Hi all, I am extremely new to pool maintenance (we had a pool servicer for our first three years in this home, and my husband took over maintenance last year, but he's out of town and now I have to deal with an algae issue despite knowing nothing about pools). Apologies for the lengthy post, but expect more details are better.
Context: While we were gone for a few days, the pool pump stopped working for an unknown period of time, but our guess is 1-2 days. In that time, algae built up along the floor and walls of the pool. I found a pool technician to get the pump up and running, but he didn't do any actual maintenance on the pool to get it back into balance. That was about a week ago, and as you'll see from my test results below, things are totally out of whack at the moment.
What I've Done So Far: (day 0 = the day the pump was back up and running, but I wasn't home until day 2, so couldn't do anything until then)
Questions:
Context: While we were gone for a few days, the pool pump stopped working for an unknown period of time, but our guess is 1-2 days. In that time, algae built up along the floor and walls of the pool. I found a pool technician to get the pump up and running, but he didn't do any actual maintenance on the pool to get it back into balance. That was about a week ago, and as you'll see from my test results below, things are totally out of whack at the moment.
What I've Done So Far: (day 0 = the day the pump was back up and running, but I wasn't home until day 2, so couldn't do anything until then)
- Day 0: My husband cleaned the cartridge filters
- Day 2: Poured in ~10oz of Algaecide (didn't measure, this was before I realized how important these kind of details were!)
- Day 2: Added 1lb of shock; made sure the chlorine floater was full of chlorine tabs (have kept it full since ... realize now that this was not the priority)
- Day 2 and since: Brushed the sides of the pool to remove any visible algae. Did one big initial brushing, and have been brushing periodically.
- Day 2 and since: Used the vacuum robot (Dolphin Triton PS with the ultrafine filters) 1-2x/day (hosing it down after each use).
- Day 3: Went to the pool store (only to later realize that was a mistake), had them test the water, and got the following results from the store:
- FC: 0.54
- TC: 0.54
- pH: 7.2
- Total Alkalinity: 4 (but "adjusted" due to effect of CYA on tested TA)
- Calcium Hardness: 177
- Cyanuric Acid: 111
- Iron: 0.1
- Copper: 0.2
- Phosphates: 1070
- TDS (?): 1200
- Day 3: Was a sucker and bought from the pool store and used: NoPhos (1 48oz bottle), AlkalinityUp (1lb). The pool store guy said that because we use the Clorox tri-chlor tablets, we wouldn't need liquid chlorine (why did I listen to this guy!), so I bought Clorox sodium dichlor shock instead (Shock XtraBlue+).
- Day 4: Used a second bottle of NoPhos (i feel sufficiently shamed about this, fear not).
- Day 4: Added 1lb shock
- Day 5: Ordered a test kit and more shock (I had really taken to heart that comment about our pool not needing liquid chlorine!)
- Day 7: Test kit and shock arrived
- Day 8 (today): Used test kit for the first time (and thus definitely might have screwed some things up but, this is what I recorded):
- FC: 4.0
- CC: [? I ran the test, but was recording all my info in the PoolMath app, which didn't have a CC input, and i don't remember what it measured]
- pH: 4.9 (not sure i did the calculation on this right. The liquid was bright yellow, far below the visible color scale. I needed 12 drops to get it to 7.4)
- TA: 70ppm
- CYA: >100 ppm (off the chart, so not sure what actual level was)
- Hardness: Couldn't get this test to work -- the agent kept separating, even after I took the tip from the kit's manual and added 5-6 drops of the hardness agent as the first step
- Water temp: 84
- Day 8:
- Soda ash: the PoolMath app suggested i would need sixty-five lbs of soda ash to get the pool's pH up to 7.6. By contrast, the kit's manual's table (when extrapolated to 13 drops) suggested about 6.9lbs. I sprinkled in the 4lbs that I did have on hand, and agitated it around with the brush.
- Shock: I couldn't get to a store for liquid chlorine today, and I had the 1lb bags of Clorox Shock XtraBlue+ that I had bought on day 5 already, so based on the PoolMath app's recommendation, I put in 2.5lbs of the sodium dichlor shock, and agitated it around with the brush. (I now realize this probably increased my CYA and did more harm than good as a result)
Questions:
- Since I just don't have enough knowledge of our system to know how to correctly clean our filters, does that affect whether I should do a SLAM? Does the fact that I used NoPhos (which says to clean the filters after use) change the answer?
- Is there any way to measure CYA when it's just "above 100" on the test kit's scale?
- With high CYA levels, do I need to drain/exchange some water before doing a SLAM? How do you determine the right amount to drain off?
- Any idea how to solve for the hardness test not working? (The pink/magenta component separates into tiny droplets and it never turns blue)
- If I need to either clean the filters or drain the pool to lower the CYA level, then it will be at least a week before I have help to do that. What would I need to do during that week to keep the pool swimmable? It's going to be 104F here this weekend, so want to make sure we're ok to get in.
