We bought a house with a gunite pool. Just had it retiled and marcited. It's a 21,000 gal sport pool. We filled with city water and the pool guy added 2 gal muriatic acid, 3 quarts Pro Guard stain and scale preventer and one gal chlorinated pool shock. He told me to keep the chlorine low for a week to prevent marcite staining. Per his instructions, I added stabilized chlorine in a floater. Within 4-5 days the water was cloudy. The chlorine level wasn't registering, PH was 7.2 and alkalinity was so high it wouldn't register. We've been dumping in chemicals all week. Since we are new to this, we need advice. So far we've added 3 gals muriatic acid and 12 gals 10% pool sanitizer. (It was cheaper than bleach.) There is all kinds of foam on top of the water and it is still cloudy. Last readings were alkalinity 150 ppm, chlorine 4 ppm, PH 6.8 and hardness 500. What should we do next?
Water Problems of a novice
- Thread starter rjswedo
- Start date
Welcome to TFP!
We need to know a little bit more about your situation to be able to really help you. Do you know your CYA level? How quickly does the chlorine level go back down? Is there a color to the water: white, green, etc? Which kind of "shock" are you using (dichlor, non-chlorine, cal-hypo)? Can you tell us more about what he said to keep the PH at?
We need to know a little bit more about your situation to be able to really help you. Do you know your CYA level? How quickly does the chlorine level go back down? Is there a color to the water: white, green, etc? Which kind of "shock" are you using (dichlor, non-chlorine, cal-hypo)? Can you tell us more about what he said to keep the PH at?
I tried to do a CY test and it didn't work. Would that mean I don't have enough CY to register? The pool guy added 3 quarts of it. On the chlorine tests, my test only goes to 5. We added 8 gallons on Monday evening and 4 more gallons last night. The chlorine has never seemed to register above the yellow color at 5. I took a sample to Leslie's Pool yesterday, though, and she said my chlorine was too high to even test the water. The pool guy didn't give me any advice regarding the desire PH level. Until we added the last bit of acid, the PH has been in the 7.2 range. The water is a cloudy version of it's normal turquoise color. It has cleared up some over the past two days. You can see the bottom in spots. Sorry I'm not much help providing the information you need.
OK, we want to help, but we need more info: what are your numbers?
You added 8 and then 4 gallons of what? bleach? liquid chlorine? CYA?
Each gallon of 6% bleach will raise your FC by ~3ppm. (12% 'shock' will raise it by ~6ppm) So when you added the 8 gallons, you jacked your chlorine up by 24 or 48 ppm!
If your CYA is less than 30, 15 ppm FC is more than sufficient to shock your pool.
pH tests are not accurate at high FC (free chlorine) levels. Your desired pH is 7.2 - 7.8.
CYA takes a long time to dissolve, like a week. Sounds like your pool guy added some kind of liquid? Most CYA tests don't register well below 30, so you probably have some, but not enough.
You can get your OTO kit to read to 15 by mixing one part pool water with 2 parts distilled water in a clean container, and use that for testing. Multiply your result by 3.
The best advice anyone here will give you is to get yourself a good test kit, like the one in my signature, and take control of your testing and your pool. It is really easy, and we are here to help you!
You added 8 and then 4 gallons of what? bleach? liquid chlorine? CYA?
Each gallon of 6% bleach will raise your FC by ~3ppm. (12% 'shock' will raise it by ~6ppm) So when you added the 8 gallons, you jacked your chlorine up by 24 or 48 ppm!
If your CYA is less than 30, 15 ppm FC is more than sufficient to shock your pool.pH tests are not accurate at high FC (free chlorine) levels. Your desired pH is 7.2 - 7.8.
CYA takes a long time to dissolve, like a week. Sounds like your pool guy added some kind of liquid? Most CYA tests don't register well below 30, so you probably have some, but not enough.
You can get your OTO kit to read to 15 by mixing one part pool water with 2 parts distilled water in a clean container, and use that for testing. Multiply your result by 3.
The best advice anyone here will give you is to get yourself a good test kit, like the one in my signature, and take control of your testing and your pool. It is really easy, and we are here to help you!
Thanks for your advice. The water looked good today. I took a sample into Leslie Pools and they said I show no CYA. The pool guy told me the Pro Guard was CYA but the Leslie guy said it wasn't. He told me to add 4 pounds of Conditioner and shock the pool with 2 gallons of liquid chlorine. That's what I'm doing tonight. Wish me luck. Thanks!
Proguard is a Biolab/Guardex brand of pool chemcials. You said that they put in 3 quarts but CYA is a solid and is usually measured in poinds and not quarts so without the acutal name of the Proguard product they put in there is really no way of telling what it was. I suspect it was NOT CYA.