Water still cloudy after 13 days at SLAM levels, with 24 hours of filtering throughou

[emike93309]

Got a green pool blue after over a week at SLAM levels. Took a break for a week to rebalance the TA and PH, and vacuum the bottom of the pool now that it was clear enough to see, and then started the process again.

SLAM'ed the pool for 2 more weeks, passing OCLT and reading no CC for 10 days. Also tried a DE boost to my sand filter, which didn't help. Water was still cloudy after all this, so based on advice I read elsewhere on these forums tried a little polymer clarifier to boost the efficiency of the sand filter. It helped a little, but my pool is still not the crystal clear pool I ran last year.

I don't know how old the sand in my filter is, but it's the same sand that was in the filter when I bought the house over 2 years ago. Been running at 11 psi since the DE boost, with absolutely no increase in pressure despite constant filtering. Is it time to change my sand, or is there something else I may have overlooked?

Current readings:

FC - 8
CC - 0
PH - 7.3
CYA - 50
TA - 90
CH - 200

 

[Texas Splash]

emike, that is odd. Your levels look quite good when compared to the TFP recommended levels. You mentioned in your post you passed the OCLT and 0 CC, but water is still cloudy which ironically is still one of the 3 prerequisites to stopping SLAM. So unless someone else chimes-in with something sand filter specific, or with some other angle to check, you may be pointed back to the SLAM process. Off & on, it sounds like you've been at it (SLAM) for a while, but you do have to pass all three SLAM criteria. I hope you get resolution soon.

 

[tim5055]

There are only a couple of situations where we recomend the replacement of sand in a sand filter. All of them deal with situations where the sand is basically turned to rock such as high CH or a conversion from Baquacil to chlorine.

What you may need to do is conduct a Deep Cleaning of the Sand Filter.

 

[emike93309]

Yup, that's why I kept it up so long. Finally I read in several threads where both JasonLion and ChemGeek concede there are very specific situations, usually when you have a sand filter and have consistently passed the OLCT for an extended period of time, where you've done as much clarifying as you can with the SLAM process, and it's acceptable to try a clarifier (with a ton of education about what you can't mix it with and the possible side effects), which is why I finally stopped dropping bleach into the pool and decided to try something else. I figured after passing the OCLT for so long, there wasn't much else chlorine could do for me and the problem had to be on the filtration side.

- - - Updated - - -

Thanks Tim, I hadn't seen that link before! I'll give it a read through.

 

[Texas Splash]

Very interesting to know. I hope you can post a follow-up to this thread to let us know if you pursue the clarifier and if it works. Good education for some of us.

 

[emike93309]

I tried the clarifier a couple of days ago and saw a slight improvement, but nothing worth the price I paid for the bottle. Maybe about the same level of improvement I saw with the DE, which was just slight. If I've got filter problems though, it would be understandable that neither solution helped.

After reading the article and videos Tim linked I'm definitely going to give deep cleaning the sand filter a try next weekend and I'll let you know how it goes!

 

[duraleigh]

A picture of your pool water would be very helpful, I think.

 

[emike93309]

Site owner? Wow, you must be very proud of how many people this place educates!

It's after sunset and I just dumped some baking soda in the pool (that low TA reading was bugging me... the low CH will get handled later this week). I'll post some pics before and after the deep cleaning later this week!

I wish I had taken pictures of the swamp I had before the initial slam. 4 days and 2 heated disagreements at the pool store later, the pool was blue and passing the OCLT. My family thinks I'm some kind of pool wizard!

 

[tim5055]

4 days and 2 heated disagreements at the pool store later, the pool was blue and passing the OCLT.

There is no reason to ever argue with them. It reminds me of the old saying; Never try to teach a pig to whistle, it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

It's a waste of time to argue with pool store folks. Their business model is based on selling you magic potions, not fixing your pool.

 

[emike93309]

Haha, usually I let it roll right off me, it's not like they're being intentionally misleading its just how they're trained. But it was 2 seperate situations, both times with a Leslie's store manager, of someone inisisting I NEED to buy certain products (Green2clean and phosphate reducer at one store, some kind of pool aid product and copper algaecide at the next) and almost refusing to check me out until I had them. The first guy insisted I'd be back admitting he was right next weekend. The second guy didn't even ask for my rewards info because he was so mad (I may have made a quip about being all stocked up on snake oil for the summer because it was the only way to end the conversation). All I wanted was some Cal Hypo and some Muriatic Acid!

The lesson I learned is that the answer to my pool's conditions is always "great!" Admitting to having a pool problem at Leslie's is like bleeding while swimming in a shark tank. I don't know how non TFP readers do it.

 

[tim5055]

I don't know how non TFP readers do it.

The spend a lot of money.

I admit, I go to pool stores at times to amuse myself. My last trip there I had my water tested and the only thing the poor girl could come up with was that my TA was "low" at 70 and I needed 48 pounds of a special balancer to bring it up to their "standards". I said no thanks - but watched another employee leading a poor guy around the store selecting what he needed to balance and clean his pool. A shopping cart full! It took two employees to help him load it all up......

 

[emike93309]

Pool pic as requested, before I start deep cleaning the filter.

Today's numbers:

FC - 6
CC - 0.5
PH - 7.5
TA - 80
CH - 200
CYA - 50

Any thoughts on why TA would have dropped 10 points? I added baking soda last weekend to Poolmath's specs, and saw the slight PH bump I expected, but when I retested Tuesday I saw no increase in TA despite, and now I'm down. I haven't changed any water, although I have topped for evaporation. I know my old results were valid because I was consistently testing 90 for a month. I double checked today's reading in case of error, but I got 80 twice. Could my chemicals be getting old? I've had them for about a year and a half. Or could there be another reason my TA would drift downwards?

 

[emike93309]

Any advice on how to undo these PVC pipes? I thought they were threaded based on the grips where they connect with the valve, but they're actually cemented shut.

 

[tim5055]

Any advice on how to undo these PVC pipes? I thought they were threaded based on the grips where they connect with the valve, but they're actually cemented shut.

you have to cut the pipes. To replace you would add a union to each pipe.

 

[emike93309]

After 30 minutes I still had so much crud coming up it looked like the Eye of Sauron. Took over an hour to get it running clear. No wonder my pool is cloudy...

I'll get everything put back together and back flushed and report back when I know if it worked or not!

 

[chem geek]

I tried the clarifier a couple of days ago and saw a slight improvement, but nothing worth the price I paid for the bottle. Maybe about the same level of improvement I saw with the DE, which was just slight. If I've got filter problems though, it would be understandable that neither solution helped.

I'm not suggesting you try clarifier again, but next time someone wants to use clarifier they need to check in with specific recommendations from us first because a lot of them are not very effective. For clarifiers, I'd only use either GLB Clear Blue or Bioguard Polysheen Blue. For flocculants, OMNI Liquid Floc Plus or Bioguard Powerfloc are good and for an alum floc Leslie's alum enhancer is good. For professional clarifiers of very challenging water, the two-stage Seaklear PRS system is what is often used in commercial/public pools.

What is very odd in your situation is that the DE added to the sand filter did not work. There isn't much that gets by DE so water may be bypassing some of your filter for some reason, perhaps channeling. [EDIT] Based on your latest post it looks like you just had so much crud in the filter that it was perhaps adding as much junk as it could be removing. I have my fingers crossed that the deep cleaning of the sand filter does the trick. [END-EDIT]

 

[emike93309]

Right? That pic was taken after 30 minutes too. In the beginning it was like mud coming up! This all started when I abandoned the pool for over 3 months due to a family medical emergency. 3 months worth of pool junk all at once, despite a lot of backflushing the first week, might have been too much to ask of a filter I've never opened before.

I forgot to ask, I downloaded a copy of this filter's owners manual, and it gives a specification of 200 lbs of sand. It also says that the sand should come within 6" of the top of the filter. I'm current 12" away from the top. I have no idea how much sand is in it, but am I safe adding fresh sand until I hit that 6" mark? Or is there a risk that the sand will end up being too heavy without knowing how much sand is already in it?

 

[emike93309]

Besides the sand question, I also forgot to ask: when I vacuumed the pool for the first time in 3 months, I vacuumed to filter instead of waste at first and saw a black cloud of garbage come back out of my returns. Is it more likely that the filter was just overloaded, or is there a possibility I need to replace my spider gasket?

 

[Fungi]

I've never heard of vacuuming to waste. I've always vacuumed using the filter setting, then backwash, then RINSE, then return to filtering.

 

[chem geek]

Vacuuming to waste bypasses the filter and is used when you want to drain something that you don't want caught in the filter. To be able to do this, you need a mult-port valve that has that option so has pipe that bypasses the filter and goes to a drain (or outside somewhere to drain).