Cloudy water after shocking for a week - on the right track?

[4boys531]

Moving to a new house and the pool hadn't been started up this year at all...was a green swamp. Same pool as in my signature except no SWG (yet). Started shocking last Sunday (July 1) - been checking chlorine usually twice a day, morning and night and trying to keep at shock levels. I also used 2 bottles of algecide last Monday - water turned a milky white and stayed that way all week. On Saturday, I started adding DE to the sand filter (enough to raise filter pressure 1 psi) and been adding it after every backwash. The backwash is a milky white that is coming out so it seems to be filtering out some of the dead algae.

Checked all my numbers last night and here is what I had:

FC = 3.5
CC = 2
TA = 170
CH = 250
CYA < 20
pH < 6.8

I shocked the pool up to 10 last night and added 3 boxes of washing soda (per the pool calculator). I also have stabilizer in a sock to up the CYA.

I checked this morning and had:

FC = 1.5
CC = 2
ph > 8.2

The water doesn't look milky anymore but is a pale blue cloudy color - I can see down to the bottom of my strainer basket but that's about it. I feel like I am running in circles - something is obviously still consuming chlorine and I have brushed the pool but I can't see the bottom. There shouldn't be much for leaves in it - it was not covered over winter but we don't have any trees nearby.

Do I need to bring my pH back down? Why did it overshoot so much?
Thoughts on what else to do? Am I missing something or do I just need to be more patient?

 

[JasonLion]

Re: Cloudy water after shocking for a week - on the right tr

Get your CYA up to at least 30! With extremely low CYA you are losing most of your chlorine to sunlight and don't have much left to fight algae with.

Calculations for adjusting PH are always approximate. Get some acid in there right away to bring PH back down to something reasonable. But this time only add perhaps half of what you calculate you need, give it half an hour to mix in with the pump running, test to see where that got you, and continue adjusting from there.

 

[rjproulx]

Re: Cloudy water after shocking for a week - on the right tr

I'm starting to be in the same boat. pH is all over the place, I've gone from swamp to faint green but super cloudy, and I'm not sure what to do next. I'm waiting until my water is clear to worry too much about pH, but it hasn't progressed much. Unlike you, I don't seem to be consuming too much chlorine the last 24 hours.