Why is my water blue?

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dpallyn

0
Jun 24, 2013
13
Central Illinois
I know, I know, everyone wants blue water and I have blue water. My question is why the water is blue? My wife swears that even the water in the spray fountain looks light blue when it is in the air.

FC runs 1-3 depending on time of day. (add at night/dusk/when I get home from work)
pH ranges between 7.5 and 7.8. (I have to add M.Acid each day to bring back down. I assume this is due to the fountain always running and aeration raising pH)
TA is usually high, around 240 or so. Has been ever since filling a few weeks ago.
CYA is around 30-40

When I first filled the pool, I had clear water, but green tint. The town water guy said we have heavy iron in the area, so I added about 24 oz of a metal out product, two bags of di-clor shock, and a few oz of a "super clarifier" all a few hours apart. Now understand, I had no idea what I was doing, just reading backs of bottles at wally-world and hoping it would fix what might be my problem. :oops: The pool tint got a lot lighter green, but still green. The test strips kept showing high pH, so I would dump a cap full or so of "ph minus" into the pool, but would stay high. I found somewhere about doing an "acid shock" to bring down TA, so I dumped most of the rest of the bottle (about 4lbs) of pH-minus into the pool. pH came down to about 7.5. FC still showing 0 or darn close everytime I tested, so added another bag of shock. The green tint (always clear, not algae) went away for the most part and pool looked very clear and clean.

Then I found TFP and the pool calculator. I put in my levels, added what was needed and got things right. Green went the rest of the way away and water turned nice and blue. I add about 12 oz of M.Acid, and 30 oz of 10% Liquid Shock daily to keep things at about the levels above. Eyes don't burn anymore, water is beautiful. Wife very happy.

But I am left with the question: Any idea why the water looks blue?
 
Is the water cloudy at all or have any suspended particulates?

You might want to pm chem geek. He has a pretty deep background in chemistry and he might have some ideas on what it could be.
 
The water should not look blue in a clear glass of pool water. In a pool, yes, because the redder wavelengths of light are absorbed 100 times more than the bluer ones, but it takes a reasonable water depth before one sees that effect. One normally doesn't see that in just a glass of water. Try another glass or plastic material just to make sure the glass itself isn't slightly tinted and also compare against tap water in the same glass.

If you've got fine suspended particles, then that can sometimes look more blue than gray since blue light is scattered more easily and is what makes the sky look blue, but this would be rather unusual to again be visible in such a small volume of water. Usually such scattering makes water look cloudy.

As noted here, high copper levels can make water look blue-green.
 
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