Help with Stubborn Cloudy Green

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WOW, no doubt, Robert. I can't imagine how this thing would have gone if I had been relying on some folks at a pool store/service to test my water for me, tell me what to do (without really educating me as to why), then probably having to come to the house once or twice, still with me having little knowledge of what's actually going on ...

Anyway, it's a holiday weekend, and I hope all of you are having a good one!! I think you can tell from the pictures below that we are too, and that the pool has legitimately turned the corner. I'm not ready for a full on summary/postmortem, but I do plan to post one once we're seriously crystal clear.

Quick synopsis of the day:

vacuumed on waste at 8:00 am; left vacuum hose and head hanging out in deep end and installed duda bags, and ran pump on recirculate, isolating the returns with duda bags for 2 hours; vacuumed to waste again, and let pump run on recirculate after cleaning duda bags with vacuum still in deep end, just moved to another corner; finally took off duda bags and vacuum, then ran two rounds of DE with pump on filter and all returns wide open; also let FC fall to about 15 in order to test everything, pH is still in line, TA is a little low but I'm out of baking soda, not worried about it at this point.

Okay on to the photos:

My son jumping onto the millennium falcon!
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From the diving board after two hours of family swim time
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I did correct the pH, and brought FC back up to SLAM level for my 50 CYA just now as the sun has gone down.

Thanks everybody for following my ridiculous journey here. It would have been so much more painful, and I would have felt so much more helpless without you guys, so seriously, Thanks!!!! I'll have a legit summary/postmordem with final photos in the next couple days.
 
Seems to be much improvement. No more cloudy green. :goodjob: Stick with it!
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I'm not only glad you guys got to actually enjoy the pool this weekend but more importantly the kids got to enjoy it as well, and were actually able to take control of it yourselves. I love following everyone's threads on here for the quests to make things right, and the ability to help one another.

We went nuts over here today, kids and adults, my 8 month old son loved the water, and kept trying to eat the floating squirt fish, and the adults and the kids had a contest of who could jump in the pool, and ride the unicorn floatie the longest like a mechanical bull...lol...it about wiped me out.

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Me sleeping with my "princess":D
 
Got my Trouble Free Pool back, finally!!
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:party: Well, well, well, how about that. Nice to see the bottom again huh? Just in time to enjoy the rest of the weekend. That looks great. What a change. Congrats on the work and amount of patience you (and the family) displayed while resolving the issue. Well done. :goodjob:
 
WOW! I am in Tennessee on vacation right now (moonshine, oh yeah) but I had to check in to see how you are doing. SO happy for you!
 
Yep!

So, I wanted to put together one final post here, just to serve as a record of everything I’ve done for my own future reference, and if it helps somebody else, that would be great too! Here is a final photo from yesterday evening, just perfect!


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April 22 -- uncovered pool and spent several days filling it up to a proper level, cleaning out some debris, and balancing pH and adding CYA

April 25 - May 7 -- attempted a typical SLAM with little to no change in the water, started this thread to get some guidance

May 7 - May 20 -- continued SLAM, tweaking shock levels up in case I was underestimating my CYA, checked for possible metal issues (copper and/or iron), put two duda bags into rotation to help filtration, put DE in the mix to help filtration, ultimately changed out sand in my filter (discovering it was only about ½ full), and FINALLY DISCOVERED A CLOGGED MAIN DRAIN

May 21 - May 23 -- continued SLAM and started seeing slow changes

May 24 -- raised FC levels to Mustard Algae level for 24 hours

May 25 -- at this point the MD was becoming barely visible, but the filter (even with DE and Duda Bags) was taking its time, and with Memorial Day weekend upon me, I bought HTH Drop Out Flocculant at Wal-Mart. I know FLOC gets a bad rap around here, probably for good reasons; and while I felt like the pool would clear with continued SLAM in 3-5 days, I needed it ready in 2-3 days, so I put in the FLOC as directed.

May 26 -- woke up to not much change, but I had a plan, so I vacuumed to waste first thing, then put the system on recirculate, left the vacuum hose at the bottom of the deep end and isolated two of my returns with Duda Bags on them, so all water was being drawn from the bottom of the deep end and run through the Duda Bags, bypassing the filter. Kept watching the bottom of the pool and vacuumed to waste maybe once or twice more, but otherwise just moved the vacuum hose around the deep end and kept everything running through the Duda Bags. By that evening, the clarity of the pool was changing by the hour.

May 27 -- woke up to an almost perfectly clear pool!! Vacuumed up a few remnants from the FLOC, then spun the filter back up and got everything moving as normal.

So, what did I learn?

First off the MD oversight cost me three weeks, and a fair amount of $$ in bleach I’m sure, so I’ll own all that … Second, sand filters are generally very low maintenance, but they’re also painfully slow. That said, there are some really good, affordable ways to help your sand filter out (the Duda Bags and the DE). I plan to continue using those strategies as indicated to keep the pool as sparkly clear as possible.

Of course, none of that matters much if you’re fighting living algae, so it’s definitely not a substitute for a proper CYA/Chlorine balance.

And neither is Flocculant, but I will say my experience with that went pretty well, and I can’t imagine the pool would have cleared as quickly as it did without that last step. I totally understand why Flocculants aren’t typically recommended here. They aren’t going to help you kill living algae faster at all. They aren’t a product you can just put in the pool and then go on about your business while it does the work for you. You must be prepared to carefully to vacuum your pool multiple times, and you must be able to bypass your filter while doing so. My guess is that the Floc helped me so much because I had already been TFP-ing my pool for weeks, so even with bad circulation most of the algae was already dead, and I was also committed to spending a fair bit of my day Saturday to nursing the pool back to health after adding the Flocculant.

Anyhow, that’s the record of all that went down. I thank those who helped cheer me on, and who helped me learn all the tricks in the book. I feel like I can handle just about anything my system can throw at me at this point. Thanks again, TFPers, and happy swimming!


 

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