Amazing how little filtration has to do with clearing algae

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JohnT

JohnT

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Apr 4, 2007
10,439
SW Indiana
Pool Size
21000
Surface
Vinyl
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
My pump quit last Wednesday morning, and thanks to poolcenter.com's speedy 2 full business day order processing, I didn't get a new one until Tuesday with 2nd day air shipping. :rant: Also got a new filter from Amazon.

Finally got everything replumbed last night. Needless to say, the pool was a swamp, with the steps covered with green slime and visibility of a foot or so. I didn't have time to put sand in the filter, so I turned everything on running on recirculate so I could chlorinate. Raised the pool to shock level about 7pm, ran to a ballgame, and when I got home at 9 I was down to 4ppm. Boosted it back up, came inside and watched TV until 10:30. Down to 7ppm, boosted it back up and back to the TV. At 12:30 I went out for one last check, boosted the chlorine back up from 6ppm and went to bed.

At 7 this morning, the chlorine was at 6ppm, the slime was completely gone from the steps and I could see the pool bottom out past the shallow end break. No green at all, just the cloudy blue.

No filtration, no brushing, no algaecide and no sweeping, just steady shock-level chlorination for 12 hours.
 
That's interesting John. Of course, it is still cloudy though so it's safe to say that you will still need the filter to clear that dead algae up. At least you are holding your FC though and that's a good thing considering what you had going before.

When is your new filter arriving and which one did you get?
 
257WbyMag said:
That's interesting John. Of course, it is still cloudy though so it's safe to say that you will still need the filter to clear that dead algae up. At least you are holding your FC though and that's a good thing considering what you had going before.

When is your new filter arriving and which one did you get?
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I got a new Hayward S244T. Ordered it from Amazon about 15 minutes after I ordered the pump. Filter arrived on Friday, but I had to wait on the pump. The filter was responsible for part of the delay, since the Hayward multiport has both the inlet and outlet on the same side, and very close together. With my solar, I had to replumb a good bit to make it work since the Pentair had the inlet and outlet 90 degrees apart.

I'm very impressed that in only 12 hours the green was completely gone.
 
John, I'm curious why, when waiting for the new kit, you didn't add your usual chlorine dose directly and stir it in with a brush or similar.

I think that the filter, even with sand, doesn't remove much green algae - mine doesn't anyway - so it doesn't have much effect on clearing a green pool. Possibly you could chlorinate and set the multiport to recirculate to get the same effect (although I can't think of any reason why you would want to do that).
 
I had had filter problems all season, and I hadn't been able to vacuum. The pool was actually dirtier in mid-May than it was when I opened. I was using pucks to chlorinate since I had low CYA, and I had a very large chlorine demand due to sunlight and organics in the pool. I kept it chlorinated by manual mixing for a short while, but it soon became apparent that it was going to be easier to clean it up afterwards since I had to go to 8 or 10ppm every morning in order to have any chlorine left when I got home 10hrs later. I could deal with it with a pump, but once the pump quit it was too much work.
 
The main elements that make up most cellular material are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. There is plenty of carbon from carbonates in the water (including carbon dioxide which is what plants like especially) and plenty of oxygen and hydrogen in water (as well as some dissolved oxygen) and nitrogen from nitrates (which are a by-product of oxidation of the ammonia and urea in your sweat and urine). There are also phosphates and other micronutrients in the water. Plenty for algae to use to grow, but oh so easy to prevent using chlorine.
 
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