lighter shades of green

[tldslick]

Went on vacation and the pump quit working and came home to green. Thought no big deal i have learned alot in the last year from all of you. :-D . I am a little concerned because my bacquacil conversion didnt take this long. Started shocking on sunday so its been 5 days so far. Still cannot see bottom just a lighter shade of green.

I did add new stairs right before i left (Royal entrance stairs...Family loves em..i found posts about them here..) I thought they were cutting down circulation maybe??? looks darker green around them.

Over the last 5 days i have been dropping a little from shock level (i have dropped down 15 during the day) and have been adding at least 3 times a day but noticed when i backwash there hasnt been a lot of green water shooting out like in the past (from opening the pool and a couple little outbreaks)

Today i cracked open the filter to check the sand even though its only a year old and decided to replace the sand since i was there.

here is my question about my ph level....i dont know what it was before hand, i was in to much of a hurry to dump bleach and got ahead of myself....the ph is very high, should i lower it??, i read other posts to "lower it before shocking"


Thanks

FC: 25
CC: .5
pHver 8.2
T/A:170
CH: 180
CYA:30

 

[TizMe]

During shocking you will not get an accurate PH reading. Clearing your pool up may take several days to get it cleared up Your TA should be lowered , it seems high to me.

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

Its hard to say with the PH and TA are high, but without knowing what they were before... anyway, high FC levels can make PH read high. It's better to test PH when the FC is below 10 if you get a chance to in between chlorine additions.

That being said, your TA is high, do you tend to see your PH drift up routinely? If so consider lowering your TA, the instructions are in Pool School.

You could add a little bit of Muratic Acid, to lower the PH to about 7.5. That way if the reading is a false high it won't be too low if it's an error. Remember to test the PH at a FC of less than 10.

Are you brushing everywhere, frequently, especially where you see the green? Running the filter 24/7?

 

[tldslick]

yes i have been brushing 2-3 times a day and vacuming once a day.

the ph has been fine all year but the t/a has been high all summer started at around 220 and has come down in the last couple of months (i have been sticking my head in the sand about that one )

it is getting better just slower than i thought it would be so i thought something else could be contributing to it

so it would be ok to lower with acid in the middle of all this??
even though it could be high because of the high fc count

the problem is that i try not to let it get that low....i think the lowest i have let it drop to is 15

 

[Butterfly]

Hi tldslick,

Today i cracked open the filter to check the sand even though its only a year old and decided to replace the sand since i was there.

Did you also backwash and rinse the new sand?


Why are you shocking to 25? Unless I missed something, your shock level is 13 or 14.

 

[tldslick]

this is where my ignorance should really shine through :-D

my thought is that is 13 is good then 20 is better

having read alot of posts about this subject it seemed the high fc level is bad for most pools because of some liner issues but i do not have a liner http://www.choisportablepools.com/

am i wrong about more is better??

yes i backwashed and rinsed 2 or 3 times...had to do it after the bacquacil conversion last year

 

[JasonLion]

Your pool is made from vinyl, so there is a risk of bleaching the pool surface if you raise FC too high. With CYA of 30, I would not take FC above 19. Even with FC at 25 the damage is slow, so you might not see any difference right away but there is a slow cumulative effect.

Higher FC levels will kill algae more quickly.

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

Good catch about the shock level, Joyce....I missed that one.

Yes, you can lower with MA now, or you can tackle one thing at a time, up to you. Just don't add chems at the same time, always wait an hour or so between additions of the various chems.

That's an interesting pool, never saw one like that.

 

[tldslick]

thanks everyone