So I'm an idiot about pools. Have never had one before. Have no idea how to maintain them. Have read through a lot of the basic stuff on this site, but am so ignorant I'm pretty sure I don't understand half of what I'm reading. Help?
My husband and I bought a farm in the French countryside (northwestern France; near Normandy/Brittany, so a climate much like Seattle), and it came with a pool. After a few years of my mother-in-law fighting with it and having very little success, we gave up about two years ago and just pretended like it wasn't there. This summer, I'm bound and determined to figure out how to manage this pool properly.
It's a Desjoyeaux pool, about 90 cubic meters (~23000 gallons) and it seems to have a bit of a strange pump/filtration system, which uses a cloth sack which can/must be removed pretty regularly and cleaned using the hose. Home | Desjoyaux Pools (It seems what we've got is a 180 Filtration System, if that means anything to anyone...)
Where we are currently:
We uncovered the pool about a week ago and discovered a dark green/black swamp under the tarp which was home to a lot of insects. We opened the pump box and found a nest of snakes. After considering whether or not napalm was an acceptable option, and after reading a bit on the internet, I decided that the first step would be to take out as much large debris as possible, so I skimmed the pool for ages and dredged as much of the bottom of the pool as I could. Then, I began shocking it. (And rehoming snakes.) One potential error: I didn't run the pump while I was shocking it during this time. Mostly because I literally had no idea what the mechanism was for the filtration system, and decided dumping a bunch of chemicals and running away was safer than flicking switches and hoping for the best.
So far so good! Three snakes later, the pool gradually changed in color from black/green to milky white/blue. And I thought we might sort of be out of the woods. But even changing/cleaning the filter every two hours hasn't reduced the cloudiness in the pool. So then I thought, perhaps my previous activities were insufficient and I decided what I'd do is shock the pool again and this time circulate the water with the pump running (without the filter in place). I tested the water and there was no chlorine to speak of (or very little) and the Ph was lower than 6.8.
I started the pump, dumped a metric ton of shock into the pool, and also went crazy with the Ph Plus. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a whole lot more stuff came to the surface over the next two hours. The coloration went back from milky white/blue to a brown/green, and after about two hours the Chlorine was reading at about 3.0, but the Ph was still about 6.8 or so. By then I had run out of anything to raise the Ph, and it was getting dark, so I declared yet another day of defeat and decided I'd finally write in to the forums in the hopes that calling in the cavalry might save me some anguish and perhaps make this pool swimmable sometime before August.
I'm not sure if anyone else has a cloth filter pool, but holy smokes they're ridiculous. Of course there's plenty of particulate matter being collected by them right now with all the dead algae floating around. It's enough that if I leave the filter for too long, the frame that holds it in place will break and the whole bag will get sucked into the pump system! I've had to fish the silly bag out twice. We ordered a 6 micron bag from the supplier, and the pressure on the bag was so great that it actually ripped, after only a couple hours in place! Oops?
Anyway, thanks for reading. I have no idea if any of this makes any sense to anyone out there, or if you have any suggestions for what I should do next, but any assistance is appreciated.
Patrick
My husband and I bought a farm in the French countryside (northwestern France; near Normandy/Brittany, so a climate much like Seattle), and it came with a pool. After a few years of my mother-in-law fighting with it and having very little success, we gave up about two years ago and just pretended like it wasn't there. This summer, I'm bound and determined to figure out how to manage this pool properly.
It's a Desjoyeaux pool, about 90 cubic meters (~23000 gallons) and it seems to have a bit of a strange pump/filtration system, which uses a cloth sack which can/must be removed pretty regularly and cleaned using the hose. Home | Desjoyaux Pools (It seems what we've got is a 180 Filtration System, if that means anything to anyone...)
Where we are currently:
We uncovered the pool about a week ago and discovered a dark green/black swamp under the tarp which was home to a lot of insects. We opened the pump box and found a nest of snakes. After considering whether or not napalm was an acceptable option, and after reading a bit on the internet, I decided that the first step would be to take out as much large debris as possible, so I skimmed the pool for ages and dredged as much of the bottom of the pool as I could. Then, I began shocking it. (And rehoming snakes.) One potential error: I didn't run the pump while I was shocking it during this time. Mostly because I literally had no idea what the mechanism was for the filtration system, and decided dumping a bunch of chemicals and running away was safer than flicking switches and hoping for the best.
So far so good! Three snakes later, the pool gradually changed in color from black/green to milky white/blue. And I thought we might sort of be out of the woods. But even changing/cleaning the filter every two hours hasn't reduced the cloudiness in the pool. So then I thought, perhaps my previous activities were insufficient and I decided what I'd do is shock the pool again and this time circulate the water with the pump running (without the filter in place). I tested the water and there was no chlorine to speak of (or very little) and the Ph was lower than 6.8.
I started the pump, dumped a metric ton of shock into the pool, and also went crazy with the Ph Plus. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a whole lot more stuff came to the surface over the next two hours. The coloration went back from milky white/blue to a brown/green, and after about two hours the Chlorine was reading at about 3.0, but the Ph was still about 6.8 or so. By then I had run out of anything to raise the Ph, and it was getting dark, so I declared yet another day of defeat and decided I'd finally write in to the forums in the hopes that calling in the cavalry might save me some anguish and perhaps make this pool swimmable sometime before August.
I'm not sure if anyone else has a cloth filter pool, but holy smokes they're ridiculous. Of course there's plenty of particulate matter being collected by them right now with all the dead algae floating around. It's enough that if I leave the filter for too long, the frame that holds it in place will break and the whole bag will get sucked into the pump system! I've had to fish the silly bag out twice. We ordered a 6 micron bag from the supplier, and the pressure on the bag was so great that it actually ripped, after only a couple hours in place! Oops?
Anyway, thanks for reading. I have no idea if any of this makes any sense to anyone out there, or if you have any suggestions for what I should do next, but any assistance is appreciated.
Patrick
Yours may be a case where some pics might be a good idea for our members to see exactly what you have back in France. While in the states, we hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to obtain the TF-100 (XL Option) with Speed Stir since getting it over there may be difficult. Nice to have you with us, and we hope we can assist you in the future. Please refer to and bookmark the vital links you see below in my signature for future reference.
Fact is those that those two testing products you are using are extremely limited. The AquaCheck Strips are virtually useless - all test strips are really. Simply not reliable. The 2-way tester will give you pH which is good, but the FC (Free Chlorine) will be extremely limited and not support your SLAM efforts.
