Staining

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Re: Staining issue has turned into a green water issue

I did add sequestrant. I need to order more and start getting the maintenance dosage in starting Thur or so.

I added algaecide, but not until maybe Friday. The Vit C and sequestrant went in Wed, I believe.

I'll snap a photo and have it up in a few minutes.
 
Re: Staining issue has turned into a green water issue

3672902207_938330783f.jpg


3673709732_41387dccec.jpg


3672901407_9a96c819ed.jpg
 
Re: Staining issue has turned into a green water issue

It's much darker now. I think it's the iron.

All the pool places are closed now. I have to go to Conneticut tomorrow and won't be home until 10pm. I suspect that I'll get to go through this all over again.

This sucks.
 
If you do the AA treatment, you need Polyquat. Did you add it? Then you slowly raise your chlorine leves. You still need a metal sequesterant to keep the metals suspended in the water, or they'll just redeposit on your pool.
 
I picked up some algaecide from Wal-Mart and put that in on Thur or Friday. I probably put it in a little late since I think it was Wed that the AA went in. By Sat the pool felt slick, but still looked good. Each time I added chlorine it would bottom back out which made me think it was algae. Only once did I get some cloudiness with the chlorine...until tonight. The pool is now like a deep tea color. Unfortunately, I have a 5am flight out of town in the morning and won't be home until around 10pm. My wife is out of town visiting family. I should be able to buy more sequestrant, but it will be Wed morning. I'm assuming it'll be too late at that point and I get to do all of this again. Does taht sound about right?

I thought maybe this was changing to a water problem and started a thread over on the Water Balancing board. Pictures are there, but that's before it really got dark. That picture was taken within 1 hr or so of putting in the chlorine.



When the writeup says to bring chlorine up slow....what's slow? I'm trying to do it over a few days, maybe this should have been over a couple weeks?
 
No, small chlorine additions every few hours. You just don't want to "shock" by dumping a bunch of chlorine all at once, as that will cause the stains to redeposit. You need to use sequesterant first, and this will also possibly increase chlorine demand. By having the sequesterant in first, this prevents the reaction with the chlorine.

You need to get Polyquat 60 algaecide, and I'm pretty sure Walmart doesn't sell it. Did you add any of these products? The algaecide you used could have been consuming the chlorine too, and you did probably added it too late to be of use. You need to add algaecide before the chlorine gets to 0. I suspect what you are seeing now IS a metals reaction and/or possible reaction from the algaecide, if it was copper based. It's also possible there is algae too. Time will tell.
 
Was it time to start adding chlorine at all, or should I have waited longer?

I found the bottle. It was Aqua Chem brand. It did have copper in it. Dangit, dangit, dangit. Why did I just grab whatever was cheap and saved $3 after I'd just spent about $60 on all of these other chemicals. Dave Ramsey calls that the stupid tax. I believe Bill Engvall would say, "Here's your sign."


Does this sound reasonable for Wed when I get back in town?

1. Add the polyquat, wait how long before step 2?
2. Since I never did get teh Borax from 30 to 50, do it now.
3. Redo the AA if staining is present.
4. Add sequestrant.
5. Now I'm back where I was and I add chlorine maybe before work, at lunch, and when I get home. Keep the SWG on it's usual setting of 50%. Contine to add maybe 1 qt or chlorine 3x per day until it gets to where it holds. Chill out and realize that this could take as much as a week to hold steady.

Am I in the ball park?
 
Re: Staining issue has turned into a green water issue

If the pool is green because of iron, then the iron is in the water, and not on the walls of the pool. If that is what is happening, all you have to do is add more sequestrant. The pool is also a little cloudy, which could be algae, but is probably just the previous dose of sequestrant working.

To prevent this from happening again, as you ramp up the chlorine level after an ascorbic acid/cirtic acid/Vitamin C treatment, you need to be ready to add more sequestrant the moment something looks wrong.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
dayhiker said:
I got home, added 128 oz of 6% all around the pool. The pool was a shade of light green.

I did a full test

FC - 2
CC - 0
pH - 7.2
T/A - 60
CYA - 40

I just went out to add the rest of my CYA. I added about 3.5# or so as a guess.

My pool is now green. This is before I added the CYA. I can makeout the bottom of the pool. Is this algae? It seems more likely that it's iron.

Any advice?

Since this is now a water issue I'll post over there too.
Click to expand...
The green is an Algae bloom, not iron! Your pictures are NOT the color of iron in the water at all! The color and cloudiness is more indicative of algae. If it were metals the color would apppear immediately after shocking the water, not overnight. Ascorbic acid is an antioxidant (reducing agent) which is how it gets rid of the iron stains. It changes the oxidation state of the insoluble colored iron to a colorless iron that is soluble. It also reduces chlorine to choride ions until it is all oxidized by slow additions of chlorine. This means it can take seveal days for the FC to hold and it means that your pool is very likely to develop an algae bloom. This is why Polyquat 60 is recommended with the ascorbic acid treatment. Whenever I treated iron stains in my pool I usually end up with slightly green cloudy water (and not from the sequesterant) for a day or two before the chlorine and polyquat started to work. Since the borates the water only clouds a bit.
 
dayhiker said:
The pool is now like a deep tea color. Unfortunately, I have a 5am flight out of town in the morning and won't be home until around 10pm. My wife is out of town visiting family.
Click to expand...

So since he just did the AA treatment, and shocking is not recommended, what is his best course of action? (Asking this since he's probably unable to access a computer today.)

And if the pool is now tea color, does this mean he needs more sequesterant before adding more chlorine?
 
Thanks for merging. I sort of felt like the original thread was buried since in readers mind it was a success story.....if only.

The color came about after approximately 1 hr after adding 128 oz of chlorine. An hour later it got the tea color I later mentioned.

I couldn't sleep list night, woke around 1am and it still looked bad. I had to start getting ready around 2:30 am for my flight, didn't think much would have changed and didn't peak. I got home around 10pm and the pool now looks like it did BEFORE I added teh chlorine. I'm anxious to see what it looks like in the morning with daylight. I guess this means the original dosage of sequestrant is still active and working? I should buy some more in the morning and start the weekly dosage. Also, I should start diligantly pulling up the chlorine by doing doses every 4 hrs or so. What should my max dosage be? 1qt is what I had in mind. The SWG is usually set for 50% and I'll just leave it there. I'll run a new set of numbers in the morning....unless I just totally crash from lack of sleep.

This all wasn't so bad though. While trying to deal with all of this last night I was also giving gumbo a try. I nailed making roux and wound up with an excellent pot of gumbo. On top of that, while in CT, today we drove through New Haven and ate lunch at Frank Pepe's pizza. This is on the Travel Channels "Pizza Paradise," show. I brought half a pie home to Alabama. I think half a pie and a pot of gumbo will be popular around the office on Wed!
 
How many gallons is your pool? You should add that to your sig.

According to the instructions, keep adding the "min" amount of FC for your CYA level - I don't see a current reading, just that you added 3.5 lbs to your then CYA of 40.

So refer to the chart, that's how many ppm of FC you should add at a time, your "min". Keep adding that amount until it starts to hold. I would think 2-3 times a day should do the trick. Remember it says keep your PH at 7.2 and don't shock for 2 weeks. If you see staining, add more sequesterant.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply