Tagprod, there was a lot of silt in the pool until yesterday. The amount of organics is excessive and the chlorine keeps getting consumed, my CC keeps climbing as well. Based on what I am seeing I need to completely filter/remove all silt and organics from the pool and then hit it to about 15-20 for half a day or so and I should be good. Saturday will be that day.. Until then I'm just shocking it twice a day to 12 and vacuuming more Crud when I can. The thing is though it's not a standard algae... the water can be filtered semi-clear down to the deep end - just with a green tint instead of a blue tint. The pool was covered for about 2 years (admitted) 3 years (I allege) and every winter the mud basically flows into the pool like a fountain. I plan to do a lot of drainage work to the back yard (french drains). I'm a newbie but I think that's a valid explanation of why it's not working. I've also been only shocking it every 12 hours, not repeatedly once an hour to full kill everything... Not sure if shocking it once every 12 hours is effective at all, and in reality it's only once a day since it's liquid chlorine and 0 CYA which means my morning shock is probably worthless.
[UPD 3/22/2008] Pool Neglected - For a long time...
- Thread starter piku
- Start date
I'm a little late jumping in here but this quote caught my eye. Anytime you "dabble" the chlorine into a pool or try to be stingy with it is when you waste it. In a pool with lots of organics, 12ppm of Cl will, within minutes, become less than 12ppm..........the chlorine is being used up killing the algae. Once it's used up below shock level, it allows the algae to regain a foot hold and the algae begins to grow again.
As has been said many times on this forum, bring your Cl level up to shock value and KEEP IT THERE UNTIL YOUR POOL CLEARS!!. Initially, that may mean dosing the pool three or four times in twenty four hours but you must test and add Cl continuously and your pool will clear.
You must hit algae with a shock dose of Chlorine and you must keep it there. Again, bringing the pool up to 12ppm won't clear your pool. bringing it up to 15-18ppm and holding it up there, running the pump 24/7 and keeping your filter clean is the only way to get the pool clean.
Not to be obnoxious to to really make my point.............you must HOLD you chlorine at high shock levels to clear a pool laden with organics.
tagprod said:
It was 12 at 11PM and 2 at 12:30AM... I shock it again. At 7:30am it was 2 again. It's kind of strange because it seems like it falls from shock levels quickly then holds at 1-3(ish).
duraleigh said:
In one of my later posts I clearly agreed with this sentiment. The only problem is that I won't have time to do this until saturday so I don't know how much to put in to maintain any progress I've made until then. That's why I chose a bare minimum 12 level. On saturday I'll shock the Crud out of it and check it once an hour.
Piku,
I'd be tempted to put NO chlorine into it until Saturday. With no CYA the Sun's gonna burn off most of what you try to do. One of the good suggestions JasonLion has made in another thread is not to try to clear a pool until you have the Chlorine you need on hand and the time to test and apply it. It sounds like that's what you're about to do.
Personally, I don't think you'll lose much ground by just letting it go until you can really bash it this weekend.
As part of your plan, remember to apply your inital dose in the late afternoon after the direct sun is off the pool. That'll keep the UV rays from getting it and allow the chlorine to work on the algae. Dose it back up again before you go to bed for a second time. Next day, there's little you can do during the day except try to keep some in there but then really dose it back up the following evening.
Let us know how you do.
I'd be tempted to put NO chlorine into it until Saturday. With no CYA the Sun's gonna burn off most of what you try to do. One of the good suggestions JasonLion has made in another thread is not to try to clear a pool until you have the Chlorine you need on hand and the time to test and apply it. It sounds like that's what you're about to do.
Personally, I don't think you'll lose much ground by just letting it go until you can really bash it this weekend.
As part of your plan, remember to apply your inital dose in the late afternoon after the direct sun is off the pool. That'll keep the UV rays from getting it and allow the chlorine to work on the algae. Dose it back up again before you go to bed for a second time. Next day, there's little you can do during the day except try to keep some in there but then really dose it back up the following evening.
Let us know how you do.
Just to supplement what Dave said --
You can put some of the tri-chlor pucks into stockings and hang them in front of the returns (for quicker dissolving) which will keep some cl going into the water and also add more cya (they are pretty acidic, so do keep an eye on the pH)
You can put some of the tri-chlor pucks into stockings and hang them in front of the returns (for quicker dissolving) which will keep some cl going into the water and also add more cya (they are pretty acidic, so do keep an eye on the pH)
I managed to vacuum every little bit of silt that settled again after brushing yesterday. I then chlorinated to 15. I went back out and saw it cloud up and go turquoise so I decided tonight is the night. It's burning chlorine like you couldn't imagine.. I'm up to 6 scoops of dichlor and 5 large jugs of bleach but I can smell the CC's and I am going to keep hitting it all night until my FC stays high.
I'm pretty sure that everyone else will join with me to wish you well with your pool/ algae/ chlorine vigil!! :-D (I've gotta say that you are VERY dedicated to this project :!: 
)
)I *specifically* bought the house I am in due to the in-ground pool. I've wanted a pool since childhood. I will have a pool and it will not be green!!! 
You nasty organics get out of that pool now 
You will soon have the clear, sparkling, beautiful pool of your childhood dreams!
You will soon have the clear, sparkling, beautiful pool of your childhood dreams!
I've consumed almost 10 182oz jugs so far tonight, plus 8.5 cups of dichlor. The pool STINKS! CC is through the roof. I just brushed and vacuumed the whole thing again. Really tough to do without a pool light. FC going from 15 to 4 every hour, but 4 is better than 2... It's starting to burn less I think. I'm going to dose it to 15 again with trichlor before I go to sleep. I let a bottle of water sit on the counter for 1 hour and tested CYA and it came up 40ppm (from 0). One of my thoughts is that the cloudiness of the water is raising the result a bit but I bet I have at least 20ppm now. So I shoudl be safe to bring it to 15-20 ppm FC without screwing up the works. I'm out of bleach now... I used it all, and I'm almost to the end of what was a mostly full container of dichlor. I dunno... If I wake up tomorrow to a green pool I think I might need to call for backup... or perhaps take a day off work.
Hrmmph.. turquoise pool.... I hit it hard this morning for 3 hours before leaving and it was starting to turn blue. Hopefully I don't lose it during the day, I don't have any pucks so I just threw in a bunch of trichlor granules whcih tend to float by themsevles anyway.
The pool has consumed an amazing amount of chlorine. I've moved up to shocking with 3 large ultra jugs of bleach and I've also added trichlor pucks that I bought today from walmart in a floater. I threw a bunch of trichlor on top and now there's a bunch of floating residue that I suspect is cyanuric acid. I took a recent sample of water and the cyanuric acid tested 100! I don't think I've actually added enough trichlor/dichlor to bring the CYA up to 100 so it's probably undissolved. My last calculation was something like 60 but with all the backwashing and vacuuming to waste I would bet on it being less. It was cloudy today so when I got home from work it was acutally more blue than when I left. It's a deep blue turquoise color but it just keeps consuming chlorine and CC is still high. The last 2 days I haven't been stingy with the chlorine. Last night every 30 minutes I added enough bleach to bring it to 15 and it would be back down to 4 in an hour and I just kept bringing it up and up and up. The green pool thread indicates 4 separate shocks followed by twice a day for maybe a week. I've dumped probably 30 gallons of bleach in this thing total so far, not to mention 3/4 of a tub of dichlor, etc. I can only assume that there was a huge huge huge bacterial load in the pool. The pool store woman told me that the cold temperature of the water ( 48 ) is working against me.
It feels to me that I've spent considerable amounts of money so far to get this pool cleared and I've cleaned out walmart's large bleach jug section TWICE! Which I don't really have a problem with, it's just that my wife is starting to get concerned about my competence in taking care of the pool. I probably should have just purchased proteam system support and been done with it. I'll keep going. tomorrow I'll go buy another 15 gallons or so and start working on it.
Sorry no pics but tomorrow morning I'll have some. Going to replace the light tomorrow too hopefully. The pool store woman said some older pools like mine must be drained down to replace the light!!! I hope not...
It feels to me that I've spent considerable amounts of money so far to get this pool cleared and I've cleaned out walmart's large bleach jug section TWICE! Which I don't really have a problem with, it's just that my wife is starting to get concerned about my competence in taking care of the pool. I probably should have just purchased proteam system support and been done with it. I'll keep going. tomorrow I'll go buy another 15 gallons or so and start working on it.
Sorry no pics but tomorrow morning I'll have some. Going to replace the light tomorrow too hopefully. The pool store woman said some older pools like mine must be drained down to replace the light!!! I hope not...
CYA tends to read higher than it actually is if the water is at all murky. Still, it is important that you not let the CYA level get too high. It would be best if you stopped using dichlor or trichlor until the water is fully clear and you can get a reliable CYA test. Because you have higher CYA levels now you can shock to much higher levels. I would aim for a FC level of 20 to 25 when shocking now.
At cold temperatures chemical reactions happen more slowly and algae grows more slowly. Since you FC level is/was still falling significantly in under an hour that wasn't hurting you very much but it would have slowed the algae down dramatically. I would say that the cold temperatures are at least a little bit in your favor.
It would be nice if you posted a full set of current test results. I think that I remember your CH level being reasonably low. If it is, and you don't want to keep carrying bleach bottles, you could switch to cal-hypo for a while.
At cold temperatures chemical reactions happen more slowly and algae grows more slowly. Since you FC level is/was still falling significantly in under an hour that wasn't hurting you very much but it would have slowed the algae down dramatically. I would say that the cold temperatures are at least a little bit in your favor.
It would be nice if you posted a full set of current test results. I think that I remember your CH level being reasonably low. If it is, and you don't want to keep carrying bleach bottles, you could switch to cal-hypo for a while.
It would appear I am succeeding... I'm out of DE and bleach though so I have to hit it hard tonight to make sure my FC stays up. Not done until the fat lady sings as they say... While vacuuming this morning I noticed one business card size chip in the plaster as well as several strange gouges here adn there. There seems to be a rubber seal on one of hte drain plugs that isn't on the other two. It appears I may be leaking slightly which might explain why my yard has been so wet all winter. We shall see.
And this is this afternoon:
And this is this afternoon:
Nice work. It is important to remember that you muct KEEP chlorine in there from this point or your pool will simply return to it's original condition.
Thank you all! I woke up and looked outside and was frustrated, then as I worked on this morning and vacuumed up a fine layer of silt it really started looking much clearer. I think I have a mustard algae problem possibly... I'm just going to keep shocking it until the CC's are 0. I'm just not there yet despite how good it's looking. Anyone have advice on the light? I'd love to get it replaced so I can work on it at night. I remember the pool guys yanked it out without a problem but it looks like there are 3 separate holes on the top of the ring. I tried to reach in there with a screw driver but it didn't seem to catch and unfortunately I can't see into the holes to see what kind of screws are holding that retaining ring. I think unfortunately that I might have to wait until warmer weather to take care of that. Also my one skimmer always seemed to want to run dry... I managed to look down in and realize the flapper door was sticking! Doesn't run dry now... Doh.
Took a set of numbers earlier
FC 1 (off to the store right now for more bleach to get this back up to shock level to finish the job)
CC 5
PH 7.0
TA 175
CH 375
CYA Didn't test.
So it looks like my numbers are drifting better except for the trichlor must be dissolving and adding acid to the water. I assume when I add a bunch of bleach for shocking tonight it'll go the other way.
Took a set of numbers earlier
FC 1 (off to the store right now for more bleach to get this back up to shock level to finish the job)
CC 5
PH 7.0
TA 175
CH 375
CYA Didn't test.
So it looks like my numbers are drifting better except for the trichlor must be dissolving and adding acid to the water. I assume when I add a bunch of bleach for shocking tonight it'll go the other way.