mysterious goo

[duraleigh]

A couple of weeks after opening, a co-worker of mine found this "stuck" to the sides of his pool and some on the steps as well. He described it as almost oily to the touch and that it was sticky and remained so a couple of days later. I have never seen anything like it.

I suspect it to be some combination of algae and residue from perhaps several types of pool chemistry thrown in at random.

The pool has been chlorinated heavily (30+ppm) at times with Cal Hypo but not regularly so FC could easily have been at zero more than once this spring.

His test results the day after this pic were:

FC = 26
CC = .5
pH = 7.6
TA = 140
CYA = 50

Obviously, the pool has been further out of whack in the recent past, but for now, things appear on the right track.

A 24 hour report after these tests were that this goo was going away slowly....water was and has always been fairly clear.

I am simply at a loss as to identification. It appears that shock level of chlorine will fix it but I sure would like to know what it is.

 

[257WbyMag]

Eewww!

No clue. Where I work, we would culture it and see what grows.

 

[spishex]

I get black goo in pools that see a lot of suntan lotion/oil. It hangs out on the surface, obviously, and migrates to the edges when the pool is being used. I assume it goes black because of oxidation. Was that glob an accumulation from scrubbing the entire waterline or was it in clumps like that around the pool?

 

[Guest]

Is it is liner pool? Black goo is the plasticizers leaching out of the liner. It's usually seen in new liners the first few years of their use.
The other possiblity that comes to mind is clafiers. I have seen them produce a dark blue sticky mess on pool parts and filters.

 

[duraleigh]

Tim,

My impression is that it was in clumps like that around the entire pool. They said they had three brushes that they were throwing away....this was one of them.....and they still had green stuff left.

Evan, yeah, it's a liner pool with a liner that's about 4-5 years old.

I, too, think it's from a combo of some additive and perhaps algae growing within the additive. As you can see....it's definitely green and it was definitely described as very sticky....not slimey like you would expect from just algae.

Based on my conversation (He's about 100 miles away), I have to think that pool maintenance has been random......throwing pool store stuff at the pool 'til it looks good enough to swim.