Cloudy water with green tint.

Aug 26, 2009
4
28 yr old pool in Phoenix, AZ
Sand filter 4 yrs old
15,000+ gals

The last 2 wks I have had a cloudy pool with a green tint. I have tried Clearifier 3 times, Algaecide 2 times, superclorinated with 6 bags of shock, & 24oz of Phosphate remover. All readings are in the accaptable range except Phophates which is high at 2000 ppb. Nothing has worked still have cloudy water with a green tint.

Lloyd
 
Hi, Lloyd,

Welcome to the forum.

Your CYA is too high. It renders the chlorine ineffective against algae at that level. (unless you keep the chlorine up around 10ppm which uses a huge anmount of chlorine.)

The only "fix" is to do a partial drain of your pool and refill. You need to drain enough to get your CYA below 60ppm and it will make your pool much easier to manage and get your water crystal clear.

At 130, I would suggest more than one partial drain and refill to get to the 60ppm number.

Your test results appear to have come from test strips. Is that right?
 
Those test results where from a local pool store, I do not think they use test strips. Do test strips give inaccurate readings?

Two of the stores that have done test for me recently show the ideal reading for CYA should be 30-200.

What is CYA?

Does it have anything to do with the hadrness? The water around here is pretty hard.
 
Have you read Pool School? :-D

CYA is Cyanuric Acid or "stabilizer/conditioner". It's like sunscreen for your chlorine.

It is sold separately, but often it is combined with chlorine into trichlor tablets or granular trichlor or Dichlor (often labeled as "shock"). Over a period of time, when a pool is chlorinated thru tablets and powder "shock" bags (Dichlor) the CYA gets too high and "normal" chlorine levels become ineffective. If you look at the CYA chart, you will see the higher the CYA level, the higher the FC must be to keep the water properly sanitized. An overstabilized pool like your's is especially common in warm climates like AZ where pools are open year round and the CYA level is never diluted thru water replacement. In areas of the country where 1/3 of the water is drained out annually for winterization, the fresh water replacement helps keep those pools' CYA levels more manaeable (they still have problems though, trust me!).

Anything over 50 is high, unless you have an SWG then up to 80 is acceptable. Anything over 100 is way too high. Chemical companies also manufacture testing equipment. So when you see a pool store readout that says up to 200 ppm is ok, it's because they also produce the trichlor chemicals that increase CYA levels to begin with. They don't want to put out anything on a testing printout that may hurt their chem sales. :roll:

The only practical way to deal with CYA as high as yours is to do a series of partial drains and refills, to get it down to 60-70 at the very least.

In a properly maintained pool, you won't need clarifier, algaecide, phosphate removers or anything else the pool store will try to sell you. The only thing I've added to my pool in 3 summers of BBB is bleach (and a little CYA this spring). :wink:
 
Since my last email I have had the water tested again, this time using a spectrometer I am not sure about the spelling. And the CYA level was at 75. The free chlorine was at 1.7 and the pH was 7.9.
 
The two very different tests represent just how innaccurate testing can be unless it's drops based testing.....preferably your own.

Regardles of the test results (I would trust neither) you have algae in your pool. The way to clear algae from your pool is with very high levels of chlorine but it's difficult to tell you just how high those levels should be without an accurate CYA test.

As a start, read How to Shock your Pool up in Pool School.
 
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