We bought a pool with a house attached to in December and just opened it up two weeks ago. Mistake #1 was dumping everything from the cover into the deep end (accidentally...but a mistake nonetheless). The water was black for the first 4 days with the pump running constantly. Had the water tested and everything but Chlorine level were perfect.
I found PF and read a lot there and finally got fed up with my lack of results after going through all of the shock powder that the PO left us. I dumped 6 gallons of Ultra Bleach into the pool and also added my final 4 bags of shock. Within 10 minutes, there was a scum layer on the water as dead algae rose to the surface. The next day, the water was Emerald Green...better than black!
I continued to super chlorinate with bleach as the levels kept dropping to 0-.5ppm overnight. During the process, the Ph dropped to 6.2 (also using Trichlor tabs, which I've just read can lead to this) and TA to 50ppm. Added a box of Borax, 3 pounds of baking soda and pointed the eyeball towards the surface to aerate. Ph has crawled back up to around 6.8. Chlorine is holding at ~4ppm and TA is up to around 100.
The water is now blue with a grey cloudiness that is slowly filtering out (I can see the bottom in the shallow end now and down to about 5 feet as it drops off). I've run the skim-vac attachment to my vacuum head and have it sitting in the deep end in hopes that I'll pull the murk into the filter and speed the process up...but it's painfully slow. My wife is getting impatient - she wants to buy some clarifier, thinking that'll be the silver bullet that we need to magically clear it up. I'm not so sure.
Latest test strip results were:
FC: ~3
TC: ~3-5
TA: ~100
CYN: ~40
pH: ~6.8
I know the strips aren't the most accurate, but my only other test kit on hand is the drops for TC.
Considering that I wanted to fill the pool with dirt and am opening it so that my wife can play...I'll take any help I can get.
I found PF and read a lot there and finally got fed up with my lack of results after going through all of the shock powder that the PO left us. I dumped 6 gallons of Ultra Bleach into the pool and also added my final 4 bags of shock. Within 10 minutes, there was a scum layer on the water as dead algae rose to the surface. The next day, the water was Emerald Green...better than black!
I continued to super chlorinate with bleach as the levels kept dropping to 0-.5ppm overnight. During the process, the Ph dropped to 6.2 (also using Trichlor tabs, which I've just read can lead to this) and TA to 50ppm. Added a box of Borax, 3 pounds of baking soda and pointed the eyeball towards the surface to aerate. Ph has crawled back up to around 6.8. Chlorine is holding at ~4ppm and TA is up to around 100.
The water is now blue with a grey cloudiness that is slowly filtering out (I can see the bottom in the shallow end now and down to about 5 feet as it drops off). I've run the skim-vac attachment to my vacuum head and have it sitting in the deep end in hopes that I'll pull the murk into the filter and speed the process up...but it's painfully slow. My wife is getting impatient - she wants to buy some clarifier, thinking that'll be the silver bullet that we need to magically clear it up. I'm not so sure.
Latest test strip results were:
FC: ~3
TC: ~3-5
TA: ~100
CYN: ~40
pH: ~6.8
I know the strips aren't the most accurate, but my only other test kit on hand is the drops for TC.
Considering that I wanted to fill the pool with dirt and am opening it so that my wife can play...I'll take any help I can get.