Hello, I have been lurking in the forums for a few years now, but just registered so I could post this thread. I am working on my brother-in-law's in ground pool (about 15,000 gal). it has a vinyl liner around the sides but feels like the bottom might be concrete. He just bought the house this winter and the pool has not been open for a couple years. When he removed the cover, it was discovered that it was torn and a whole bunch of leaves and stuff had gone into the pool over the past couple years. Well silly me, I said I would help when he asked me what to do, I felt pretty confident in the SLAM and have used the "green swamp to blue oasis" sticky to clear up my pool in the past with good success.
So on Sunday when I arrived to start helping him get it ready the pool looked like a massive glass of tea. The color was dark brown but the clarity of the undisturbed water was pretty good. We got the pump fired up and added enough chlorine to get up to shock levels. We started cleaning the leaves and debris out of the pool and could see the floaters and we could actually see the water color turn to a grayish green. We continued to check and hold the chlorine level until it became too dark to see anymore. We did not leave the pump going because the pump was needing to be backflushed about every 2 hours.
Monday morning he fired the pump back up and continued the chlorine checking and topping off, but all my B-I-L has to test with are test strips so he was not able to get a good level throughout the day, but he assures me it never dropped below 10 between the morning and when I arrived in the afternoon. When I got there it was around 33ppm free chlorine but the pool was still greeen. I made a couple checks and let the chlorine com down to around 20 before we began adding more. He continued the routing and this time was able to allow the pump to run overnight.
On tuesday, He added chlorine in the morning before work and when I showed up around 4:30 in the evening the level was down to about 2ppm. I shocked again and after 1 hr it was at 33ppm. He added two more gallons before bed last night and this morning I tested it before work and the level was still over 30ppm, i stopped putting drops in because I am starting to run out of them....
Ok, so here is the dilemma, the pool is still as green or greener than it has been the entire time. We don't seem to be making any headway on this and I am curious where we are going awry. The grayish hue has gone away and it is now a definite green color and the pool pump can run all night and only gain a couple PSI. We can barely see the third step in the pool and I am not sure why it seems to be going backwards.
Last night when the levels had dropped I tested all the levels again and they were as follows;
FC 2ppm
PH 7.2
TA 240
CYA not detected.
Any help is greatly appreciated, everyone keeps telling us to pump it out and start from scratch, but my B-I-L and I think we can get it this way and really want to prove everyone else wrong. Thanks in advance for any and all help.
So on Sunday when I arrived to start helping him get it ready the pool looked like a massive glass of tea. The color was dark brown but the clarity of the undisturbed water was pretty good. We got the pump fired up and added enough chlorine to get up to shock levels. We started cleaning the leaves and debris out of the pool and could see the floaters and we could actually see the water color turn to a grayish green. We continued to check and hold the chlorine level until it became too dark to see anymore. We did not leave the pump going because the pump was needing to be backflushed about every 2 hours.
Monday morning he fired the pump back up and continued the chlorine checking and topping off, but all my B-I-L has to test with are test strips so he was not able to get a good level throughout the day, but he assures me it never dropped below 10 between the morning and when I arrived in the afternoon. When I got there it was around 33ppm free chlorine but the pool was still greeen. I made a couple checks and let the chlorine com down to around 20 before we began adding more. He continued the routing and this time was able to allow the pump to run overnight.
On tuesday, He added chlorine in the morning before work and when I showed up around 4:30 in the evening the level was down to about 2ppm. I shocked again and after 1 hr it was at 33ppm. He added two more gallons before bed last night and this morning I tested it before work and the level was still over 30ppm, i stopped putting drops in because I am starting to run out of them....
Ok, so here is the dilemma, the pool is still as green or greener than it has been the entire time. We don't seem to be making any headway on this and I am curious where we are going awry. The grayish hue has gone away and it is now a definite green color and the pool pump can run all night and only gain a couple PSI. We can barely see the third step in the pool and I am not sure why it seems to be going backwards.
Last night when the levels had dropped I tested all the levels again and they were as follows;
FC 2ppm
PH 7.2
TA 240
CYA not detected.
Any help is greatly appreciated, everyone keeps telling us to pump it out and start from scratch, but my B-I-L and I think we can get it this way and really want to prove everyone else wrong. Thanks in advance for any and all help.
