Cloudy Blue Mess

[jdkelly1983]

Hi everyone and thanks in advance for any and all helpful input.

My wife and I recently purchase a house in Texas, and were blessed with a pool (we are both from Florida and total water babies). When we viewed the home the pool was crystal clear and looked amazing. Fast forward several weeks and it turned into a green monster with a semi-dead pump. I have finally replaced the pump and filter, Pentair 1.5hp Cristal-Flo II and a 19" Sand Dollar filter, also threw in a Hayward skimmer box for good measure. It has been up and running for 4 days now and I still have a very cloudy (but at least blue) pool.

After brining the water level up I hit the pool with 2 rounds of 1lb "Pool Essentials" shock, once on Wednesday and again on Thursday. The pool went from dark green to cloudy blue. Friday my wife took a water sample to Leslie's pool supply and they told us everything looked to be on the right track and then gave us a list of Chemicals and timelines to load them in the pool.

1) another 10oz of shock, wait four hours then
2) 5 cap fills of Clear Aid (10oz), wait four hours then
3) 2.5lbs of conditioner

additionally we were told not to backwash for 3-5 days.

so we are currently halfway through step 3 and I have seen NO change in the water color. Perhaps I am being overzealous, but should the clear aid not have cleared up the pool a bit?

the read outs from our water sample are as follows:
FAC - 0.5
TAC - 0.5
pH - 7.6
TA- 100
Ca. Hardness - 300
Cyanuric Acid - 0
Iron - 0
Copper - 0
TDS - 1000
Phosphates - 100

Pool size is 12'x24'x52" AG.

thanks again for any help and assistance, sorry for the long post.

 

[YippeeSkippy]

JD, welcome to TFP

What you'll find here when you read is that we don't believe in handling pools the "Pool Store Way"... their testing is notoriously inaccurate and they really need for you to *buy* something to make that "free water test" worth their time. Hence we call that being "Pool Stored".

Around here we like for everyone to have a quality pool testing kit of their own (no one cares more than you to get it *right*) and then ONLY put in to your pool that which it needs and nothing else.

We encourage folks to use liquid chlorine (aka "bleach") as it is cheap, easy to come by and adds no other hidden ingredient like calcium or stabilzer, which tend to build up to unmanageable levels and require pool draining.

Your pool has some dead algae in it, but unless you keep at it the still living algae will just take over again. You dont need anything else but bleach and a bit of stabilizer (and I'm not sure about that since youve been adding products that contain it already. You may need more or just better testing).

Please take a few minutes to read some of the Pool School articles that explain how we do things-
Pool School - What is TFPC?
ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry
[FC/CYA][/FC/CYA]
Pool School - Recommended Pool Chemicals

Yip

 

[jdkelly1983]

Yip, thanks for the feedback. I was never a fan of pool stores, so happy to know I am not alone. I finally have a blue pool, not crystal clear, but I can see the bottom. My chlorine levels are currently between 3-6 and pH is about 7.5, using the HTH 6 way tester. My only real concern is that I currently have a faint chlorine smell. will that smell go away as my chlorine levels balance out some more, or do I need to deposit other chemicals?

thanks again for you assistance

 

[YippeeSkippy]

If you have a faint chlorine smell, the usually indicates that you have chloramines (the icky things that make pools go green) in the water. You actually need MORE chlorine to get rid of this. The chlorine in the water now is overrun and can't perform its job....it needs back up soldiers in there!!

I'd put 1/2 gallon of bleach in, mix it around, order a test kit and move on with the TFP method of pool care. Once you have a test kit that works accurately you'll find our methods much cheaper and with much nicer water to swim in.

Yip