Water turned slightly green...unusual.

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borjis

borjis

LifeTime Supporter
Aug 19, 2014
3,612
Pacific NW
Bit of a mystery here.

I had a brand new Raypak heater installed last thursday.

Added 4ppm of chlorine (unscented regular bleach) on saturday
and ran the pump all day with the suction robot to clean the pool.
This was the first addition of chlorine since last november.

I am on city water, not well. The pool was fresh filled october 2015.
I have never seen the water turn green before when adding chlorine.

There is dilution by rain water that I have drained down a few times
to keep the water at the correct level.

I solely practice the tfp way (since 2014) and have never added any algecides
or potions to this water. Just bleach, washing soda, baking soda and cya.


I'm having a hard time believing it's metals from the city water, as that
would have turned green during the fresh fill. And as mentioned above, i went
and entire year plus without this happening.

The heater is a new variable, i did not opt for the cupro nickel exchanger
so I have whatever is standard. PH is good so I don't think copper from
the new heater was leaching off, if thats a thing.

Part of me wants to let the poolco that installed the heater know, but
I don't want them dumping potions in the water or potentially making
things worse.

Do new heaters have residual chemicals from manufacturing that may have caused this?

There was a thread where someone said they had this happen to them 3
years in a row out of nowhere (getting slightly green after first year chlorine addition)
but that it went away after a few weeks and their metal test came up as zero.
Any of you experienced this?


Here are my current TF-100 test results:

water temp: 44 degrees

FC: 4.0
CC: 0.5
PH: 7.5
TA: 60
CH: 150
CYA: not registering (i lose it this time of year due to rain fills/drain downs dilution)


Any suggestions much appreciated.
 
Just a guess, but the effective chlorine level at 4ppm FC and 0ppm CYA is much higher than what you might typically see in normal operation. Maybe some iron from water lines has ended up in your pool and oxidized when you added the chlorine. When this happens, the water isn't actually green, but yellow, and yellow water against a blue liner looks green.

Not certain at all, but it might explain it. Do you live outside or on the edge of a city where your water lines may not get flushed well from other users beyond you?
 
Personally, I have seen this very thing happen to a Lady's pool I helped with. She called a couple of hours after we added Chlorine and we determined later it was Iron. Fresh fill in a large pool with City water and it made sense after we thought about it. Old town, and they were constantly having water delivery system issues because of dilapidated piping. It can happen even in much better systems I am sure.
 
If it's still there put some pillow stuffing material (local craft store should have it) in the skimmer basket and see if you can filter it out. If you get a brownish-red stain on the stuffing material, it's iron. A little tablespoon or two of cal-hypo powder sprinkled on top will locally jack up the pH and FC inside the skimmer and make the metals precipitate faster. Think if it as a little Myth Busters science experiment you can do.


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Thanks for the options.

I was puzzled most by the fact I did a fresh fill just over a year ago and never saw it before, but the more
reading I've done, it truly is leaning towards a metals issue. The water out here is pretty darn good so
I'm confused how this could have happened. The neighborhood was built in the late 60's / early 70's.
The water plant is about 3 miles away, but I'm also way in town and not on any outskirts.

I looked into the lamotte metals test kit but it's kinda spendy at $ 75.

Where I live now the water is cheap. It cost me $ 20 to fill my pool up when the liner was replaced.

I think my plan for now, will be to drain half and refill and see how it goes from there since that will
be the least cost option. And I want to take care of it quick before any possible staining happens.

I might try that pillow stuffing before I replace some water just to see what it shows. And yes
it could actually be yellow but showing as green with the blue liner...makes sense.

I had iron staining at my last house/pool and that wasn't any kind of fun.
 
Can you vacuum to waste?

I know we don't like to push this approach but an alum based flocculant will cause metals to drop out of solution. Polyaluminum chloride flocs do this too. If you can vacuum to waste, you then remove the flocc'ed metal laden water at the bottom and refill. It will use less water to do it that way.

Up to you.


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If you are keeping FC in your pool, you should have CYA (30 ppm) in there as well.

Lower your pH down to 7.0 or 7.2.........that may clear the green immediately or speed up the process a lot. If it's not bugging you, I'd just let the filter run 24/7 until it is filtered out....may take a few days.
 
Thanks Dave,

I ran out of cya granules but have more on the way arriving this weekend.

Wouldn't a ph lower than 7.2 harm my new heater heat exchanger though?
or just as long as it isn't there for weeks on end?

Unfortunately there is no heater bypass plumbed in.
 

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I know we don't like to push this approach but an alum based flocculant will cause metals to drop out of solution.
Click to expand...
If you try this as a last resort, the cheapest and best date is specifically Leslie's brand of pure alum floc at about $25 a tub. Follow the direction precisely, especially re ph if you go this route, and only if you can vac to waste (and have a sand filter, which I see you do.)

Personally, I would do this BEFORE trying any metal sequestrants...because even if it only partially works and even if your municipality is cheating out on its own sequestrant, you will dramatically lower a Jacks or Metal Magic habit, each which cost roughly the same as the tub of floc ;)
 
Just confused - do you have an autofill or has the pool been filled recently with muni water?


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No autofill, but the record breaking heavy rains and draining to proper level past few months has wiped out my cya completely. (did last year too, and the previous owner used a puck chlorinator...maybe not such a bad idea hehe)

And that also makes it more puzzling. Rain and snow this season has probably replaced close to 1/4 of my water since August.


It was fresh filled for the first/only time in october 2015 when the the new liner was installed.
The entire first season went very well. No weird issues.

I'll probably just replace the water..it will only set me back $ 20. easy to do.
Doing the floc makes me nervous. I won't do that unless its absolutely necessary / don't want to make
things worse.
 
I drained and replaced 1/4 of my water, there was still a slight hint of green when I checked it the next day so
I replaced another 1/4 bringing it to a 50% water change out.

All the green is gone. And after adding chlorine it did not turn green, so its safe to say my city fill water doesn't
have a high concentration of metals.

Still puzzled how this happened at all but thankful it's cleared up now.
 
Too bad you didn't save some in a bucket. You could tested some floc on it.


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And it will be St Patrick's day on Friday so maybe the pool was just trying to be festive?!?

Way to go ruining the pools mood, dude....


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