Each year I fight iron staining. This year has been exceptional. When I uncovered the pool in mid April, it was pretty bad. I put in 1 qt of polyquat 60 and maybe 2#'s of citric acid. It looked great. A week later, I started trying to pull up the chlorine level. The pool turned green. I added maybe 6 qt's of sequestrant and still green. I gave up, added maybe half a qt of polyquat, another 1.5# or so of citric and it looked good again. Another week goes by, same loop, etc. I maybe have done one more iteration again. Finally, I remembered that it sometimes takes 2 weeks to be able to pull up the chlorine. 2 weeks ago yesterday, I add 1qt of poly, maybe 1# of citric, and it looks good. Each iteration, it had looked very cloudy to the point of not being able to see the bottom. I felt like I was this "ll" close to an algae bloom. 1 week passed and I added another bottle of poly. This past Monday, I decided it was time to start pulling up the chlorine (2 weeks from citric treatment). I ran my SWG at about 50% (I had been doing it at 25%) for maybe 10 hours. Last night I added maybe 1/3 of a gallon of bleach in 8 oz increments maybe every 30 minutes. I also added 1qt of sequestrant. This morning things looked good so I turned on the pump about 6 am and added maybe 8oz of bleach over 1 return jet and another 8 oz over another jet. It's been running all day. My wife just texted me that the pool was green.
I took readings maybe Saturday or so. I"m going from memory, but:
FC - 0
CC - 0 - but I could see a small patch of algae on the steps
pH - 7.2
Alkalinity - 80
CYA - 70
What in the world am I doing wrong and what should I do to fix it? I'm inclined to just shock the heck out of it, add 3# of citric, wait until the FC drops close to 0 and then add polyquat. WHat really stinks is I'm about to leave town for 10 days and my sister is my kids at my house. Not having a pool to play in will be an obstacle.
I'll test my levels when I get home this evening and post them here. The first iteration when the pool turned green, FC was 3. The others, maybe 0.5. Within 6 hours of adding the citric, it's been blue again. Normally, citric or abscorbic turns it blue within 30 minutes, but this year it has taken longer.
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She just texted a photo. It is a pale green, but green. The other times it has almost gone deep green then towards the color of tea. SHe's adding a bottle of sequestrant now.
- - - Updated - - -
One more comment, when I bought muriatic this year, it was a "less fumes," formula. Could something in the muriatic be reacting?
I took readings maybe Saturday or so. I"m going from memory, but:
FC - 0
CC - 0 - but I could see a small patch of algae on the steps
pH - 7.2
Alkalinity - 80
CYA - 70
What in the world am I doing wrong and what should I do to fix it? I'm inclined to just shock the heck out of it, add 3# of citric, wait until the FC drops close to 0 and then add polyquat. WHat really stinks is I'm about to leave town for 10 days and my sister is my kids at my house. Not having a pool to play in will be an obstacle.
I'll test my levels when I get home this evening and post them here. The first iteration when the pool turned green, FC was 3. The others, maybe 0.5. Within 6 hours of adding the citric, it's been blue again. Normally, citric or abscorbic turns it blue within 30 minutes, but this year it has taken longer.
- - - Updated - - -
She just texted a photo. It is a pale green, but green. The other times it has almost gone deep green then towards the color of tea. SHe's adding a bottle of sequestrant now.
- - - Updated - - -
One more comment, when I bought muriatic this year, it was a "less fumes," formula. Could something in the muriatic be reacting?