Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please help!

[wahhutch9]

So we recently wrapped up the installation of a 27,000 gallon inground, vinyl liner SWG pool w/ cartridge filter. We are in Northwest Ohio.

I'm waiting on my sprinkler guy to come back in and re-route the system before I can hydroseed or sod. So until then, I'm left with dirt all around concrete deck.

We had a very, very heavy storm come through the area yesterday. Heavy rain, hail, and winds out of the north at 65+ mph. When I came home yesterday, the pool went from looking clear to looking like the attached picture.

I have no idea what to do to fix this. So much dirt had to have gone in. I cleaned the filter yesterday and and let the pump run all night hoping that would get some of the dirt out. Unfortunately, it looked the exact same this morning. The filter cartridges weren't that dirty. I was hoping some of the dirt would have settled over night and I could simply vacuum slowly multiple times over the next couple of days to help.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[zea3]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

Your going to have to vacuum it out as much as you can, then brush the pool so the filter can catch the dirt you stir up. You may have to repeat the process several times over the next few days. You will need to complete the shock process also.

 

[faby3003]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

I would turn the pump off for a few hours to let the dirt settle to the bottom of the pool. Then vacuum.

 

[ouachita]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

How do you think the dirt got in there? Wind? Does surface water drain into the pool and washed it in?

 

[wahhutch9]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

It was the wind. With gusts up to 65 mph out of the north that blew the mud and muck up above the concrete deck and into the pool. It was a very strange storm. Everything is graded well away from the deck. Once I get the sod or hydroseed in, we won't have this issue.

Thank for everyone's help! My pool contractor swung by and put something in there to help bring the particles together either through the filter or to the bottom of the floor. We'll see in the morning!

 

[wahhutch9]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

Hey everyone.. I wanted to bump this back up to the top. It's been about a week and half since the mudslide

It has improved quite a bit, but we still aren't back to crystal clear yet. It's been vacuumed twice per day since it happened (granted, we weren't able to vacuum during the days it rained significantly.) Fortunately, the rain and storms that we've had since have not blown any additional large quantities of dirt into the pool.

At this point, visibility is about 8 ft. I can just barely see the main drains in the 8 ft. deep end.

I ran some more tests today, here are the results:

pH= 7.5
FC= 11
CC= 0
TA = 70
CH = 90
CYA = 30

When this whole thing started, the FC was 0, TA was 55, CYA was 0, and CH was 120.

Outside of vacuuming, does anyone have any additional advice to clear up the cloudiness? I'll be adding more CYA to bring that up closer to 60. But everything else seemed to be in the normal range (outside of FC which might still be high from shocking?)

Thanks again!!

 

[wahhutch9]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

As a data point... my FC was 13 on 7/4 (in case that is useful information)

 

[mk1]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

might want to clean the filter now......

 

[wahhutch9]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

lol. The filter has been cleaned multiple times over the last 10 days. I cleaned again yesterday and the cartridges weren't very bad at all

 

[blakeusa]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

Where did you get the fill water? From a pool water company or was it well water?

If it was well water I might suspect you have iron in the water.

 

[wahhutch9]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

It was city water.

 

[Lizt111]

Re: Heavy rain + lots of dirt and mud = Brown Pool! Please h

I'm no expert.... we went away last week and had a monster rain storm which washed tons of muddy dirt into our pool. It literally looked like river water .
We did the brush, vacuum, backwash thing for 5 days with almost no improvement. Our numbers were pretty good, even with the muddy water. We decided to start shocking, and hit it HARD. Almost overnight we could see the steps in the low end.
We shocked for 3 days in a row, and it's now blue again. It's not crystal clear, but I can see the vac in the deep end again. We just didn't have the patience to keep at the brush, vacuum, backwash routine. We had algae when we opened and that took 3+ weeks to clear up. It is very frustrating, I hope you get yours blue again. soon!