Hi everyone!
Despite having our pool (details in sig) for three summers now, I am largely a noob when it comes to pool maintenance, however I am here to learn. With the festive weekend approaching, we are anxious to get our pool going, but we are still experiencing very cloudy water, and I'm hoping someone here can offer some fast advice. I have already read enough on this forum to know that testing is vital, and I did just yesterday order the TF-100 test kit with the SpeedStir gizmo, but obviously it's not here yet. I did get a test done at the local pool store today, and I will post those results in the hopes someone can help me do something productive before the TF-100 kit comes (which is back-ordered, I believe). I've also now read through much of the beginner info here at TFP.com, so I'm starting to realize my mistakes, and want to start learning the TFPC method of maintenance.
A short background: I've decided that this year I really want to clean up the pool, and learn to run it correctly (unlike past years), which led me here in the last few days. We also had purchased and installed a brand new 22" sand filter and new sand just this spring (2018). However, for a number of reasons we never opened the pool last year, and it had been overwhelmed with leaves two falls ago, so it was a complete mess when I pulled the cover off. Waist high, black, nasty water, with leaves about thigh high. My wife was mortified, and proclaimed that she would refuse to go into our pool if I didn't completely drain that water and refill the pool with fresh water. I knew that was a bad idea, but I absolutely had to show her some immediate improvement. So first thing is I climbed in physically with a sport fishing landing net, and with that net I was able to get the majority of the large leaves out. I had on hand pool store chemicals from previous seasons, as well as pool store chemical mentality, so a that point I added about 2 pounds of basic bagged shock powder, and started topping off with clean water. Additionally, I added about 4 pounds of CYA and some Alk buffer I had on hand. I only have some dip strip tests that are at least two years old now, so I knew I was "adding and hoping", but I just had to make an improvement, or the wife was not going to be happy.....
The initial shocked helped turn the water from black to gray/blue, where it's been ever since, but was a large improvement; enough to give my wife some hope. In the last week and a half or so, I've continued to use A LOT of the packets of shock, as well as keeping two Dichlor pucks going at all times, in the hopes of keeping my sanitizer levels high. I now realize that these products were also adding unnecessary and counter productive levels of CYA, on top of what I had previously added, and I know that it's only liquid chlorine bleach from now on. Knowing my pH was low, I added 8 pounds of 20 Mule Borax last night. So that's basically what I've been doing, and where I am now.
I have read about and want to start to SLAM my system. In my mind, that's more or less what I was trying to do with all the shock packs, but I don't yet have the test kit to do it correctly, and there's still so much organic material in the water that needs to be removed physically. I don't believe so much waste could be oxidized by bleach, without being prohibitively expensive and/or heavy to haul.
Also, because I had good luck doing it in past seasons, I purchased a flocculent called PowerFloc from my local store. Although my pH was a little low (per pool store test and floc directions), I decided to try to floc the pool anyway. I did this Monday afternoon, and by the evening it looked like it was working great, but then it POURED overnight, and kind of ruined things. Tuesday morning I vacuumed though I could not see more than about 6" down. Honestly, I am tempted to floc again today, which was also the advice of my local pool store guy. I have so much organic material in the water and I don't know a better way to get it out. I don't believe my humble sand filter will be able to pull out these fine bits. Imagine a leaf that has kind of disintegrated into a hundred minute bits of this and that, then multiply that by about a million leaves. Between vacuuming and using the leaf rake, I feel strongly that I've got 99% of all the actually leaves, sticks, and larger debris, though I can't see to be certain. I do have a ring around the liner I need to scrub and vacuum up, and then there's all the bits and pieces I've been mentioning. I'm also high on CYA, and if I floc I'll wave to vacuum off and replace water anyway, thereby helping to drop my CYA level, so I guess my biggest question for you guys is should I floc again? I think I'd like to, I think it needs it, yet I am wondering if it's kind of anti to the TFPC paradigm.
So to summarize, I guess the big questions would be, should I floc again or not at this point? The Floc I'm using suggest a pH as high as 8.0, should I bring my pH a little higher still? And really, what can we do to have any chance of getting the pool cleaned up and usable by the weekend without a test kit? I can have testing done at my local store, and I also do have some dip strips, as well as a multitude of test kits for the aquarium hobby, including pH and ammonia, if needed. From this point forward, what would you guys do to get my pool clean and clear? Any and all help is very much appreciated!!
Recent Local Pool Store testing results (as they call them):
5/21/18:
pH: 6.7
FC: 2.8
Adjusted Total Alkalinity: 76
Total Chlorine: 3.5
Total Hardness: 121
CYA 53
5/23/18:
pH 7.4
FC: 15 (max value their machine could record, so could be higher)
Adjusted Total Alkalinity: 77
Total Chlorine: 15 (again max value for their equipment)
Total hardness: 138
CYA: 80
Please let me know if you need any more information to try to help. Thank you in advance for your consideration!
-AquaCat
Despite having our pool (details in sig) for three summers now, I am largely a noob when it comes to pool maintenance, however I am here to learn. With the festive weekend approaching, we are anxious to get our pool going, but we are still experiencing very cloudy water, and I'm hoping someone here can offer some fast advice. I have already read enough on this forum to know that testing is vital, and I did just yesterday order the TF-100 test kit with the SpeedStir gizmo, but obviously it's not here yet. I did get a test done at the local pool store today, and I will post those results in the hopes someone can help me do something productive before the TF-100 kit comes (which is back-ordered, I believe). I've also now read through much of the beginner info here at TFP.com, so I'm starting to realize my mistakes, and want to start learning the TFPC method of maintenance.
A short background: I've decided that this year I really want to clean up the pool, and learn to run it correctly (unlike past years), which led me here in the last few days. We also had purchased and installed a brand new 22" sand filter and new sand just this spring (2018). However, for a number of reasons we never opened the pool last year, and it had been overwhelmed with leaves two falls ago, so it was a complete mess when I pulled the cover off. Waist high, black, nasty water, with leaves about thigh high. My wife was mortified, and proclaimed that she would refuse to go into our pool if I didn't completely drain that water and refill the pool with fresh water. I knew that was a bad idea, but I absolutely had to show her some immediate improvement. So first thing is I climbed in physically with a sport fishing landing net, and with that net I was able to get the majority of the large leaves out. I had on hand pool store chemicals from previous seasons, as well as pool store chemical mentality, so a that point I added about 2 pounds of basic bagged shock powder, and started topping off with clean water. Additionally, I added about 4 pounds of CYA and some Alk buffer I had on hand. I only have some dip strip tests that are at least two years old now, so I knew I was "adding and hoping", but I just had to make an improvement, or the wife was not going to be happy.....
The initial shocked helped turn the water from black to gray/blue, where it's been ever since, but was a large improvement; enough to give my wife some hope. In the last week and a half or so, I've continued to use A LOT of the packets of shock, as well as keeping two Dichlor pucks going at all times, in the hopes of keeping my sanitizer levels high. I now realize that these products were also adding unnecessary and counter productive levels of CYA, on top of what I had previously added, and I know that it's only liquid chlorine bleach from now on. Knowing my pH was low, I added 8 pounds of 20 Mule Borax last night. So that's basically what I've been doing, and where I am now.
I have read about and want to start to SLAM my system. In my mind, that's more or less what I was trying to do with all the shock packs, but I don't yet have the test kit to do it correctly, and there's still so much organic material in the water that needs to be removed physically. I don't believe so much waste could be oxidized by bleach, without being prohibitively expensive and/or heavy to haul.
Also, because I had good luck doing it in past seasons, I purchased a flocculent called PowerFloc from my local store. Although my pH was a little low (per pool store test and floc directions), I decided to try to floc the pool anyway. I did this Monday afternoon, and by the evening it looked like it was working great, but then it POURED overnight, and kind of ruined things. Tuesday morning I vacuumed though I could not see more than about 6" down. Honestly, I am tempted to floc again today, which was also the advice of my local pool store guy. I have so much organic material in the water and I don't know a better way to get it out. I don't believe my humble sand filter will be able to pull out these fine bits. Imagine a leaf that has kind of disintegrated into a hundred minute bits of this and that, then multiply that by about a million leaves. Between vacuuming and using the leaf rake, I feel strongly that I've got 99% of all the actually leaves, sticks, and larger debris, though I can't see to be certain. I do have a ring around the liner I need to scrub and vacuum up, and then there's all the bits and pieces I've been mentioning. I'm also high on CYA, and if I floc I'll wave to vacuum off and replace water anyway, thereby helping to drop my CYA level, so I guess my biggest question for you guys is should I floc again? I think I'd like to, I think it needs it, yet I am wondering if it's kind of anti to the TFPC paradigm.
So to summarize, I guess the big questions would be, should I floc again or not at this point? The Floc I'm using suggest a pH as high as 8.0, should I bring my pH a little higher still? And really, what can we do to have any chance of getting the pool cleaned up and usable by the weekend without a test kit? I can have testing done at my local store, and I also do have some dip strips, as well as a multitude of test kits for the aquarium hobby, including pH and ammonia, if needed. From this point forward, what would you guys do to get my pool clean and clear? Any and all help is very much appreciated!!
Recent Local Pool Store testing results (as they call them):
5/21/18:
pH: 6.7
FC: 2.8
Adjusted Total Alkalinity: 76
Total Chlorine: 3.5
Total Hardness: 121
CYA 53
5/23/18:
pH 7.4
FC: 15 (max value their machine could record, so could be higher)
Adjusted Total Alkalinity: 77
Total Chlorine: 15 (again max value for their equipment)
Total hardness: 138
CYA: 80
Please let me know if you need any more information to try to help. Thank you in advance for your consideration!
-AquaCat
