Hi everyone,
First time poster, with a few questions so this is a long and fairly detailed post!
Some background:
I recently bought a house with an in-ground pool that was clear for a few days but turned green quite quickly.
So, I shocked the pool, added some muratic acid and some stabilizer and started to bring the color from green back to a white-ish blue pretty quickly.
About a week later (and 24/7 filtering incl. hosing out filter once or twice a day), the water was clear to the bottom in the shallow end (about 3 ft) and I could see the plug in the deep end but not crystal clear (about 6 ft deep).
I then bought a "Kreepy Krawly" to start to vacuum out the dead algae and to leave on while I'm not at home. It worked for 10 ft long stretches but would then just kind of stop, and it wasn't due to the pool hose being too short or anything like that..... plus I was manually taking the filter out and hosing it off, so there was no issue with the filter, skimmer basket or pump basket being blocked.
So, thinking that it's just a piece of junk, to remedy that problem I decided to just buy a manual vacuum, which I attached to a long pole and started to just vacuum manually.
The skimmer that the vacuum hoses go into is a two-hole skimmer and so I use the hole that has the most suction and start to try and vacuum out the debris. After watching some youTube videos for comparison, my vacuum doesn't vacuum up anywhere near as much as the videos that I have seen. Not even close. In fact, it looks like the wheels on the bottom of the vacuum make more of an impact. All that seems to happen is that it stirs up the dead algae, making the pool cloudy again!
So, I pull the vacuum head to just below the surface to check for suction and while it's not like a carpet vacuum, there is definitely "some" suction happening....
The hoses are not blocked, so what am I missing here?
Also, my spa is sort of built into the side of the pool and that is where the freshly filtered water goes first, before flowing into the main pool. The problem is that as soon as I start the vacuuming process, after about 3-4 minutes, the spa water turns a dark green/brown.... So, I turn off the pump and pull the filter out to hose it. Sure enough, it's dirty, but not black. So, I hose it out again but still have the issue of the unfiltered water getting into the spa.... and eventually into the main pool (there are 3-4 outlets spread around the pool that allow filtered water to enter into the main pool, aside from the spa overflow).
I think the problem is that too much of the dead algae (it looks like it's dusted all over the bottom of the pool) is getting picked up by the vacuum and is too much for the filter to process - even though to my eye, the vacuum is barely making an impact on the floor of the pool as I run it over the bottom. Am I wrong?
After watching all this, I went to the area where I have the pump and plumbing setup, only to find that I don't have a multi-valve anywhere on the system. Only a pump, the filter, the clear sight-glass thing with the filter basket, another bread plate shaped slight glass that looks like a multi-valve "maybe should be there but isn't" and then three valves... one of which, I cannot fully turn off as the genius that put it in, installed it so close to the other plumbing that the handle hits the pipes preventing full shut off....
I also cannot find a dump pipe that would usually run into a main yard drain in the back yard. I used to have a setup at another house I lived in, and would just set the multivalve to "backwash" and as soon as I started the pump up, water would pour out of that pipe and discard it into the drain located underneath it (perfect for getting rid of dirty water while vacuuming!).
So, short of calling out a pool guy, I'm trying to figure out what setup they have installed on this pool (mid 80's pool from what I can tell) and if there is something that I'm missing here that someone else might know about, as I want to swim in my pool!
It also seems like I have a pool leak in the skimmer plastic by the looks of it (tested with the dye kit) but I will deal with later..... I am hoping to sort this issue out as I'm using 5-7.5 gallons of liquid chlorine a week just to keep the algae in check.
Any help &/or guidance is appreciated!
First time poster, with a few questions so this is a long and fairly detailed post!
Some background:
I recently bought a house with an in-ground pool that was clear for a few days but turned green quite quickly.
So, I shocked the pool, added some muratic acid and some stabilizer and started to bring the color from green back to a white-ish blue pretty quickly.
About a week later (and 24/7 filtering incl. hosing out filter once or twice a day), the water was clear to the bottom in the shallow end (about 3 ft) and I could see the plug in the deep end but not crystal clear (about 6 ft deep).
I then bought a "Kreepy Krawly" to start to vacuum out the dead algae and to leave on while I'm not at home. It worked for 10 ft long stretches but would then just kind of stop, and it wasn't due to the pool hose being too short or anything like that..... plus I was manually taking the filter out and hosing it off, so there was no issue with the filter, skimmer basket or pump basket being blocked.
So, thinking that it's just a piece of junk, to remedy that problem I decided to just buy a manual vacuum, which I attached to a long pole and started to just vacuum manually.
The skimmer that the vacuum hoses go into is a two-hole skimmer and so I use the hole that has the most suction and start to try and vacuum out the debris. After watching some youTube videos for comparison, my vacuum doesn't vacuum up anywhere near as much as the videos that I have seen. Not even close. In fact, it looks like the wheels on the bottom of the vacuum make more of an impact. All that seems to happen is that it stirs up the dead algae, making the pool cloudy again!
So, I pull the vacuum head to just below the surface to check for suction and while it's not like a carpet vacuum, there is definitely "some" suction happening....
The hoses are not blocked, so what am I missing here?
Also, my spa is sort of built into the side of the pool and that is where the freshly filtered water goes first, before flowing into the main pool. The problem is that as soon as I start the vacuuming process, after about 3-4 minutes, the spa water turns a dark green/brown.... So, I turn off the pump and pull the filter out to hose it. Sure enough, it's dirty, but not black. So, I hose it out again but still have the issue of the unfiltered water getting into the spa.... and eventually into the main pool (there are 3-4 outlets spread around the pool that allow filtered water to enter into the main pool, aside from the spa overflow).
I think the problem is that too much of the dead algae (it looks like it's dusted all over the bottom of the pool) is getting picked up by the vacuum and is too much for the filter to process - even though to my eye, the vacuum is barely making an impact on the floor of the pool as I run it over the bottom. Am I wrong?
After watching all this, I went to the area where I have the pump and plumbing setup, only to find that I don't have a multi-valve anywhere on the system. Only a pump, the filter, the clear sight-glass thing with the filter basket, another bread plate shaped slight glass that looks like a multi-valve "maybe should be there but isn't" and then three valves... one of which, I cannot fully turn off as the genius that put it in, installed it so close to the other plumbing that the handle hits the pipes preventing full shut off....
I also cannot find a dump pipe that would usually run into a main yard drain in the back yard. I used to have a setup at another house I lived in, and would just set the multivalve to "backwash" and as soon as I started the pump up, water would pour out of that pipe and discard it into the drain located underneath it (perfect for getting rid of dirty water while vacuuming!).
So, short of calling out a pool guy, I'm trying to figure out what setup they have installed on this pool (mid 80's pool from what I can tell) and if there is something that I'm missing here that someone else might know about, as I want to swim in my pool!
It also seems like I have a pool leak in the skimmer plastic by the looks of it (tested with the dye kit) but I will deal with later..... I am hoping to sort this issue out as I'm using 5-7.5 gallons of liquid chlorine a week just to keep the algae in check.
Any help &/or guidance is appreciated!
