Adding chlorine makes water cloudy

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JulieMorris316

JulieMorris316

0
Jul 21, 2017
58
McIntosh FL
This has started happening again just now this season, and it also happened last summer about partway through the season. One day everything is normal, and then the next time I add chlorine, I can see it forming a visible white cloud as it moves trough the water. It doesn’t dissipate quickly either, it stays. It will go away for the most part after a day or two, either by the filter catching the “cloud”/precipitate or the chlorine levels dropping back down.

Anyone know what might be causing this? Here are my levels (Taylor 2005 test kit, fiberglass pool, no SWG):

PH 7.4
CH 250
TA 70
CYA 50

My FC was in the 1-2 range so I added enough to get it to the 5-10 range, and now the pool is cloudy white. I can still see the bottom of the deep end, but ?.

The only other thing in the water is Proteam Metal Magic which I use to combat some pretty decent staining. I added quite a bit at the start of the season but haven’t put any more in since. Adding chlorine produces the same white cloud as when the MM is first working. Could it be causing the metals to come out of solution, or...?
 
Is it plain bleach? Clorox bleach? Liquid Chlorine or "Shock" liquid? Some folks accidentally buy thickened or CLoramax type bleaches and it foams up on them. Some have scents, or cleaners, etc.

That's why I ask. What strength and brand is it?
 
Hmmmm... ok, so you're using the ideal chlorine then..

So I don't know what might be causing the cloudy water? Something about the Metal Magic I am assuming but... don't know.

I hope someone else might have an idea. I'm sorry.
 
No problem, and thank you for trying to help! I’m thinking it has to have something to do with the MM because it’s happened about partway through the summer both seasons that I’ve been using it, but I never had it happen until I started combatting the stains. So it’s the only thing that would make sense. I’m hoping someone might have seen it before and have some ideas on how to keep it from happening. I’ve removed an electric heater from the system that I think might have been contributing to the stains so hopefully I won’t even have to use it or have this problem next year, but for now I’m looking at the rest of the summer with cloudy water unless I can get it figured out ?.
 
When you use high volumes of Metal Magic it will react with chlorine and cloud the pool temporarily. Some say this is precipitate of sequestered material dropping out of solution and it gets filtered out. I don't know if that is a true statement. You will continue to see this happen until all the sequestrant is spent. Do you see a lot of white stuff when you clean your cartridge?
 
zea3 said:
When you use high volumes of Metal Magic it will react with chlorine and cloud the pool temporarily. Some say this is precipitate of sequestered material dropping out of solution and it gets filtered out. I don't know if that is a true statement. You will continue to see this happen until all the sequestrant is spent. Do you see a lot of white stuff when you clean your cartridge?
Click to expand...

There is usually quite a bit of white stuff after I’ve dosed the pool, but it usually seems to lessen after the initial dose and cloudiness in the water has subsided. The MM does turn the water cloudy and (supposedly) this is the sequestered metal filtering out, but like you I’m also not sure how true that is.. It’s weird though that it only starts to happen when adding chlorine quite a while after any more MM has been added, and after multiple rounds of chlorine addition over time without a similar result, so I’m not sure what drives it to hit that point? I’ve read of people using MM on a consistent basis but haven’t seen anyone mention this happening so I’m kind of at a loss.

Should I maybe keep the chlorine on the higher side for a bit until it can react with whatever is causing this and the filter can get it out?
 

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I suspect they were either iron or copper, but I didn’t test them specifically except for knowing that a vitamin C tablet removed them. Im starting to have some spotty stains of a different kind that the MM didn’t address, and just ordered a Jacks stain ID kit, but the original one was a uniform layer that formed over most of the pool surface so it made the water look greenish when it was actually clear. If I disturbed the water level I could see the transition from white fiberglass to stain and it looked brownish.
 
It is municipal water. I just pulled the last report from our town website and these are the results. Not sure any of them are high enough to cause the stains. In that case it might have been copper, or maybe some other metal from the heater? I’ve since removed that from the line, so if that’s where it was coming from I at least shouldn’t be introducing any more metals to the water.

Do you think the particular metal may have something to do with the cloudiness I’m seeing when I add chlorine? 5AA8799B-04FE-44B3-A6E8-3A9DF0BF83DD.jpeg
 
Clouding when you add chlorine is from the sequestrant. If the heater had a copper exchanger that was deteriorating that could be the source of your stain. The best way to fix the problem is to get rid of the metal. The AA treatment lifts the stain and the sequestrant keeps it in solution. The next step would be to drain the pool and refill with metal free water. As long as your tap water is low in metals and you don’t use any copper based algaecides you won’t need sequestrant anymore.
 
The bottom chart confuses me, does it say it has got a test of 0.824 ppm copper somewhere in the system?

Remember this is a water test from somewhere else, not your house, there can and will be more iron and copper from the lines to your house.
 
cfherrman said:
The bottom chart confuses me, does it say it has got a test of 0.824 ppm copper somewhere in the system?

Remember this is a water test from somewhere else, not your house, there can and will be more iron and copper from the lines to your house.
Click to expand...

Yes that kind of confused me too. It says that’s the tap water analysis, so I’m guessing they took it from maybe the town office or somewhere similar, and the main analysis from the water tower, but I’d need to call and ask to be sure. I live in a town of only about 500 people in a really small geographical area, with mostly 100+ year old homes (including my own). So while I’d expect them to be similar it is very likely my tap/refill water may be higher or lower than what they tested. I do still have some cast iron pipes inside my house, but to my knowledge everything on the outside including the pool water source has been replaced with PVC.

On a positive note I have noticed that the stains don’t seem to be returning as quickly (or at all yet so far) since I cut the electric heater out of the plumbing line.
 
zea3 said:
Clouding when you add chlorine is from the sequestrant. If the heater had a copper exchanger that was deteriorating that could be the source of your stain. The best way to fix the problem is to get rid of the metal. The AA treatment lifts the stain and the sequestrant keeps it in solution. The next step would be to drain the pool and refill with metal free water. As long as your tap water is low in metals and you don’t use any copper based algaecides you won’t need sequestrant anymore.
Click to expand...

That makes sense. I was hoping to avoid the dreaded drain and refill, but I know I’ll also hit a point of being tired enough of dealing with the current situation that it will start to seem like less of a chore lol. Do you have any idea why it seems to hit a turning point so quickly? Where I can add metal magic and go through the initial cloudy stage, then add doses of chlorine for weeks on end, and then all of a sudden it starts going cloudy on chlorine addition? Would adding more sequestrant (ie more Metal Magic) keep this from happening, or make it worse?
 
Just to have a reference of it here, this is with the pool stained vs after adding the metal magic. The stains aren’t patchy, it’s just a uniform stain over the whole surface and makes the water look green when it’s not. So whatever it was coming from it seemed to be a significant enough amount of metal to be able to cover the whole shell of the pool. Would the levels in the water analysis be enough to make this happen? 97D99B7E-3B7C-4345-81B1-ED25123EA6F4.jpeg
 

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