Hello everyone! I stumbled across this AMAZING site after googling things like "why is my pool green", "can I use household bleach in my pool", "I'm about to set my pool on fire", things like that.
I bought my first "big" pool the first week of May. Its an above ground, steel frame, vinyl pool. 17 feet wide by 52" deep. Around 6400 gallons. I live in drought stricken Central California (temps get to 115), and this is the first time we've had a pool of this size due to cutting back on water usage. Well since we went from no rain, to drowning in it this year, I decided screw this I'm getting a pool. Now I'm trying to maintain it.
Everything was going great until about last week. We had been keeping chlorine tablets in a tablet dispenser, and doing weekly shocks. And then it started to get cloudy. Thus began my research. Apparently, I was supposed to be testing it and maintaining all kinds of stuff like Ph, Akalinity, Free Chlorine, blah blah blah. I had no idea so much went into it lmao! I bought the Clorox test kit and got the app. That helped a lot. Things were looking up. And then 6 of my 32 nieces and nephews came over to swim, along with my 3 kids and their dad. The next day my pool was GREEN. I'm not a total noob...I know its algae. My husband shocked it yesterday morning, and its still green. I tested it earlier today and the free chlorine was at 0. So I put some of that in there. I brushed the sides and the bottom. I was about to pour all my household bleach in there but decided umm yeah maybe I should figure out what I'm doing before I start throwing a bunch of stuff in there. So here I am!! I checked out that SLAM video and that was awesome. So I'm about to go back out there and see what I can do.
Thanks for having me, and I hope to have a sparkling pool before our temps get outrageous. When you live in Satan's Armpit, a pool is a must.
I bought my first "big" pool the first week of May. Its an above ground, steel frame, vinyl pool. 17 feet wide by 52" deep. Around 6400 gallons. I live in drought stricken Central California (temps get to 115), and this is the first time we've had a pool of this size due to cutting back on water usage. Well since we went from no rain, to drowning in it this year, I decided screw this I'm getting a pool. Now I'm trying to maintain it.
Everything was going great until about last week. We had been keeping chlorine tablets in a tablet dispenser, and doing weekly shocks. And then it started to get cloudy. Thus began my research. Apparently, I was supposed to be testing it and maintaining all kinds of stuff like Ph, Akalinity, Free Chlorine, blah blah blah. I had no idea so much went into it lmao! I bought the Clorox test kit and got the app. That helped a lot. Things were looking up. And then 6 of my 32 nieces and nephews came over to swim, along with my 3 kids and their dad. The next day my pool was GREEN. I'm not a total noob...I know its algae. My husband shocked it yesterday morning, and its still green. I tested it earlier today and the free chlorine was at 0. So I put some of that in there. I brushed the sides and the bottom. I was about to pour all my household bleach in there but decided umm yeah maybe I should figure out what I'm doing before I start throwing a bunch of stuff in there. So here I am!! I checked out that SLAM video and that was awesome. So I'm about to go back out there and see what I can do.
Thanks for having me, and I hope to have a sparkling pool before our temps get outrageous. When you live in Satan's Armpit, a pool is a must.
you are here now and it WILL get better! Your pool will be awesome and fun when we get done teaching you how to take care of it!
