How long to clear pool after Harvey?

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blairsooley

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Oct 29, 2016
70
Spring/TX
My pool (see pic taken 3 days ago) was under a ft of water from the local creek, which was undoubtedly mixed with the wonders of the North Houston storm and sewage overflows. Starting on Wednesday I removed the twigs and branches and other lumps of organics. After 3 days of running the filter continuously and backwashing 3 times, the water is slightly clearer and now is a light colour of green. The numbers are
FC = 16 (adding cal-hypo regularly to keep it there),
CC = 0.5,
CH = 170 (using cal-hypo to bring up FC and CH together),
TA = 70,
PH = 7.4,
CYA = 0. I forgot to check CYA and have just added solid CYA to bring the number up to 30.

All this said, we're on the road to recovery but it slow going. Can anyone give me an idea how long this kind of cleanup typically takes? I'm particularly interested in why it hasn't cleared much as I can't see the bottom yet. I forgot to add to my signature that I have a DE filter.

Thanks, Blair

PoolAfterHarveyAug2017.jpg
 
You have a lot of organics, sediment, etc that have been deposited in there. Keep SLAMming and keep that filter running and it will most assuredly clear up. If you can vacuum to waste or otherwise vacuum the bottom, that will help too.
 
Do you have a bottom drain. Is so can you close that off and use your vacuum attachment?
If you don't have a vacuum to waste set up already then rig up an external pump and as it settles down vacuum out the sediment onto the lawn or into the garden to reduce the load on your filter then add fresh water, chlorine and repeat.
 
Thanks for the validation, triptyx. DMS2014, I see it as a pool that can be easily fixed. We didn't flood but many of our neighbors did. Our community has been amazing at getting together to tear out the damage before mold sets in, and provide support where we can. We had over 200 volunteers from everywhere helping out our street alone. Hopefully, you came out of it with little damage.
 
Thanks Oly. I have a bottom drain. I can close the value I have no idea if I can use the vacuum attachment on it as I haven't read up on how to do this. I have used my wet vac to remove big stuff before but at this moment I can't see the bottom. There have been water moccasins in the flood waters in and I don't want to get in and take a chance one of them is at the bottom of the pool. I have been trying to run my vac but I'm having a heck of a time keeping the inline filter clean. It clogs after just a few minutes so I'm constantly cleaning it. I assume that's because the pump that is driving it is tee'd in just after the output from the main pump but before it gets to the filter, and incoming water from the main pump is full of junk. Sounds like it may have been plumbed wrong. I would think it would be better to have the vacuum connected after the DE filter.

The good news is that the colour is getting better.
 
Vacuums are usually connected before the filter to prevent what they vacuum up from just cycling back into the pool. I know this makes it a pain in the tail sometimes though!

Can you remove the vacuum's inline filter (I'm assuming you meant the vacuum has it's own filter? If you mean the actual pool filter, see next step -> ), set the main filter valve to waste, and vacuum the gunk straight off of the bottom and out the waste line?
 
Are you using just the pool cleaner to vacuum the pool? You may have better results using a manual pool vacuum plugged into the skimmer and vacuum to filter. DE will catch a lot of the sediment. You can also try raising the pool back to shock level and turning off the pump for 24 hours to give the crud a chance to settle on the bottom and then vacuum slowly to waste. You have to move really slow to prevent stirring up too much while vacuuming. After you vacuum what you can, top off the pool, raise the FC again, brush the pool to mix everything in and let the filter do the work. Keep an eye on the filter pressure and backwash it when there is a 10% rise in pressure.
 
blairsooley said:
Thanks for the validation, triptyx. DMS2014, I see it as a pool that can be easily fixed. We didn't flood but many of our neighbors did. Our community has been amazing at getting together to tear out the damage before mold sets in, and provide support where we can. We had over 200 volunteers from everywhere helping out our street alone. Hopefully, you came out of it with little damage.
Click to expand...

I"m good, Blair. After reading some numbers of other people and seeing pics, I am Very, very, very lucky. My pool is perfect after a deep clean and adding my chems and 261lbs of salt!
 
Thanks for the suggestions. The colour is now aquamarine and its too cloudy to see the bottom in the shallow end. I ordered a manual vac but it's got a delivery of Sept 14th. Amazon is overloaded and the wait times are long. I'm considering removing the filter from the crawler so it can keep moving the sediment off the floor but if I remove the filter, won't sediment from the pump clog the water holes of the crawler, which it seems is what the filter is meant to stop? \


By the way, I cleaned and reloaded the DE filter this morning. Chemicals are

FC = 15 (1 ppm loss overnight),
CC = 0.5,
CH = 225 (using cal-hypo to bring up FC and CH together),
TA = 90,
PH = 7.6,
CYA = 40

Looks like a waiting game now.
 

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Here's the end result, 7 days later. As it turns out, using the cleaner without the filter really helped to stir up the sediment from the bottom and expedited the process considerably. However, now my Pentair Racer cleaner seems to not want to stay on the bottom anymore. It just spins in loops and comes up to the surface periodically, shooting water like a whale. I took it apart to clean it last night and found a random seed in the timer gearing that I thought could be upsetting things. I'll tear it apart again tonight and look for something else. Any ideas, please let me know.

20170905_PoolCleanafterHarvey.jpg
 
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