Hi! Complete noob with a swamp

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Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

I'm clearing a swamp and have a long thread here

http://www.troublefreepool.com/hi-complete-noob-with-a-swamp-t22028.html

but I didn't want this question to get lost.

I was reading some old threads last night, and someone suggested taking a small sample of pool water and adding a boatload of bleach to show that it IS possible to get it clear with enough chlorine.

I decided that I needed that encouragement since not much seems to be happened here and tried the same experiment.

Unfortunately, no matter how much bleach I add, I cannot get a sample to get any lighter than a clear-ish yellow.

I waited for awhile to see if it needed time, but that didn't work. I added more bleach, but that didn't work. I even used 1/2 bleach and 1/2 pool water, but my pitcher of water was still yellow. Is there something else I need to test for here?
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

That much chlorine would have cleared anything organic. That makes me wonder if its some type of metal. Do you fill with well water? Could you bring a sample to your local pool store and have it tested for metals? Just some ideas, I am not really sure whats going on. I just read your other thread and see that copper was tested but nothing for iron.
Come to think about it bleach is about that color, could that be what you are looking at?
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

I was just reading the other thread as well. Could you post some more specifics about your recent testing, how much bleach you have added, etc. Without specific amounts and test results it's difficult to really get a handle on your situation. What may seem like gobs and tons of bleach may just not really be the amount you need..or something else may be revealed in the process based on test results.

:wave:
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

Is your bleach fresh? Where did you get it. When did you get it? How long has it been stored? How has it been stored?

Bleach does lose its potency pretty fast, especially if it is not stored properly. Also, many people report that bleach from some outlets, say dollar stores, have usually been stored improperly and can be a much lower % than what is listed on the jug.

It sounds like this could be your problem.

gg=alice
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

Okay,

While I was out of town I had my "pool boy" test the water daily & add bleach to get it up to 10ppm. I made him a chart using the pool calculator & estimating my pool at 22K gallons. He said that the chlorine was down to 3ppm on Thursday, but Fri-Sun it was around 7ppm when he came by.

Today I decided that I might have some really resistant algae & that the CYA might have gone up, and made my target 15ppm.

My notes are:

9:45 am FC 11.0 Added 182 oz. Great Value bleach (1 extra large jug), did some brushing, backwashed
10:20 am FC 14.5 Did nothing
3:00 pm FC 10.0 Added 228 oz. GV bleach (1 extra large jug, plus 46 oz.)

3:20 pm - played around with the bleach & pool water, and noticed that I couldn't get it clear. Ended up adding about 90 oz. because when I played with the sample, I always poured the water back into the pool.

7:15 pm - tested for ammonia using a test kit from the pet store. It looks like there is a small amount of ammonia. In trying to match the colors it looks like it's between the 0.0 and 0.25 levels.


7:30 pm - Test results

FC 14.5
CC 1.5
TA 40
CH 40
CYA 0

Didn't bother with pH because chlorine level is so high.

8:15 pm - Felt like a complete idiot when I was measuring the amount of chlorine left in the jug I had been using. . . because I noticed that the bleach is awfully yellow. It looks like it's about the same color as the yellow pool water.

Umm, I use city water, and I'm pretty sure that Iron is not a problem. Apparently yellow bleach is, though.

I'm embarrassed. :oops:

OTOH, I still have awfully brown water. What should I be doing differently? It's been a week since I put the CYA in the water in a sock. It's not fully dissolved. It's not showing up at all on the tests.
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

The GV brand, from Wally's is normally a good brand to use. In most Wally stores it moves out pretty fast. It's best to buy just enough for a couple of weeks, especially if you have a store that is pretty close and handy, and store it in a coolish place, out of sunlight.

One thing you can do to help the CYA leave the sock faster is to massage it. I have very delicate skin and never have any problems doing this. I rinse my hands and put on hand lotion afterwards. (I use a lot of hand lotion through out the day as I have to wash my hands so much.) Make sure the sock is getting full force from the return. You may have to adjust it some every once in a while. If sock is positioned well it will bump and twist some in front of the return.

Some of the CYA products are slower to go into the water than others. The fastest is the HTH brand. Don't do this now unless you have to add more...... I like using a sturdy women's knee high. You can get about two lbs in it, tie it to a long string, wrap, don't tie, it around a rock or couple or bricks in front of the strongest return. If you don't tie it it is easier to reposition it.

As I backwash pretty frequently and have a lot of splash out I usually add CYA monthly. I like the HTH brand the best. Two lbs will almost fully vacate a stocking in a couple or three hours, if it is in front of a strong return.

BTW..... I started using knee highs as neither DH or I use white athletic socks and a box of knee highs are priced right.

gg=alice
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

How much make up water are you adding per day? I wonder if you dont have a leak under ground that pulling mud in your pool. Is there any sand or dirt on the bottom of pool, close to a return ?

There is no way you put enough bleach in the pool to turn it bleach yellow. :shock: I was talking about your test water :wink:
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

coloeb said:
How much make up water are you adding per day? I wonder if you dont have a leak under ground that pulling mud in your pool. Is there any sand or dirt on the bottom of pool, close to a return ?
Click to expand...

I can't really see the bottom, so I can't tell if there is any sand or dirt.

I haven't added any water since I got the pump repaired on Wednesday. The level is very slightly lower due to backwashing, and I may add a little water tomorrow, but I don't think there is a leak.
 
Re: Can't get clear water no matter how much bleach I add

I just realized that a lot of the yellow color may be due to pollen. I didn't consider that at first because our cover was still on the pool during the worst of the pollen this spring. But since the disappearing pool boy dumped everything off the cover and into the pool, the pollen got in there anyway.

We had really bad pollen this spring. On a positive note, the pool is starting to look better. I can tell where the shallow end starts angling down towards the deep end because it is a different color.

Hmmm, I think it's time to go buy some cheap pantyhose for the skimmer baskets.

This morning my FC was 10 and CC was 1.5

I added bleach to get back up to 15 as per the pool calculator
 

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Okay. . . . .

The pool must hold less water than estimated.

FC 16.0
CC 0.5

It has been cloudy today and we have a lot of trees, so there's been very little sun on the water.

The big problem is that the water is yellow-orange. :(
 
Latest update - I rigged up some skimmer socks using little girls tights. They were pretty effective. Whatever's in the water was being caught by the tights, because when I got up this morning they had lots of brown stuff stuck to them.

My water is still orangey-brown. It's bottle-of-Lipton's-lemon-iced-tea brown. Now that the water isn't so cloudy, I've also realized that the sides of the pool are stained that same brown.

I'm beginning to think that the brown has some pollen, but that it's mostly tannins. I have oak trees, magnolia trees, and a lovely stand of large gardenia bushes.

Morning test results:

FC 12.5
CC 1.5

We had a little bit of rain overnight. I retested for CYA and it is beginning to actually show up. It is probably less than 20, but there is some in there now.

What should be my target for CYA while I'm trying to kill the algae and filter out the brown stuff?

I've been aiming for a chlorine level of 15 to kill all the algae. Is that good or should I go higher?
 
It wouldn't hurt to go a little higher... and keep brushing the sides, try to get some of that brown off. I was afraid to brush the sides, thinking it would waste my chlorine... (duh!) but when I did brush, the pool got cleaner faster, cause you work the crud into the chlorine instead of the chlorine only getting the surface.
 
MomUv5 said:
Morning test results:

FC 12.5
CC 1.5

We had a little bit of rain overnight. I retested for CYA and it is beginning to actually show up. It is probably less than 20, but there is some in there now.

What should be my target for CYA while I'm trying to kill the algae and filter out the brown stuff?
30 would be good.

I've been aiming for a chlorine level of 15 to kill all the algae. Is that good or should I go higher?
Based on your CYA, your shock level is about 12.

Along with fpm, I also suggest you try the sequesterant.
Click to expand...
 
It sounds like your getting there, how is your filter holding up to all this, I assume your backwashing a lot to get the dead algae and stuff out. As for as the CYA levels go, 30-40 is a good number to shoot for, just don't overshoot as the only way to get rid of it is by water replacement or professional RO treatment, it can also take a week or more to show up on tests.

Ike
 
Isaac-1 said:
It sounds like your getting there, how is your filter holding up to all this, I assume your backwashing a lot to get the dead algae and stuff out. As for as the CYA levels go, 30-40 is a good number to shoot for, just don't overshoot as the only way to get rid of it is by water replacement or professional RO treatment, it can also take a week or more to show up on tests.

Ike
Click to expand...


Ike, I'm backwashing 1-2 times a day.

I did the Vitamin C test on the stains, and it looks like iron. My latest theory is that when the pH was really low (at the beginning of this saga) it was leaching metal out of the pool heater. Is that a reasonable theory? Then when I brought the chlorine levels up really high all the iron showed up.

I bought some sequestrant, but the chlorine levels are too high to use it. It says not to "super shock" the pool for at least 5 days after adding the sequestrant.

I also did a quick test in a bucket and the sequestrant makes the water lighten up some in just a few minutes even with really high chlorine levels. It was not clear, but it wasn't nearly as brown.

Just now FC was 16.5 - I've had the floater thing in there since I left to go out of town, and just now pulled it out.
CC was 0.5

Next question - should I do a partial empty and refill? Water is relatively cheap and high quality. Around here it does not have the staining that you see with high iron. I think I'm just having some strange issues.
 
If you want to drain and refill you certainly can, just remember this means adding more CYA, scrambling your balance again etc. It may not be the cheapest fix, but I suspect it would speed up the overall process.

Ike
 

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