How do I remove a large amount of organic debris.

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I ordered two and put them in tonight. And that was one problem solved. Now next problem. Some of the joints are leaking. Most of them were solved by installing the missing o-rings or by tightening down the joint. But I have one that's not yielding to either of those solutions. This is the connector at the top of the pump. Ok, so I had a spare connector with the same size o-ring and replaced the o-ring and that didn't solve the problem. So I'm a bit confused about what to do next.
 
Did anyone go over how easy they are to overtighten ? That makes more drips, not less. And it pinches o-rings, ruining them. I found that mine all needed to be snug, and not what I considered tight. It only took about 5 years to figure that out.
 
Just think of how much knowledge you are gaining by doing it yourself. Once you understand the entire system, you will never be held hostage by a pool guy/gal again!
I really like this net skimmer, link below. I have had it for four years and its still in great shape. Has a lifetime warranty. I run my pool year round (SC) and in the fall I get a good many leaves. Sometimes I will brush them all into the deep end and once they settle use the net to remove as much as possible. My vac has a catch bag that works good for leaves. It isnt as fine as the regular one. Good luck! You got this.

 
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So I started my SLAM process yesterday night. The pH was high, so I added 2kg of Dry acid and that brought the pH down to around 7.2 this morning. Then I added 1 gallon of stabilizer and waited two hours to test the CYA in the pool again. It still registered at zero. So at that point, I added a second gallon of stabilizer and one gallon of liquid chlorine (10%). I then returned to the pool about 4 hours later, and the big change was that all the tadpoles that were in the pool were now dead. So I'm a tadpole mass murder... but it had to be done. They were all floating on the surface, so I grabbed my pool net and spent the next 25 minutes fishing out tadpole corpses. Good Fun!. They all ended up the compost pile. I took a sample of water, and I'm going to test it after I run a few household errands. Feels good to start this process. I still have the pump running, oh and I put three 3in tabs in the chlorinator. I expect his will keep the chlorine level up. I have looked around but finding liquid chlorine at this point is just about impossible. I have three more gallons of liquid. But for now while the pump is running the cholrinator is going to be my source of chlorine over night. I'll have a better idea of the water chemistry in an hour or so.
 
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2 gallons of CYA is about right. Let it mix now. If that doesn't show any at all after 24 hours, all of the crud may have turned to ammonia. To test for ammonia you add to raise FC to 10 and test again in 10 mins. If you lost most of it in 10 minutes, it's ammonia.

The cure is to repeat those 10 min cycles until the FC holds for 10 mins. Then you SLAM.
 
Correction, in stock at Williams lumber in Hopewell Jct.

HTH Pool Care Liquid Chlorinating Chemicals 1 gal Mfr# 11189 - Ace Hardware

Your pool stays clean and clear with HTH sanitizer products, designed to effectively guard against bacteria, algae and other organisms. We offer two types of chlorine-based sanitizers: stabilized and unstabilized. This convenient and easy to use liquid chlorinator effectively sanitizes and kills...
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Tallfellow said:
Ok so just tested the water and these are my numbers: FC 2.0, Ph 7.3, TA 120, CH 125, CYA 25
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Nice. No ammonia. Use 30 as the CYA as we round up and it may not be fully mixed yet or have some trapped in the filter dissolving still. Ph is close enough for SLAM so full steam ahead !!!

FC is the only # to care about now. Every 2 hours is best to test/add. Do the best you can.
 

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Test FC and add as often as you can. We prefer 2 hour intervals. The longer it stays below SLAM level the longer it takes.

SLAM Process
 
I've been testing 3 times a day during the day, about 12 hours or so total. So once every 4 hours. I have the chlorine pool pucks (3") in the chlorinator. The chlorinator is set at it's most aggressive level, it's running wide open. So I think my chlorine levels are not dropping much, even as the chlorine is being used..

FC was down to 6 this morning, so I put two quarts of bleach in to the pool. I was going to put the two quarts of bleach in last night, but I wanted to see what numbers I got this morning. It's lower, so I put in the bleach. I'll test again mid-day. Of course because the pucks have stabilizer in them, the CYA is going to go up a little over time, but I think I've got lots of head room on that. They've been going about 4 or 5 days now, and I haven't seen any appreciable increase in the CYA.

I don't have a good sense of what should be going on with combined chlorine. Should that stay the same, go up, go down? What prompts the generation of that? Does it depend on CYA levels?


Tony
 
I would anticipate that between your high FC levels and the availability of UV on the pool, your CC would stay very low (but I defer to the experts — just noodling through it a bit).
 
It's hard to predict what will happen with your CC.
As chlorine combines with organics, it goes up. But if you get FC high enough over the SLAM (shock) level, you achieve breakpoint and free it back up. As you get the organics out of the pool and keep the FC level up, CC should go down. It may take a while to get it down below 0.5, even starting from 1. It all just depends on your individual pool, what it is sanitizing, how much FC is going in, and how much UV exposure there is.

If you still have a lot of intact leaves, you could get a leaf gulper (HD/Lowe's sometimes have them, Amazon has them). Swimming Pool Leaf Gulper Leaf Eater Vacuum Cleaner w/ wheels and brushes

It hooks up to your garden hose. Put a couple of tennis balls in the net to keep it held up (if the one you get didn't come with a float). It's really good at getting big quantities of leaves off the bottom--much easier IMO than using a leaf rake (which you will still want to use after the major work with a leaf gulper).

Sounds like you may be past the point of needing it though. Just consider it for the future.
 
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FC: 6 CYA: just below 30

The color is improving. I can now start to see the debris that's on the bottom of the show side of the pool. So i'm working to get as much of that out as I can, but as soon as I start pulling it out the water clouds up again with organic debris. So I'm trying to both pull it out with the net, and push it to a central location with a brush...

However, I have a much bigger problem now. The water level in the pool is dropping. Since I started it's down about 3 or 4 inches. It's gone from being at the very top of the skimmers to just above the level of the skimmers. At this rate sometime this afternoon it's going to end up below the skimmers. I believe the problem is with the main drain of the pool. I'm going to turn that off for now, so that I can see if the water level stays constant.

I had a similar problem last fall. I was hoping that the fix was the plumbing at the filter, and not in the line from the drain. To test that I'm going to have to turn off the the drain and replumb it so that I can use an air pressure tester to see if the line is leaking. I'm not sure what I do at that point if it is.

I'm pretty sure if I turn off the pump that the water level would stabilize. But clearly that's not an option if I'm going to clean the pool up.


FC level was still 6 so I added two more quarts of liquid bleach. The CYA level is staying around 30.
 
Test as often as you can, up to every hour or two, adding back to your SLAM level, and it will go quicker than if you are testing less frequently. The first bit is what uses the most LC.

I can't imagine thousands of gallons are being retained by the filter. If the level is dropping that much, there's water leaking somewhere. :(
 
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With FC at 6, 2 qts of LC would increase FC to 8? Is that what you intended or enough LC? (forgive the question when you have a lot of other things to worry about but it helps my own understanding).

Any chance you can post any pics of how it’s looking?

With the leak, could also be hydrostatic valve in the main drain basket.
If it is the actual main drain, my understanding is that you can plug it with no real ill effects to the pool (but I defer to the experts). If it is main drain, maybe plug it and worry about trying to repair it down the road once you have less on your plate.
 

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