First time poster so I apologize for my long-windedness with this.
My wife and I have a 4' x 24' above ground that will not clear up. Here's some backstory...
Last year we didn't open it up. Since our kids are grown and moved out, we (ok...I) decided we didn't want to mess with it. Fast forward to this year. My wife said she would like to get the pool going for two reason. One, she wants to use it and two, we're looking at selling our house next year. This spring it was green and nasty. In fact the last time I added any chemicals of any sort was late summer 2014. By the time we started on it, we had tadpoles. We started by replacing the filter sand. I believe it's a Hayward filter but the labels have fallen off so I'm not entirely sure. Not too mention, we're not the original owners and all the documentation about the pool is gone. A popular pool place in town recommends we fill it to about 7/8 full with new sand (equates to 5 bags). We then head to another local pool place and they tell us to shock it with 6lbs of shock and a full bottle of algaecide. Done. Pool went from green and nasty to milky looking. I mentioned this to the folks at the pool place and they recommend I used a product called "Pool First Aid" which is supposed to help clear it up. I did and it didn't. So I threw in some flocculent. That didn't work either. A few days later we head back to the pool place and they tell us to shock it with two gallons of Baquacil and a bottle and a half of Sanitizer. They then tell us, if we see no noticeable difference in the water after shocking it, to use more floc. I see no noticeable difference so I floc it. This time, I start noticing clumps of white stuff floating at the top of the pool which I believe is "white water mold?" At least that's what he folks at the pool place tell me it could be (they actually described it as having a "wet tissue paper" appearance.) Yesterday I decide I'm going to vacuum the pool down to within inches of its life, refill it and start over. However as I'm vacuuming, I notice I can actually start to see the bottom. Up to this point I could barely see the third step on our pool ladder. I stop vacuuming, refill it and turn the filter back on. This morning though, there was no noticeable difference. The water is still cloudy. I can still see the bottom, but I was expecting some marked improvement from last night. On my way to work I start thinking about the filter and my pea-size brain is telling me we should have only used four bags of sand, not the five I tossed in there (and we followed the instructions to a "T" when replacing it) and the extra sand may be causing the filter to not work as efficiently as it should/could. Is it possible that too much sand will cause the filter to take longer cleaning the water? Or do I need to leave well enough alone and allow the filter to keep working considering the length of time the pool sat unused? I still have not added the sanitizer also. Should I go ahead and add that? According to the local pool place, our pH is good, hardness is good. Everything looks good according to them. It's just still cloudy
My wife and I have a 4' x 24' above ground that will not clear up. Here's some backstory...
Last year we didn't open it up. Since our kids are grown and moved out, we (ok...I) decided we didn't want to mess with it. Fast forward to this year. My wife said she would like to get the pool going for two reason. One, she wants to use it and two, we're looking at selling our house next year. This spring it was green and nasty. In fact the last time I added any chemicals of any sort was late summer 2014. By the time we started on it, we had tadpoles. We started by replacing the filter sand. I believe it's a Hayward filter but the labels have fallen off so I'm not entirely sure. Not too mention, we're not the original owners and all the documentation about the pool is gone. A popular pool place in town recommends we fill it to about 7/8 full with new sand (equates to 5 bags). We then head to another local pool place and they tell us to shock it with 6lbs of shock and a full bottle of algaecide. Done. Pool went from green and nasty to milky looking. I mentioned this to the folks at the pool place and they recommend I used a product called "Pool First Aid" which is supposed to help clear it up. I did and it didn't. So I threw in some flocculent. That didn't work either. A few days later we head back to the pool place and they tell us to shock it with two gallons of Baquacil and a bottle and a half of Sanitizer. They then tell us, if we see no noticeable difference in the water after shocking it, to use more floc. I see no noticeable difference so I floc it. This time, I start noticing clumps of white stuff floating at the top of the pool which I believe is "white water mold?" At least that's what he folks at the pool place tell me it could be (they actually described it as having a "wet tissue paper" appearance.) Yesterday I decide I'm going to vacuum the pool down to within inches of its life, refill it and start over. However as I'm vacuuming, I notice I can actually start to see the bottom. Up to this point I could barely see the third step on our pool ladder. I stop vacuuming, refill it and turn the filter back on. This morning though, there was no noticeable difference. The water is still cloudy. I can still see the bottom, but I was expecting some marked improvement from last night. On my way to work I start thinking about the filter and my pea-size brain is telling me we should have only used four bags of sand, not the five I tossed in there (and we followed the instructions to a "T" when replacing it) and the extra sand may be causing the filter to not work as efficiently as it should/could. Is it possible that too much sand will cause the filter to take longer cleaning the water? Or do I need to leave well enough alone and allow the filter to keep working considering the length of time the pool sat unused? I still have not added the sanitizer also. Should I go ahead and add that? According to the local pool place, our pH is good, hardness is good. Everything looks good according to them. It's just still cloudy
I'll get a test kit on order. We dabbled in testing our own water but not really knowing exactly what we had to do if something was out of balance, it was easier to just let the pool folks test it for us. Of course those test kits were just the swabs you dipped in the water and compared them to the color chart on the container.