cloudy water and vacuum problems

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Suarez7

Suarez7

0
May 25, 2011
18
Bridgewater, NJ
Hey all.

Had a family party then a few days later the wife and I went on vacation (8 days) to Jamaica. Had a couple of pucks in the pool to maintain, but clearly it wasn't enough. Came back to a swamp.

Got back on July 6th...been fighting with my pool since. bleached heavily, got it back to a cloudy blue (only able to see 6" down). Been dumping full bottles of concentrated cholorine two at a time. Last week I got fed up and put a bit of floc in. still fighting...

Just took readings and I'm at:

FC (10)
CC (1ish)
PH (<7)
CYA (60)

I think the floc lowered the PH levels, so I just added baking soda. I've been keeping TC in the 15-25 range, relative ly consistently. With the CYA of 60, my shock leves are around 24. I'm going to bring PH and FC up and try the OCLT.

I haven't been vacuuming as much as I should as when I vacuum it seems to keep grabbing the liner. Has anyone every experienced that? It grabs the liner and gets stuck. I have to either pull it off (which can be dificult) or shut off the pump then pull it off. Sometimes there's nothing there that I can tell, sometimes there's a small 'volcano' shape in the liner. I don't know whether it was there before.

Thanks all.
 
Well, you have a lot of issues going on but I will address a couple.

Looks like you are testing with strips.....they simply are not adequate to clear a pool the way we teach. It's all just guesswork and we teach precision.

TA doesn't raise pH....20 Mule Team Borax does.

Do you have a vacuum head that is made for vinyl? Sounds like you have one made for masonry.
 
Thanks for the responses...

Vacuum head I'm using is the one that was here when I moved in. I didn't have any issues with it the first two years, but that's not to say that it is right.

I'm using Leslie's test kit (Complete Poolcare DPD TEst Kit). I have to water down the samples to test for the desired range of chlorine (1.8 or 4.5 pool water to 9ml total).

No criteria really, just trial and error. I'm using Clorox bleach I get from Costco. The label says 8.25% sodium hypochlorite (yields 7.85 available chlorine) and comes in a 3.78 QT size.

I used Baking soda to raise Alkalinity thinking that with aeration it will raise the PH. Maybe I should just stick to the basics. I'll head out and get some Mule team borax.

Here's the vacuum...is this incorrect?
 
My mistake on your kit....the results fooled me and I assumed.... :oops: That kit is fine. You might consider supplementing it with a seperate FAS/DPD test and you would no longer have to dilute and could get the precision you are currently missing.

That's a vinyl brush, too. Only suggestion I could make is restrict the intake (got a valve?) when you vacuum.....that should do it.

I suppose it might be the bristles are worn down enough to let the intake get too close to the pool floor....maybe compare it to a new one at the pool store. That's just a complete guess but maybe worth a look.

Sounds like you are doing a lot of the right things but maybe just doing them a bit more carefully will put you back to a crystal clear pool
 
duraleigh said:
My mistake on your kit....the results fooled me and I assumed.... :oops: That kit is fine. You might consider supplementing it with a seperate FAS/DPD test and you would no longer have to dilute and could get the precision you are currently missing.

That's a vinyl brush, too. Only suggestion I could make is restrict the intake (got a valve?) when you vacuum.....that should do it.

I suppose it might be the bristles are worn down enough to let the intake get too close to the pool floor....maybe compare it to a new one at the pool store. That's just a complete guess but maybe worth a look.

Sounds like you are doing a lot of the right things but maybe just doing them a bit more carefully will put you back to a crystal clear pool
Click to expand...

No worries. Thanks for the advice and suggestion, Dave. I'll keep on it a bit closer.
 
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