Diving a Dirty Pool?

[lambo]

Not literally diving, but is it safe to swim in a dirty pool? As you can see in my pics below, my pool a) has a leak - see this thread - and b) is still green. I'd like to find the hole and attempt to repair it myself, but the pool is taking forever to get clean because I'm having to use a hose dangling in the bottom and connected to my skimmer.

From what I can tell, it's just some algae. I've only been running the pump for 4 days (and at that, only a couple hours each evening after work because I don't trust my MacGuyver setup). But I don't want to fill the pool up and risk having to dump it all if the liner needs to be replaced.

So, all that said, would it be 'safe' to just swim around for a bit to at least see if I can locate the problem? I won't be ingesting any water (at least not intentionally) and I've poled around enough to know that all that is left on the bottom is a few leaves.

Thoughts?

Shallow end is at about 6" of water right now:


I've kicked up quite a bit of algae - it's usually a bit cleaner:




As always, this forum rocks and my pool would still be a terrible green swamp if it wasn't for you guys!

 

[duraleigh]

Dose it with a quart of Clorox if you want to be super safe. Algae is harmless enough and most things that hurt you in a pool are person-to-person transmissions (doesn't look like you've had many swimmers lately )

 

[lambo]

Dose it with a quart of Clorox if you want to be super safe. Algae is harmless enough and most things that hurt you in a pool are person-to-person transmissions (doesn't look like you've had many swimmers lately )

Dave -

That's what I thought as well. I've been shocking the pool, so everything is basically dead or dying. I figure if I swim in the lake, which has far more organic matter than my pool, than I should be fine for a few minutes in my cold pool.

Thanks!

 

[Durk]

Many years ago, I had to dive down to the bottom in ours once in that kind of shape. We had no choice other than to drain and the main drain cover had to be cleared of a clog from the mess. Not fun, but no ill effects.

 

[lambo]

Many years ago, I had to dive down to the bottom in ours once in that kind of shape. We had no choice other than to drain and the main drain cover had to be cleared of a clog from the mess. Not fun, but no ill effects.

I can confirm that it definitely isn't any fun. But we had a 90 degree day yesterday and with half the pool empty, the remaining water was actually warmish. Wasn't able to identify the leak location unfortunately so it looks like I'll be calling a leak detection guy.

I think his rate was $90/hour and generally takes him 2 hours to search the pool. Another company charges a flat rate of $250. Hopefully these sound like reasonable prices? Both have dive suits, surface supplied air systems, the sonar leak detection whatevers, etc.