New pool owner green water

[stockton]

Hello all,

Need advice on whether to drain or fight with chemicals. We bought our house a year ago in a short sale. The pool was a pond, and the owner at the time said he had never seen it that green. He went to the pool store and they said to put two boxes of green to blue in. The sale went through and the pool was still green. I started testing and adding chlorine to it and got it a grey color. I came to a realization that the previous owner never cleaned the pool the year before, and when he pulled the cover in the spring before we bought the house, he let all the leaves fall to the bottom. I cleaned out more leaves than I could ever imagine. When i winterized the pool it was a light grey color. When we opened it this year i got 99% of everything off the bottom(can't see it). Before i start spending a lot of money on bleach, i would like to know if that would be a waste of money. I have read that if the water has been bad that long it won't behave.

I should mention i have not tested the pool as of this post, but have 7 way strips and a cya tester.

Thanks,

 

[JohnT]

Welcome to TFP!

No need to drain. You can easily get the water sparkling no matter how dark and nasty looking it is.

Forget the strips and get a real kit that can measure the chlorine levels you will need to clear your swamp. I'd recommend the TF-100 which you can buy at TFTestkits.net. The Taylor K2006 is very similar and will work as well.

Check out Defeating Algae

and

Turning Your Green Swamp Back into a Sparkling Oasis

For guidance in the process.

 

[Richard320]

Whether or not a drain makes sense depends on test results. If CYA is triple digits, or CH is into four figures, a drain is in order. Why add anything to the water just to pump it out later?

If CYA and CH are reasonable, then clear the swamp. It can't look worse than this:

Post 14

 

[stockton]

CYA was testing at zero, just ordered a tf-100 should be in Wed, I spent days clearing leaves off of the bottom last year, cleared the cover of leaves and while waiting for test kit started sweeping the bottom of the pool and I don't know if i will ever get 100% of the solids off of the bottom.

This was after an hour.

 

[Richard320]

Similar situation to this: http://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/75138-Another-swamp-is-it-worth-it-Drain-or-gain

 

[timerguy]

Just keep dragging a leaf net on the bottom until you pull it out empty, even if you can't see the bottom.

 

[stockton]

Got a leaf net on Monday spent Tuesday dragging filth off the bottom, got a turtle shell(will post pic later). Got my TF-100 in today test as follows.
C & FC - 0
Ch - 100 ppm
CYA - 10 or less than ( added 6lbs stabilizer last week)
TA - 120
PH - 7.2
Temp 76
Should i start slamming or try to get cya and ph up a bit?
thanks,

 

[JohnT]

Start slamming.

 

[stockton]

Went and got a bunch more bleach and then started the Slam at 11:30, testing every hour and adding a couple gallons of bleach each hour to remain at shock of 10.
My next problem is that my filter is losing pressure pretty quick(water is nasty) i am having to refill with well water. The pressure is going from 18 after backwash to 21 withing minutes and usually within the hour 28.

 

[Richard320]

If you have a multiport valve, try running on recirculate. And after you've got a good kill, vacuum to waste once to remove most of it. http://www.troublefreepool.com/threads/58738-Filter-or-Recirculate

 

[stockton]

Thanks that was kinda what i was thinking, but not sure.

The turtle shell from the bottom.

 

[stockton]

confused fc - 11 cc keeps dropping an hour ago 1.5 now .5.

 

[Nuvene]

CC dropping is a good thing.. CC is the chlorine that has already burned up fighting algae

 

[northrn]

Stockton, you may want to review this article:

:lookhere: ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry

 

[stockton]

After 18 bottles of bleach,

Now off to Wally to get more.

 

[northrn]

I love swamp to oasis threads!

good luck to you!

 

[stockton]

Ok i have read a bunch of threads on fas-dpd testing but it seems with the taylor speed stir my readings on the same sample are different. I have read that a drop of 871 a second until clear, but what is clear, as soon as it goes clear i stop adding 871 and it turns pink. Right now i am getting a reading of 12 FC and 8 CC on day three of Slam. I have had readings of FC 12 CC 5. Anyone have a easy explanation of using the speed stir with dpd test? If i manually do the test the results are about where i think they should be.

 

[timerguy]

Easy is the word I would use too! Stop dropping reagent in as soon as it turns clear. Multiply that last drop count by .5 don't worry about it turning pink again. It does that! That's a lot of CC! Seems you have something going on still. Your pool pics from yesterday looks anything but a clean pool. It looks worse than any green pool I've had.

 

[stockton]

Thanks based on your response I tested again and my FC 3.5 and CC 11.

 

[stockton]

Follow up, asked the wife to help with tests, she did a side by side comparison speed stir vs manual and guess what? She got the same results each time, so turns out it was operator error(or as i put it, don't over think it).

Will post pictures later, apparently my camera can not take small pictures (or operator error).