Hi! I am new here so I am very appreciative of anyone who will jump in and offer advice.
We have a 20k mineral springs pool which has been opened for about a month. Everything has seemed to be fine until about 5 days ago when we took a water sample into our pool store and the result showed that we had chlorine residual and needed to add 14 bags of "Burn Out 35". Three days later we took a sample back to the store and things had improved. The total chlorine was slightly low (0.8) so we were told to just do a "boost" with our chlorinator.
The next day we noticed the water was slightly cloudy so we completely cleaned the filters with a power washer and added our weekly renewal (this was yesterday). This morning the water was so cloudy we can't see the bottom.
We took a sample back to the store and both the free and total chlorine readings were zero. We had sampled it before we went and our test confirmed this. The owner of the company ran numerous other tests and our phosphates came back at >2500 and the nitrates were at 5ppm. The owner of the company told us he could sell us a bunch of chemicals to try but felt it may be a swing and a miss and is recommending draining and refilling the pool. He said that we need to fix the chlorine problem before we can fix the phosphates and that the only real way of getting rid of nitrates is removing the water.
Just a bit ago (about 8 hours) we did an additional self test and the tablet did reAct at about 0.5 ppm of chlorine.
We are having another water test performed in the morning but we don't know what to do. Certainly we don't want to dump a bunch of money into chemicals if we will end up draining. We don't know how the nitrates could have gotten into the pool. We don't use fertilizers. We want, whatever, done as soon as possible so we can begin using the pool.
Any advice?? Thanks
We have a 20k mineral springs pool which has been opened for about a month. Everything has seemed to be fine until about 5 days ago when we took a water sample into our pool store and the result showed that we had chlorine residual and needed to add 14 bags of "Burn Out 35". Three days later we took a sample back to the store and things had improved. The total chlorine was slightly low (0.8) so we were told to just do a "boost" with our chlorinator.
The next day we noticed the water was slightly cloudy so we completely cleaned the filters with a power washer and added our weekly renewal (this was yesterday). This morning the water was so cloudy we can't see the bottom.
We took a sample back to the store and both the free and total chlorine readings were zero. We had sampled it before we went and our test confirmed this. The owner of the company ran numerous other tests and our phosphates came back at >2500 and the nitrates were at 5ppm. The owner of the company told us he could sell us a bunch of chemicals to try but felt it may be a swing and a miss and is recommending draining and refilling the pool. He said that we need to fix the chlorine problem before we can fix the phosphates and that the only real way of getting rid of nitrates is removing the water.
Just a bit ago (about 8 hours) we did an additional self test and the tablet did reAct at about 0.5 ppm of chlorine.
We are having another water test performed in the morning but we don't know what to do. Certainly we don't want to dump a bunch of money into chemicals if we will end up draining. We don't know how the nitrates could have gotten into the pool. We don't use fertilizers. We want, whatever, done as soon as possible so we can begin using the pool.
Any advice?? Thanks