Help! High Alkalinity Low pH causing cloudy water

Jump to latest Follow Reply
S

subsnao

0
Jun 1, 2018
20
Chicago, IL
Hello everyone!

My fiance and I bought our first house in January and moved in in February. The house came with a pool (stats below), which she is excited about (me not so much... you will find out why shortly).

Pool Stats:
  • Above ground
  • 24 ft x 4ft deep - ~14000 gallons (makes the math easier)
  • Cartridge filter
  • Filter is a Hayward Swimpro Voyager model SW150. Pump is a Hayward model (unsure of model number)
  • I do have a Nature2 chlorinator inline. Currently, it has a bad cartridge in it (haven't been able to find a replacement) and no chlorine tabs.
  • Our water is a combination of well and water from a few nearby rivers that is treated. It is hard, but nothing extraordinary. We do not have a private well.

My most recent test results:
  • FC: 0
  • CC: 0
  • pH: ~7.2
  • TA: ~160
  • CH: ~240
  • CYA: 0

Story time!

When we opened the pool, water was crystal clear. There was algae and leaves on the bottom of the pool, but water was clear. I vaccumed as best as I could, but water became too cloudy to see anything. I left the filter and pump to run 24/7 to see if it would clear up. The green color went away after a few days and turned a cloudy blue color. That is where my trouble started. TA was measured by the pool store above 250. So i started adding muriatic acid to combat the high TA. This, as I came to understand, nuked my pH all the way down to about 6.8. The other night I added some pH Increaser I got from the pool store. This upped the pH slightly to 6.9 and got the TA to about ~130. I then added 2 boxes of Borax to try to bring the pH up again (knowing fully that it would increase TA also) and arrived at the numbers you see above. My pool is now a cloudy blue/green color and I feel like I am running in circles. I only have a return jet available for aeration. Help?
 
STOP! Your PH /TA is not the first thing that needs attention with these results. And your PH and TA is not the source of your cloudy water.

Before we act on those results what test kit did those results come from?

You need CYA and chlorine. Read Pool School. Read about the Overnight Chlorine Loss Test to determine if you have an algae problem and need to follow the SLAM process.

Get rid of the Nature2 and the cartridge. It does not help you and could be a source of your algae problems.
 
The results came from a Taylor 2006 with the FAS-DPD test. I made sure to get the one with the powder as I read somewhere that it is one of the best ones to have. The strips just weren't cutting it for me.

Right now I have a floater in the pool with 3 3" trichlor pucks in it just to get some chlorine in the water. I know its meant for slow release, but some is better than none right?

I thought I had to deal with the pH and TA before shocking/chlorinating as the chlorine wouldn't be effective when those are out of whack. I can run to the pool store tomorrow to get some CYA (should I get liquid or solid?). I also have about 7 bags of shock from the store as well. I believe those are Cal-Hypo. I have read through most of the Pool School, but apparently not enough. Thank you so much for your help. Tomorrow morning I will remove the chlorinator from the loop and just have pump/filter running.
 
Hello all!

Update time. I have been adding enough chlorine according to the pool calc to get me to SLAM level. I am also slowly adding in CYA through solid stabilizer in a sock in my skimmer. That seems to be going well. I did have to dose the pool with Borax as the pH dropped below 7. Here are my latest results:

FC: 4.5
CC: I didn't test this but there is a bunch in there
pH: ~7 (after borax)
TA: ~160
CH: Last test was ~250
CYA: Somewhere around 10-20 I would think. Test tube was full and black dot still visible

I seem to be having trouble keeping FC at SLAM level. I assume that means I have a nasty algae problem (and losing some to the sun). I have been dosing pretty much every hour or two. Any advice? Pool today is a lot less green but still cloudy. I hope I can get this thing ready by June 23 as we are having a party. And hopefully I dont go broke buying bleach...
 
@jblizzle

I just retested the water about an hour after I dosed today. FC was 8.5 and CC was ~2.5. Pool calc says to add 1.3 jugs of 8.25% bleach (I was able to find 5 jugs of the concentrated stuff today cheaper than the normal stuff). I am going to add about 1.5 jugs right now and test is another hour or 2. Any advice? Pool stinks like chlorine, but I attribute that to the high(er) CC level.
 
So I have gone through now, in one weekend, 17 121oz bottles of bleach. Most of it the 6% stuff, some the concentrated stuff at 8.25%. Is this normal? Pool is definitely getting better looking. Even in one day today the pool got more blue. I am going to continue with the dosing, but should I be worried about anything? How do you guys keep up with the bleach demand?
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
subsnao said:
So I have gone through now, in one weekend, 17 121oz bottles of bleach. Most of it the 6% stuff, some the concentrated stuff at 8.25%. Is this normal? Pool is definitely getting better looking. Even in one day today the pool got more blue. I am going to continue with the dosing, but should I be worried about anything? How do you guys keep up with the bleach demand?
Click to expand...
attachment.php
 
@Richard, that would probably be cheaper in the long run, lol.

Update time!

Latest test results before the last dose of the night:
FC: ~5.5
CC: Didn't test this time
TA: ~150
CH: Didn't test this time
CYA: I am assuming 20. I filled the tube on my Taylor test kit and the dot was still visible. Tube was cloudy, but I could still see the dot.

I added ~1.5lbs more of stabilizer. That brings the total added to ~4.5 lbs over 2-3 days. I will test it again in a day or two once this newest addition dissolves. Pool is super blue, but still cloudy. I am hoping (for my sanity and to get the Mrs. off my back...) that over the next day or two we can start to see the bottom. I was only able to add 2 121oz jugs of 6% bleach as that is all I had left of that strength. I have some 8.25% jugs, but I will start using those tomorrow. I figured I was safe undercutting the SLAM level by a little bit as the sun is now down and the pool doesn't seem to have any algae left in it. I am still having trouble seeing FC above 10ppm, but that could be due to my testing intervals and my low CYA level. What do you all think?
 
So quick question for everyone. The previous owners of the home we bought left all of the pool equipment for us, including a very nice robotic vacuum. When can I start using this thing? It is kind of hard for me to manually vacuum as my AG pool does not have a deck around it. The water today is still very blue, but I can see a little deeper than yesterday. I stuck the brush head on the pole and put it all the way down to the bottom. I could barely see the brush at the bottom, which is an improvement. Ever since I started the SLAM I couldn't see more than a foot or so down.
 
Threw in the robot last night and let him run for 2 or 3 hours. The amount of crud he pulled up was amazing. Who knew that much stuff lurked below decent looking water. My chlorine levels were slightly higher this morning than they were yesterday morning, probably due to the fact that I pulled up a bunch of leaves and dead algae with the robot. I hope this process is over soon, for my sanity at least.
 
Update time!

Water is definitely almost clear. Still a bit cloudy, but I can see the robot running along the bottom much better. All of the crud he pulled up last night must have been eating the chlorine I was dumping in. When I got home from work (I dosed the pool before I left for work), I had a FC of 3.5, CC of 0.5, and CYA of ~30. The CYA is a bit strange as I have added almost 5 pounds of granular CYA over the past few days. We have had a bit of rain, but no downpours or anything. I wonder why my CYA is still low? Any ideas? Also cleaned the filter today. It was slightly green, but it hasn't been cleaned since this past weekend. It didn't take long to clean and the stuff coming off the filter was a lot less "algae-like" than it has been. So I think I am over the algae hump. OCLT should be happening within the next week I would think.

And thanks everyone for the advice and support. I was slightly skeptical that pool care could be this easy (3 common household chemicals, no way!). But I knew something had to be right if one of the internet's largest pool care forums was preaching this type of pool care. Maintaining the pool this year and opening next year is going to be a piece of cake.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply