Opening Pool for first time

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157 Carriage

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Aug 23, 2015
7
Bethel CT
First time pool owner here.

Hooked everything back up just fine and removed pool cover. At first glance the pool was disgusting. I didnt test the water initially but should have after reading online that should have been the first thing i do. I dumped about 8 jugs of bleach in which cleared it up a little but the water is still very cloudy and green. I still need to vacuum it well. My main question is when should I do all the water testing now that i dumped all this bleach in? I have the testing kit recemended on here so I should have all the right readings. Also pool is quite large - I think around 35 - 40K gallons...
 
Test now. That's a big pool and if it was dark and evil looking, that chlorine is probably all gone already.

Start with FC. If it's above 10, your pH test will be whacked and the TA test will color shift from green>pink to blue>yellow. Which means wait a few hours to get those readings.

Test CYA and CH. If either or both are astronomical, you'll want to replace some water, so do that before adding any more expensive chemicals. Why treat it only to dump it out?

See what you get. If the FC is below 10, run all the tests and post back and someone will be along to guide you. If CYA is 90 or better, re-run it using the dilution method described in Pool School - CYA

In fact, if any of your tests look weird, see if the problem is covered in Pool School - Extended Test Kit Directions
 
157 Carriage said:
Ok I finally had some time last night to run all the tests. Here are the results:

FC- 0
CC-0.5
CH-100
TA-50
CYA-85

What do you all think? Will I need to pump out some water and replace? I would prefer not to if possible.
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It will be a whole lot easier to clear the pool and maintain it with a lower CYA number. To get to shock level of 36 in 35000 gallons will take about 15 jugs of bleach. That's just to get there -- keeping it there will require more!

Draining a third of the pool to reduce CYA to a manageable 60 will reduce the shock level to 24. Ten jugs of bleach, plus whatever to maintain it. But there's also 1/3 less algae to kill, so that will be reduced. You're looking at a potential savings of at least $60. How much is water where you live? Go look at your water bill and figure 16 CCF and crunch some numbers. Betcha it's less than the cost of the bleach.
 
157 Carriage said:
Yes fair point. Ok so Ill remove about a third of the water then. Do I need to worry about any of the other readings? I tried using the pool calculator but got a little confused.
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No, there's no other readings that indicate draining more than that is required. It'll all change anyway once the pool is refilled and diluted.

The Calcium Hardness is a not low if you have a plaster pool. Could you fill out your signature? What we want is listed here.

Low Calcium can be fixed easily by just adding some. But wait until the water is cleared up. You'll likely be losing a little water to backwashing and so on during the SLAM.
 
Ok so I drained about a 3rd of the water and replaced it. I retested the water and here are my results:

FC:0
CC:0
CH:100ppm
TA:60
CYA:45

My pool is now bright green and I will need to slam it ....is there anything else I need to do based on my tests?
 
Yes I forgot to mention my ph was 7.2. So I went ahead and starting slamming. So far so good. By the end of it once it passes the overnight Fc loss test, Do i need to retest all measures again? Once its clear I'l probably need to rebalance, correct?

Thanks for all of the support so far! Very much appreciated.
 

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