Hazy water, and stinging eyes?

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I retested, and after averaging a few times, I think CYA is closer to 50. FC seemed to be holding pretty steady and wasn't crazy low when it was hazy/cloudy. I test daily, and had been at 5 or so for a while. So if I go up to slam level, I probably wont need it there long, as I'm passing CC and OCLT already. And it is ok to swim up to shock level right? The kids will kill me if on this 85 degree day I say they can't go in the pool! LOL
 
If you've got proper circulation, filtration and active chlorine levels, and your water is not over-saturated with calcium carbonate, then you should not have cloudiness. It should be very clear as shown with my pool during the day and at night (the pool is 6 feet deep at the floor drains). Now I can see tiny particles in the water in front of the lights at night which is in part due to having a cartridge filter. With DE, you see less of those, with sand usually more.
 
Your pool is beautiful!

Is calcium carbonate, just the CH test? That's ok for me...anyway, right now the water looks great, and last night, only about 12-18" in front of the light had some visible haziness. That's what I saw when I first got the pool dialed in, so it looks good again. Here's the test results of the OCLT...

10pm last night:

FC: 13.5ppm
CC: 0.5

5am this morning:

FC: 14ppm (1 more drop than last night to get to clear, so I assume some margin of error in our tests)
CC: 0.25 (I say a quarter, as it was hard to tell if it even had a pink tinge, so I'm taking that < 1 drop would have cleared it)

I did each test, night and morning, twice to be sure I was getting the same results.

So given:

1. clear water
2. 0 loss of FC overnight
3. CC < 0.5

I'm thinking I kicked it rather quickly...but maybe just for good measure, bump the FC up one more time today before I go to work, say to maybe 18 (1 gallon of 12.5%) and let it then coast down from there back to about 5...

Thoughts?
 
Still curious on a few things too -

1. What would cause my filter pressure to go up 10% for about a day, then come back down to normal pressure?
2. I'm guessing I likely had algae in the pool from the start when I opened, or it develope as I got the hang of things, but just never fully exploded? So good I caught it early. Past OCLT tests resulted in 1ppm, vs last night, which was 0.
3. If #2 is yes, now that it seems gone, normal FC levels shouldn't allow it to start right?
 
steveg_nh said:
1. What would cause my filter pressure to go up 10% for about a day, then come back down to normal pressure?
2. I'm guessing I likely had algae in the pool from the start when I opened, or it develope as I got the hang of things, but just never fully exploded? So good I caught it early. Past OCLT tests resulted in 1ppm, vs last night, which was 0.
3. If #2 is yes, now that it seems gone, normal FC levels shouldn't allow it to start right?
Click to expand...
Just following up on this.

  1. I have no idea.
  2. Perhaps. If algae is already established then normal chlorine amounts won't be enough to kill it quickly enough because the algae will already be clumped or chained and that needs more chlorine to get to the inner cells to kill them. Normal chlorine levels work great at preventing individual algae cells from reproducing, but aren't good when they've already bloomed into a "mass". That's what the higher SLAM levels are for -- to break through the mass more quickly to kill all the algae.
  3. Yes, in theory. However, there might be areas of poor circulation so if algae seems to start up in a particular area you can consider changing your circulation pattern or running your FC higher to hopefully diffuse sufficient chlorine into the area.
 
Thanks. I think I have things under control now. No more cloudiness, and the pool's been seeing heavy use. I had to dump about 12" of water last night so the patio builder could properly caulk the coping stones, so I'll have to see what my water chemistry is like after filling from the hose tonight...But I think by hitting it hard, I killed off whatever was lurking.
 
Those night pics of your pool are awesome, definitely a bit of a haze in front of the light though. Have you tried a scum bug type of thing. That will pull any oils out of the pool? My guess is it's makeup, oils from perfume, lotions etc. suspended in the water and it just takes a long time to get rid of it without some help from an absorber.
 

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I do have the scum bug in the skimmers, both. Those things get nasty! I've read though, that with a light on, it's almost impossible to have 0 haze in front of the light so that hasn't worried me much.
 
With a DE filter, one usually doesn't see many particles or haze in front of a light at night, but that assumes good circulation and a light bather load. With a heavier bather load it takes time (multiple turnovers) to remove the dead skin cells and other particulate matter from the pool. My 16,000 gallon pool with a cartridge filter and light bather load (one person every day for about an hour) shows some floating particles in front of the light as shown in this post with an overview picture of the pool at night here.

Given your bather load, your pool looks very good. If you were to not use the pool for several days, you'd probably see fewer particles/haze in front of the light at night.
 
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