Hello TFP.com members!
I just wanted to say hello, and introduce myself quickly. My wife and I live in Upstate New York, and when we purchased our house in December of 2013 it came with a 24' above ground. My wife and I were both brand new to pools, and we were completely clueless about pool chemistry (largely still are!). Quick history: the first year we had the pool open we managed to keep it going most of the summer, with a few bumps along the way. This was with pool store chemicals, and very little knowledge, but we had fun. Year two, much the same, with some increasing issues. By the third year, things got uglier. I could never get the water right, it was cloudy, green, or gross more often then it was clear. The only filter maintenance I did during was remove the old sand, discover that the laterals were broken, epoxied them back together, rinsed the old sand, and put it right back in. That fall (2016), I waited too long to close the pool, and after suffering from poor water quality all summer, no less than a full forest's worth of leaves dumped in the pool. At that point I decided I would deal with it the following spring, so I put the cover on leaves and all. The following year (2017), for a number of reasons we never bothered opening the pool, so the leaves and bad water sat under a not super great cover for about 18 months, which brings us to now (Spring 2018).
This year, I am determined to get this pool cleaned up and going for us to enjoy this summer. To that end, I've purchased a brand new 22" Blue Wave sand filter. I realize there are other choices, but sand filters were all I really knew about when I bought it, and it fit our budget as we were able to use some store credit, and got it through Home Depot online. It came with a 1.5hp pump, but for the moment I am just using our old, but trusted, Hayward 1.5hp. It was loaded with the recommend amount 220 pounds of filter sand, and seems to be working well. I climbed in the pool with a sport fishing landing net when the water was waist deep, and the leaves were thigh deep, and I cleaned out all the leaves I could. I then used the new this year leaf rake, I now feel like I have 98% of the leaves and other organic debris out. However, my water is still really, really cloudy with bits and pieces of what used to be leaves and who knows what. It's like organic sludge. I shocked the heck out of it this season, so it's cloudy gray/blue, not green, but there's so much organic waist still in there that I can't see more than 6 inches down. I know I need to clean that organic material out of the system, but don't know the best way. I bought and used a flocculent yesterday, it looked like it was working great last night, but then it poured overnight, and kind of ruined it. I'm waiting one more day to floc again. I'm hoping this well help me get to where I can at least see the bottom, and see if there's more debris anywhere.
In searching for help, I found TFP.com (in fact, I found this site three years ago). I am now resolved to following the TFP paradigm preached here, and to show my commitment, I "took the plunge" and purchased the TF-100 test kit and the Speedstir gizmo from TFTestkits.com. That was a lot more money than I wanted to spend right now, but I know from reading posts here that no one will really help me without reliable test results. The only thing is, it said the SpeedStir thing was backordered, expected back in stock this week, and would ship then. So I'm not sure when I'm going to get my test kit, but I'm really, really looking forward to receiving it. Once I do, I hope I'm able to get this pool back in order quickly. In the meantime I'm reading some of the beginner stickies and other posts in the forum; lots of great info for sure.
So that's my story ;-)
Thanks in advance for everyone's help!
-AquaCat
I just wanted to say hello, and introduce myself quickly. My wife and I live in Upstate New York, and when we purchased our house in December of 2013 it came with a 24' above ground. My wife and I were both brand new to pools, and we were completely clueless about pool chemistry (largely still are!). Quick history: the first year we had the pool open we managed to keep it going most of the summer, with a few bumps along the way. This was with pool store chemicals, and very little knowledge, but we had fun. Year two, much the same, with some increasing issues. By the third year, things got uglier. I could never get the water right, it was cloudy, green, or gross more often then it was clear. The only filter maintenance I did during was remove the old sand, discover that the laterals were broken, epoxied them back together, rinsed the old sand, and put it right back in. That fall (2016), I waited too long to close the pool, and after suffering from poor water quality all summer, no less than a full forest's worth of leaves dumped in the pool. At that point I decided I would deal with it the following spring, so I put the cover on leaves and all. The following year (2017), for a number of reasons we never bothered opening the pool, so the leaves and bad water sat under a not super great cover for about 18 months, which brings us to now (Spring 2018).
This year, I am determined to get this pool cleaned up and going for us to enjoy this summer. To that end, I've purchased a brand new 22" Blue Wave sand filter. I realize there are other choices, but sand filters were all I really knew about when I bought it, and it fit our budget as we were able to use some store credit, and got it through Home Depot online. It came with a 1.5hp pump, but for the moment I am just using our old, but trusted, Hayward 1.5hp. It was loaded with the recommend amount 220 pounds of filter sand, and seems to be working well. I climbed in the pool with a sport fishing landing net when the water was waist deep, and the leaves were thigh deep, and I cleaned out all the leaves I could. I then used the new this year leaf rake, I now feel like I have 98% of the leaves and other organic debris out. However, my water is still really, really cloudy with bits and pieces of what used to be leaves and who knows what. It's like organic sludge. I shocked the heck out of it this season, so it's cloudy gray/blue, not green, but there's so much organic waist still in there that I can't see more than 6 inches down. I know I need to clean that organic material out of the system, but don't know the best way. I bought and used a flocculent yesterday, it looked like it was working great last night, but then it poured overnight, and kind of ruined it. I'm waiting one more day to floc again. I'm hoping this well help me get to where I can at least see the bottom, and see if there's more debris anywhere.
In searching for help, I found TFP.com (in fact, I found this site three years ago). I am now resolved to following the TFP paradigm preached here, and to show my commitment, I "took the plunge" and purchased the TF-100 test kit and the Speedstir gizmo from TFTestkits.com. That was a lot more money than I wanted to spend right now, but I know from reading posts here that no one will really help me without reliable test results. The only thing is, it said the SpeedStir thing was backordered, expected back in stock this week, and would ship then. So I'm not sure when I'm going to get my test kit, but I'm really, really looking forward to receiving it. Once I do, I hope I'm able to get this pool back in order quickly. In the meantime I'm reading some of the beginner stickies and other posts in the forum; lots of great info for sure.
So that's my story ;-)
Thanks in advance for everyone's help!
-AquaCat
Make sure to save the vital links below in my signature for future reference. They'll come in handy as you move forward. Also checkout the TFP 