Please help us with our cloudy water!

[bmwarlok]

Hi there,

I am very excited to find this site. We have had our pool for 3 seasons now, and the past 2 it was always very cloudy and we had no idea why. This year we decided to refill it with fresh water, and I attempted to educate myself on balancing chemicals. We have a 24ft 13,500 above ground pool. We had the water tested when it was delivered, and had to add calcium, cyuric acid, chlorine, and ABC Balance. The chemicals are now all in the "ideal" range--and we now have cloudy blue water. I am at my ropes end on what to do with this pool!!!! We have been running the filter 6-8 hours every day, and I did notice today alot of little bugs floating in the water, but besides that it is just cloudy. We do have lots of trees around our pool. But everything is just floating, not sinking to the bottom. Also, our pump loses pressure alot and we have to back flush it every day.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do or what could be causing all the problems???? I keep hearing from other people how they just add a gallon of bleach every week and their pool is sparkling clean-we test and balance almost every day, yet ours is a mess!!!!!

Any help is very appreciated!~

Thanks~

 

[Rangeball]

Can you post a complete set of test results?

Also, what are you using for a chlorine?

 

[algaeh8er]

I had to run my cloudy blue pool in the shock range with the filter running 24/7 for it to clear.

 

[The Mermaid Queen]

There are some links in my signature that are quite helpful...

What are you testing with? strips? drops? pool store?
Please post your most recent results for us to be able to further assist you.

Welcome to TFP! With a little patience, we will help you get your pool sparkling and clean!

ETA Just reread that your pump LOSES pressure daily... usually as the filter gets stuff out of the water, the pressure goes UP... I know about keeping pool water clean. Equipment, not so much.

 

[bmwarlok]

Oh thank you guys so much! You are AWESOME :-D

Ok-test results with the aqua test strips--- (estimated compared strip to chart)

Total Hardness ~ 300

Total Chlorine ~ 3

Free Chlorine ~ 2

PH ~ 7.2

Alkalinity ~ 80

Cyanuric Acid ~ 30

The water temp is 78 degrees

And yes---the filter loses pressure after it has been running for several hours. We have a 1HP motor and a sand filter-maybe it is too small for our pool?

Thanks again!!!!!

 

[Wolfmarsh]

If your combined chlorine is 1, you need to jack up your chlorine and shock the pool. Get your chlorine up to around 15ppm, and check it twice a day, adding whatever bleach is necessary to bring it up to 15ppm again.

Run your pump 24/7 until its clear, backwashing as necessary.

Use the bleachcalc program to determine how much bleach to put in.

 

[bmwarlok]

Thanks Wolfmarsh-

I went to the bleach calculator--I can't figure out how it works. Can someone explain it to me?
I want to go to the store today to get all the bleach. Now I know its not safe to let the kids go in when the chlorine is so high--is there a level it needs to be down to when it is safe again?

Thank you again!!! Much appreciated!

 

[JasonLion]

If you are having trouble with BleachCalc you might want to try my Pool Calculator and see if that makes more sense to you.

There are two points of view on chlorine levels that are safe for swiming. One attitude is that very high levels are fine as long as you don't drink the water. The other is to wait for the chlorine to get down to the Max column on Ben's best guess chart (see the link in my signature), for your pool I believe that would be 6. I suggest rinsing off after being in water above 5.