Elks Pool

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Oh joy (not). I persuaded the person who had helped maintain this pool for the last 20 odd years to help me and gave him a key to the pump room. Tuesday he texted me to say water was green. At that time, I thought the pool was just it's usual, horrible turbid self. Lots of sand on the bottom, so I started our "creepy crawler" (self-vacuum). Wednesday, I stopped by and stuck it back into the skimmer as it had come loose and noticed the water was horribly turbid, as usual, but not green. Last night, I checked in and found green water, a chlorinator that had been turned to "off" (there was no water at all in it when I opened it and the smell of chlorine was over powering the pump room, which was super hot when I first went into it.) The bottom of the pool has LOTS of what appears to be sand (from the filter?) even though some folks keep telling me it's debris blown off our flat roof.

So, I opened valve on chlorinator to 2.0, put 5 extra pucks in, cleaned the pump, got the creepy crawler working again. We were out of cal-hypo, but it was suggested that the cal-hypo was causing the cloudiness. Use of liquid chlorine would be ideal, but expensive. (Our Lodge is poor and I don't want to be spending my own $.) I'm about to go manually vacuum it and test it thoroughly this morning and am thinking about stopping by Wal-Mart to pick up some bags of di-chlor to shock the green out. Opinions?

P.S.- I find it hard to believe that the person to whom I gave a key would have turned the chlorinator off on purpose. I'm hoping he intended to open the valve wide open and just got it backwards by accident.
 
UPDATE: New reagents. I tested, didn't believe some of the results, so I had sample tested by pool service. Results are: pH 7.5, FC 5, CC 0, TA 80, CH either 140 or 200, CYA either 60 or 80. Turns out the pool service sells 2.5 gallons of 10.5% bleach (or "liquid chlorine" as they like to call it) for $6.50. Added 10 gallons of that 10.5% bleach, so my calculations shows it should end up, after being duly circulated, at FC 23. If we take the average of the two CYA tests and call it 70, then I'll need to raise FC another 5 points to 28, which should be another 2.5 gallons.

Pool service recommends I close the pool for a few days since we are averaging 11 bathers per day. He says all my efforts so far have been on the mark, but without having used bleach, all I'v done is raise the CYA, add calcium cloudiness and barely kept up with the bather load, meaning I've been killing what they've been adding everyday but not making any headway.
 
What we teach never blends well with Pool Store or Pool Service advice. On top of that we simply do not trust their testing.....too many instances (read this forum for hundreds upon hundreds of examples) of them being fairly wrong to just dead wrong.

Please read "The ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry" up in Pool School to start. You will hopefully decide to take matters into your own hand and stop listening to the bad advice that has got you to this point.
 
DURALEIGH, regarding the pool service: FWIW, I watched pool service perform the same tests I did, using the same Taylor k-2005 kit. And .... I have yet to take their advice on anything except running pump 24/7, which hasn't cleared turbidity, but has raised CYA levels. It was my reading of 80 CYA that I didn't believe. Their reading was 60, but the dang turbidity test can be SO subjective, depending on the person and the lighting. The pool service guy did the TA test twice (He screwed up the first one) and I doubt the accuracy of his result of 140. In the meantime, the pool service is nothing but a waste of $35 per week, IMHO, since they don't manually vacuum or brush. (That one hour of labor would be well worth $35!!!) I am, however, considering taking their advice of closing the pool for 3 days in order to 1) clear the water, and 2) perform an uninterrupted bucket test.

I've decided tri-chlor is for the birds. Need to persuade Lodge to convert to SWG, but we don't have the $2,000 it will cost. GRR.
 
I have kept FC at shock levels (25+) since Friday, using 10.5% "liquid chlorine" (a/k/a bleach). Recall CYA was 60 (pool store test) or 80 (my test). Green is gone, but water is, as always, still cloudy. My CH test was 200. Sample tested at pool store was 140. Pool service worker at pool just now tested it at 140. This is a plaster/concrete pool. Pool service workers says he'll go back to store and get about 15 lbs of calcium. Opinions on that?

I am closing the pool to all bathers for 3 days in an attempt to clear it up. Will keep FC at 25+ (I hate the DPD test, but it's what we got and even using the minimal mark of pool water diluted by tap water , FC is still "off the chart" high. May have to bring my FAS-DPD test from home for the next few days.) I am considering the use of Drop-N-Vac flocculant and/or Lo-Chlor Miraclear Blue clarifier, but the label does not not state what's actually in the bottle! Opinions and suggestions?

Closing the pool for 3 days will also allow me to perform an uninterrupted bucket test.

EDIT at 4:30 PM: Purchased new reagents for CH test. My result is 170, performed twice. Idiot pool service guy wrote down that pH was 7.4 when he tested this morning and something illegible for FC, which I know was 25+. Sheesh. In the meantime, TA still holding at 80. Bought 50 lb bag of calcium chloride flakes. Label says 77%. Won't add any today as I am hoping pool will pass OCLT tomorrow morning, but have to go home to get my FAS-DPD for an accurate FC reading just before sundown.

EDIT: At 7:45 PM, FC was 23.5 per FAS-DPD test.
 
Dang it, failed again. Was 29 last night. Is 24 this morning, but at least the water is clearing. Added 600 oz, by volume of calcium chloride flakes yesterday morning, hoping to bring it up to 260. Last night's test showed 200. As an experiment, this morning, I added 98 oz by volume cal-hypo just to see if it cloudied water. It did but the cloud dissipated rapidly. Now it's off to buy another 5 gallons of bleach. This is getting old.

I stripped the screws on the control valve for sand filter. Want to change o-ring as sand is being pumped back into pool, which it was doing before I changed the sand in the filter 10 days ago. Pretty sure I didn't break any laterals.

Found a slow leak in pump, bought replacement for shaft seal and got someone who is better at mechanical stuff than me coming to do the replacement job this morning. Maybe he can get the stripped screws out. EDIT at 3 PM: He did. Gasket was seriously shot. Suction and water flow much stronger now. Hopefully no more filter sand will be ejected into pool.

PS- thankls for words of encouragement YippeeSkippy.
 

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Thanks MGMoore70. I don't see the post I put up here a few hours ago, so I'll repeat myself. Someone else with better mechanical skills than me replaced the seal shaft on the pump today. Stopped the leak. He also did control valve for me. Turns out the gasket was completely and severely shot. He replaced it and o-ring (but didn't see the stainless steel nuts & bolts I had bought for the control valve.) Suction and water flow much stronger now! I vacuumed up sand manually and HOPE that I don't see any more of it on floor tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, starting the pump also cloudied the water severely. When I left at 5:40 PM, I had only circulated latest addition of bleach for 30 minutes. Shallow end got 54 drops, deep end got 58 drops. I really hope it passes OCLT tomorrow, but doubt it will as a white cloud came off the walls when I brushed half of them just before doing the testing. (150 feet of circumpherence is a lot of brushing!)

Why did turning on the pump make the water so much cloudier?
 
Vince-1961 said:
(150 feet of circumpherence is a lot of brushing!)
Click to expand...

Vince,

I've been enjoying your saga and feeling bad for ya that there's so much of your labor in this "labor of love" you're taken on. Here's an idea that I use and it might ease your labors--you could brush the walls & floor while you're in the pool. It'll sure be cooler that brushing from the deck. I do it that way.

A couple of years ago, I even started doing my regular skimming while in the pool. Bought a big (like 6") aquarium net/skimmer for 2 or 3 bucks and I set a bucket for debris on the deck. Makes this tedious job much more pleasant.

If ya try this, wear water shoes (I wear Crocs) to protect your feet. That plaster will eat 'em up after half-an-hour of walking on the pool bottom.

Good luck!!!
 
FC was 32.5 at 7 PM yesterday. This morning I didn't get there until sun had been up for several hours and shining directly on pool for more than an hour. FC then was 27. CYA still testing at 100, so I drained 5" of water (about 7% of total volume) and am refilling. I've got to open the pool tomorrow or my head'll get bitten off! Can now see the drain and even make out a few grates around the edges. Shallow end is nice and clear. Fished an F-16 jet fighter out of the deep end! Still getting some small bit of sand from filter despite new gasket on control valve. Am hoping maybe perhaps it's just some that was left in the pipes.

I don't understand why CYA tested at 100 or above twice this week when last week two tests showed 60 and 80. Haven't used any tri- or di-chlor since then. Any explanation?
 
Consider telling them that for their safety, the pool is undergoing a cleaning and sanitation and will not be open. I can't imagine they want to swim in a pool that is not clear. Once it is cleared, they will be happy.

In regard to CYA, was the lighting (in or out of sun, shade, etc) different between the 2 testing times?
 
You've mentioned it a couple times, but are you sure it's sand in the pool? I've had instances where there was algae outbreak in the pool and once I brought up the chlorine level and killed things off - I had what looking like sand in the bottom of the pool. Every day it seemed I was vacuuming out more and more, thinking my sand filter was shot. I ended up vacuuming to waste to get it out. Not sure if anyone can confirm this happens to them, but wanted to share in case your filter is fine and you're just picking up the result of the high FC.
 
Lots of changes today and pool is open tomorrow! Drained 6" and refilled. Hot sun most of day and then the bottom fell out. Very heavy rains around 6:30 PM, pool almost overflowing. At 8:45 PM (after I finished my volunteer shift cooking in the kitchen for about 40 people....made a totally awesome spaghetti as tonight's special in addition to regular menu), FC 21 (it's dropping nicely), TA 90 (perfect), CH 150 (down from the perfect 220 yesterday or whenever , so I added 100 oz. Cal.chloride flakes), CYA 70 (down from 100 earlier today), and as expected, pH off the chart high. I wish I could have 1 more day with no bathers, but I also wish I would win the lottery. I'm sure the pool will be crowded tomorrow.

Radefeld, I just assumed it was sand, b/c of the color and size/texture per appearance. It's been vacuumed out (to filter) as of 8:45 PM, but if I see it again tomorrow, I'll vacuum to waste per your suggestion. (er, ah, um...that is ..... assuming I'm not out on my boat offshore scuba diving or fishing, which would be much more preferable than driving inland to this flipping pool!

MKMoore7, I never thought about the lighting b/c it was "adequate" for me to see and now that I do think about it, I don't have any useful recollections. It was light. I could see. That's about it.
 
You really need to know your CYA level to know how much chlorine the pool requires to be at safe levels.

I don't think the Pentair IC60 would be adequate for that pool. I have two of them for a similar-sized pool with a much smaller bather load, running at 12 hours a day at 60%. I would go for the more expensive one in this case.
 

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