WHOA! Mud in pool.

[buck1s]

Hopefully someone can give me advice as to the best way to clean a pool that's had a bit of mud run into it. We had so much rain that it leached mud through a retaining wall near our pool patio and some of the mud made it to pool. There won't be enough to scrape off the bottom, but the water is mud-cloudy

Wait and manually vacuum? Run the filter, don't run the filter? Thanks.

Chris

 

[UnderWaterVanya]

My GUESS is that vacuum to waste and then brush and filter.

Just a guess however.
BTW - It would help a lot if you added your equipment info in your signature as this describes (pool-school/read_before_you_post) some filters are good, some are great, some are just plain terrible - knowing what you have will help a lot in narrowing the advice.

 

[Richard320]

Do you have a "waste setting" on a multiport valve? If you do, use that to manually vacuum. It will suck it up and spit it out the waste pipe, sparing your filter.

If not, I guess you'll be manually vacuuming and likely needing a backwash or two.

 

[buck1s]

Thanks. I have a sand filter, multiport valve, SWC, manual pool vacuum, and a Polaris 380 that I'm sure won't be any use right now. I guess that I have to endure the look of the pool until the sediment settles. Ugggh

So, manual vacuum to waste. Got it. Is running the filter while the water's still muddy/cloudy a problem? I've got it turned off right now.

 

[buck1s]

Oh yeah, I forgot. 20k gal IG, gunite, plaster, tile at the water line, 2 skimmers. Thanks again for all advice.

 

[linen]

Is running the filter while the water's still muddy/cloudy a problem? I've got it turned off right now.

Not a problem, I would run 24/7 until it clears up. You may have to backwash often.

 

[Richard320]

Is running the filter while the water's still muddy/cloudy a problem? I've got it turned off right now.

Not a problem, I would run 24/7 until it clears up. You may have to backwash often.

I gotta disagree with Linen, here. Let the water settle out overnight, vacuum up the worst of it, and then let the filter clear the rest. If you have good circulation, you'll just have a cloudy dirty pool for weeks. Filters are made for filtering floaters, not shovelling up mud!

 

[buck1s]

Thanks for the suggestions. Running the pump/filter wasn't helping so I set the valve to recirc and added flocculent. Then I let sit for 24 hours and had a nice settling at the bottom. I vacuumed to waste and got rid of the large majority of the dirt, but the pool is still cloudy. Is there anyway the filter can catch the rest of the flocc'd particles now? I have crappy well flow so I don't like adding water that often. I used much of the water that caused the problem getting rid of 90% of the flocc'd debris.

 

[jblizzle]

Sand filters are just a little slow at clearing up the cloudiness. You could try a little DE in the filter to help grab the smaller particles.

 

[dattia]

Try skimmer socks. They really do work well for such a simple thing. I double mine up when trying to clear a mess.