look neater to the uninformed in the K-2006)

p.p.s. I would strongly suggest the TF-100 with the XL option which gives more FC reagent, as you will need to do a lot of FC testing while clearing the algae, no sense in not having enough on hand having to reorder in a couple of weeks and pay another shipping charge.
 
Oh... Okay that makes sense.

The one concern I have with the TF-100 is that it says, "For residential use," which leads me to believe it is inferior to the Taylor, which is a more commercial/industrial product???

I looked up the FAS-DPD thing, and it appears it is the only truly accurate way to measure chlorine and to higher levels.


Are they both equally accurate? Also, I will need good, clear instructions. I can measure accurately, count drops, etc., but I despise anything that is subjective like tell which color (when two are close). Maybe I don't know what I am talking about, but I was reading up more and the 2005 kit has just the regular DPD, which might actually be better for day-to-day pool operations as it is obvious it takes less time to complete the test and it is still probably accurate enough between 0 and 10 ppm.

Then I started reading about OTO, which is the yellow stuff. Apparently, this works to high levels, but on the testers they rarely go above 5 ppm, which seems too low to me.
 
They both use the Taylor brand reagents (almost all the same exact reagents except for the pH test which uses a slightly differently calibrated reagent to match its smaller reference color block). Dave at TF-Test kits buys Taylor reagents in bulk and repackages them into the custom TF-100 test kit, plus if you buy from him you get an 18 month freshness guarantee as he goes through them fast enough to make sure they are always fresh, not necessarily true if you K-2006 from somewhere that may not sell many and had it on the shelf for a long time.

ps the only color matching test on the TF-100 is the pH which does have a wide acceptable range, and there is no drop counting pH test, with the TF-100 you get both the color matching OTO chlorine test as well as the more expensive to use FAS-DPD drop counting chlorine test, many of us never use the OTO and just use the FAS-DPD. The K-2005 on the other hand only has the DPD color matching chlorine test which can bleach out at high FC levels unlike the OTO which although harder to read shades of yellow never bleaches out.


p.p.s. another way to look at it from that packaging side of the TF-100 is that Taylor sells the basic OTO/pH test kit with dual comparitor block for less than they sell the dedicated pH only test block, so the OTO is really a freebee that makes the cost to put together the TF-100 lower
 

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