Pool parent for 1 year...first green spell after heavy rain, help!

[Confetti70]

We have lived in our new house for just over 1 year, and this is our first pool. approx 10K gallons in ground gunite with cartridge filter. We had our first massive rain fall in a short amount of time and the pool turned green within an hour or so. Clearly we were on the low end of chlorine...at last check it was in the normal "range". It tends to run on the higher side of ph.

What is the best approach to rectify? I have granular shock, which I can add, so far I've just added 3 tabs and turned the pump back on (it had timed off). It's a clear green, I can see the bottom, and it happened very quickly, so I can't imagine algea already being present? There certainly isn't any growth or anything in or on the pool surfaces...just really full of rain water and now a greenish tint. We'll be checking the levels here soon, but I thought I'd post first to see if I should just call our pool guy out to handle asap or do anything more ourselves until he can get here to minimize any further issues. Our pool guy comes once a month to support our cleaning and chemical work - we'd eventually like to do it all ourselves, but we felt better having a monthly "check in" to make sure we don't screw anything up right off the bat.

thanks!

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!

Do you have one of the recommended test kits? You need that to follow the SLAM process that is described in the How To section of Pool School.

You should also stop using solid forms of chlorine until you know your stabilizer level. You may be doing more harm than good. Check out the chemistry in Pool School.

 

[Casey]

Welcome. First things first is taking control over your pool and buying a reliable test kit and being able to post test results instead of telling us your chlorine is on the low side and pH is on the high end. We can't do anything with that. We recommend the TF100. You can check them out... Test Kit Comparison

You're going to have to read and re read Pool School.

We want to help you but we offer no magic bullets or house calls so you have to arm yourself with information to take control over your pool.

 

[freqz]

My pool looks pretty similar at the moment. I brought FC back up and set the pump to filter overnight and will check again n the morning.

If it's not clear I'll SLAM starting tomorrow evening.

Trust your kit. Trust your kit. Trust your kit

 

[Confetti70]

Ok, fair enough. We are admittedly not pros at this (yet). I don't know all the acronyms and I don't know all the processes. We're near Dallas also and just had that crazy rain system move through, and I was shocked to see my pool turn green so quickly - never happened before. By extension, if things move that fast, I wanted to find out if there was anything *immediate* that we could do. If having a pool guy once a month disqualifies me from this site, no worries.

 

[freqz]

No insult intended...the point is you're capable of taking care of your pool. .

 

[Casey]

We're going to need a full set of test results. CYA level mainly and what your fill source is? No one is disqualifying you because you have a monthly visitor. It just helps us help you if you have all the tools to take care of your pool. If you want to stick with the pool boy, that's certainly your choice.

 

[Isaac-1]

Chances are this did not just happen, there was likely something leading up to this. We really need to know a full set of good reliable test results to get an idea of what happened, but if I were to take a wild guess it would be that you have a case of over stabilization, if you have been using stabilized chlorine pucks and stabilized granular chlorine for a year or so the CYA Stabilizer levels probably built up to the point that your free chlorine (FC) was no longer effective, and a combination of the warming water, along with relatively low FC and the storm all came together at once to cause this. To understand all this I highly suggest that you start reading the pool school link in the upper right of this page.

Ike

 

[Confetti70]

That was a general sentiment, not aimed at you freqz

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ok, thanks for the info.