My mother gave me an intex pool(more info in my siggy); She was tired of dealing with it, and I'm starting to see why!
She was using Pristine Blue in it; we tried that and ended up with some serious problems.
The water was slightly green, we took it to the pool store, they had us add muratic acid, and BAM! Algae blooms the next day.
We had no luck at ALL getting rid of it until I came across this site. We used Chlorine shock (unfortunately, not DiChlor, just regular chlorine) for a few days, and the pool is no longer green at all. However, it is still cloudy (milky white)-I can't see the bottom.
Today I went and Purchased Borax, CYA, Baking soda, and Bleach. I bought the 6-way testing kit from wal-mart, and I bought the sticks so I could measure Free Chlorine as well. This is just about as much money as I can afford to spend on this pool at the moment.
These were my numbers:
pH -7.5
TA - 120
FC - 1
TC - 1
CH - Stick 200 Drop 320 (the only one that the two didn't agree on)
CYA - 0 (no surprise there, as I haven't added any).
I decided to shock one more time. I used the pool calculator and figured out that I needed to add 128 oz of 6% bleach and 23oz of CYA, which I put in a nylon sock and tied to the ladder.
The Bottle of CYA said that I would need 3lbs to bring it up to 30, but I went with the calculator-better to err on the safe side, I hope.
I think that my TA is a little high-will the chlorine or CYA help with that?
I'm not sure what hardness means, exactly, but I imagine it's high also.
BTW, we are using well water, not city-so there is a lot of iron in it, according to the pool store. They told us that this meant that we absolutely could not go with chlorine??? I think they just like to push non-chlorine methods.
I'm really not going back there again. Things were just getting worse and worse when we were listening to them. The methods I have read about here are already visibly working much, much better than anything they suggested.
I also wanted to ask for vacuuming advice. We are using one of those deals that hooks to the garden hose-there is no way, as far as I know, to hook it into the filter-and even if we could, we have tiny particles in the pool that I can see coming right back in from the filter anyway.
I rigged the vacuum up with a thin pillowcase instead of the net bag it came with, by inserting a drawstring, and it seemed to catch a lot of the particles, until they just got totally stirred up from the bottom.
It seems that the water clears up SOME (not completely) when it settles, and I can see debris on the bottom, but as soon as I try to vacuum, no matter how careful I am, I stir it up and it's cloudy again. I'm assuming this is debris from dead algae? We were very careful not to get in with dirty feet. I tried using "super blue" to round it all up, with no luck at all. I eventually want to buy a pool buster, but at the moment I really can't afford to sink any more money into this.
The whole point of the pool was for my 6 year old to be able to swim for therapeutic purposes (he recently had leg surgery) and the poor thing hasn't gotten to swim in two weeks.
I apologize for the long post, I just wanted to give a complete overview and ask all my questions at once.
Am I on the right track? Am I missing anything? And does anyone have any advice about vacuuming?
I am SO glad I found this site...for the first time, I at least feel like there is hope about this blasted thing.
*EDIT* I also wanted to add that it may be our climate. Several people I know are having awful pool problems-I know someone with a HUGE in ground pool who just drained and refilled it because of algae- and even my poor fish tank had been having a war with algae and cloudy water-and it never has before.
She was using Pristine Blue in it; we tried that and ended up with some serious problems.
The water was slightly green, we took it to the pool store, they had us add muratic acid, and BAM! Algae blooms the next day.
We had no luck at ALL getting rid of it until I came across this site. We used Chlorine shock (unfortunately, not DiChlor, just regular chlorine) for a few days, and the pool is no longer green at all. However, it is still cloudy (milky white)-I can't see the bottom.
Today I went and Purchased Borax, CYA, Baking soda, and Bleach. I bought the 6-way testing kit from wal-mart, and I bought the sticks so I could measure Free Chlorine as well. This is just about as much money as I can afford to spend on this pool at the moment.
These were my numbers:
pH -7.5
TA - 120
FC - 1
TC - 1
CH - Stick 200 Drop 320 (the only one that the two didn't agree on)
CYA - 0 (no surprise there, as I haven't added any).
I decided to shock one more time. I used the pool calculator and figured out that I needed to add 128 oz of 6% bleach and 23oz of CYA, which I put in a nylon sock and tied to the ladder.
The Bottle of CYA said that I would need 3lbs to bring it up to 30, but I went with the calculator-better to err on the safe side, I hope.
I think that my TA is a little high-will the chlorine or CYA help with that?
I'm not sure what hardness means, exactly, but I imagine it's high also.
BTW, we are using well water, not city-so there is a lot of iron in it, according to the pool store. They told us that this meant that we absolutely could not go with chlorine??? I think they just like to push non-chlorine methods.
I'm really not going back there again. Things were just getting worse and worse when we were listening to them. The methods I have read about here are already visibly working much, much better than anything they suggested.
I also wanted to ask for vacuuming advice. We are using one of those deals that hooks to the garden hose-there is no way, as far as I know, to hook it into the filter-and even if we could, we have tiny particles in the pool that I can see coming right back in from the filter anyway.
I rigged the vacuum up with a thin pillowcase instead of the net bag it came with, by inserting a drawstring, and it seemed to catch a lot of the particles, until they just got totally stirred up from the bottom.
It seems that the water clears up SOME (not completely) when it settles, and I can see debris on the bottom, but as soon as I try to vacuum, no matter how careful I am, I stir it up and it's cloudy again. I'm assuming this is debris from dead algae? We were very careful not to get in with dirty feet. I tried using "super blue" to round it all up, with no luck at all. I eventually want to buy a pool buster, but at the moment I really can't afford to sink any more money into this.
The whole point of the pool was for my 6 year old to be able to swim for therapeutic purposes (he recently had leg surgery) and the poor thing hasn't gotten to swim in two weeks.
I apologize for the long post, I just wanted to give a complete overview and ask all my questions at once.
Am I on the right track? Am I missing anything? And does anyone have any advice about vacuuming?
I am SO glad I found this site...for the first time, I at least feel like there is hope about this blasted thing.
*EDIT* I also wanted to add that it may be our climate. Several people I know are having awful pool problems-I know someone with a HUGE in ground pool who just drained and refilled it because of algae- and even my poor fish tank had been having a war with algae and cloudy water-and it never has before.