Crystal clear to cloudy in 2 hours

[run53]

Help!

We had a heat wave in New England. 4 days of 90 degrees or more then we got some heavy rain and it cooled off. That's when my pool got cloudy (not green but can't see deep end bottom). My pool had heavy use during the heat wave. 18 people on two straight days and five in the water on the third. The FC was maintained at 2.4 or more throughout by my SWG. We are also in the midst of yellow pine pollen season.

Last night when I noticed it starting to cloud up the FC was 1.5. I only had 1.5 gallons of bleach on hand so I poured it all in and ran the filter all night with SWG on 100%. Woke up this morning and the situation has worsened a bit (more cloudy). Heading out to get bleach now to shock. Also going to clean my filter and put new DE in (pressure is a little higher than usual. Here are the reading (TF-100) from this morning.

TC=5.0
FC=4.5
TA=70
pH=7.4
CYA=45
CH=180

Is this the start of an algae bloom?

 

[zea3]

That's what it sounds like. Also your CYA is lower than recommended for a pool with a SWG. That could also contribute to the chlorine burning off too quickly in the sun. Try raising the CYA to 60-70 ppm after you complete the shock process. On days when you know there will be a heavy bather load bump up the percentage on the SWG a couple of ppm and give the pool a booster shot of bleach at the end of the day.

 

[JasonLion]

Large pool parties will tend to cloud up the pool. As zea3 said, add extra chlorine and give the filter time time to work.

 

[run53]

Thanks guys. Just got back from store with 10 gallons of 8.25%. When I got back I did another reading and got TC=3.5/FC=3.0 and the sun is barely rising on the pool. This drop was from 5:15am to 7:45am.

So it's eating my FC pretty quickly. Just added 4 gallons of 8.25% to get FC to shock level (16). Will retest in a half hour and add bleach as necessary to keep FC at 16.

Once clear, i will begin to raise CYA as suggested.

 

[run53]

Well, as of 5:30pm and 6 gallons of 8.25%, the pool is crystal clear again.

However, I may have just made a big mistake. This morning, when the pool was so cloudy that I could not see bottom of the deep end, I removed my solar cover. Unfortunately, without thinking, I just placed it back on the pool. I assume the cover was covered with tainted water since it was on the pool this morning.

I'm afraid I just re-introduce the algae back into the pool?

I am still at shock level, so hopefully it will kill the algae from the cover as well. Keeping fingers crossed.

 

[run53]

All is good. Using the shock process described on this forum and my TF-100, it only took about 12 hours (and about $14 worth of bleach) to go form not being able to see the bottom of the deep end to crystal clear.

Granted, it wasn't a swamp, but it's so nice to see my pool as it usually is. Crystal clear!



Now it's off to getting my CYA up to the correct range.