Opening bromine pool (first time)

[timthegreat9]

So I live in Maine and purchased a home during the winter time. There is a 20x40' in ground vinyl pool which had 2 feet of snow on top of the cover when I purchased the home. The pool is a bromine pool. Well I looked under the cover and the water is green and it looks like algae is on the bottom. I tried calling every pool company nearby and all of them are booked till the middle of June to open pools.

I have been reading the forum and understand it might take a week to go from green to clear. I am trying to have my pool open by memorial day so I am going to open it myself this weekend. The pool store sold me 4 bags of shock and said to uncover the pool, raise water level, start the pump, put in shock and just clean the pool out. The told me to bring them a sample after this and they would sell me the chemicals I need.

Since this is a bromine pool is the TF-100 test kit something that would be useful. I have never owned a pool but I am going to give it a shot and hope for the best. Been doing my research about openings the last few weeks and due to no pool company support till June I am not going to wait. Any one with any advice feel free to chime in. I will post pictures of the equipment and the pool later this week once I get some time.

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!!!

How sure are you that this is a bromine pool? That is not very common.

I think the TF-100 would still work for you, the multiplier for the FC and CC is just different for bromine that chlorine, but all other tests are the same.

Honestly, I am not 100% sure how you clear a bromine pool exactly. Usually we say to follow the SLAM Process, but I am not sure if that would need to be modified for your case.

 

[Casey]

Welcome... Waiting to see a response on how you know it's bromine?

 

[timthegreat9]

We'll when I did the walkthrough with the old owner he told me it is a bromine pool and had some bromine tabs in a 5 gallon container left for me to use at the start of this season.

 

[timthegreat9]

Ok so I worked on opening the pool this weekend. So I took off the cover took the brush to the bottom to see how thick the algae was.


I found a pool guy who helped me start it up saturday and gave me the chemicals for start up. He said to just treat it as a chlorine pool and he said not to put the bromine tabs in. Also I have a DE filter that he said I should switch to a sand filter. After it was running the filter was clogging like every 10 minutes until I gave up and tried again on sunday. Here is a picture of my DE filter and the pool now that chemicals have been added.




The pool is semi clear on the shallow end and the deep end I still cant see the bottom. I was going to try vaccuming for the first time today. I assume I am going to have to open the drain filter on my filter when I vaccum and add more DE when I finish. My question is as a pool novice like myself who is having alot of trouble with the DE filter should I switch to a sand filter? How much roughly would it cost a sand filter including installation?

 

[jblizzle]

The filter is doing its job. DE is very efficient so it traps a lot of that gunk quickly. A sand filter will also clog quickly when you have the mess you started with, although it is easier to backwash.

I would stick with the DE filter and use this as motivation to not let the pool get an algae bloom again