Just finished building my tile pool, need help balancing well water!

[RussMaGuss]

I just finished building my tile pool and am having trouble getting the water totally clear. Also am looking for advice on balancing levels and getting the alkalinity and hardness down because it is well water

In my excitement to get the pool up and running, I added about 1.5 qts of flock instead of 28 ounces (roughly 150 ml / 10 cubic meters of water) Maybe it was a bit too much? I let it run through my sand filter in recirculate mode for a few hours and then let it settle overnight. In the morning there was a crazy amount of rust colored dust at the bottom that I vacuumed to waste. That cleared it up enough that I could see the tiles at the bottom of the pool, but it's still what I would consider cloudy. The water was still cloudy (maybe still flocculant in the water?), so I again ran the filter in recirculate mode without adding any more flock and then let that settle overnight. Again, I vacuumed to waste this morning and got a little more, but nothing compared to what I got before. It's still decently cloudy though, so I added some clarifier in hopes of that filtering around for a while and vacuuming to the filter (right?) so I don't have to dump out 500 gallons of water while I clean the bottom of the pool out.

As far as my test kit shows, my numbers are:

Free and combined chlorine: 8 ppm free, maybe around 3 ppm combined
Ph: 7.3
Alkalinity: 350-375
Calcium Hardness: turned purple around 250 and blue at 500
CYA: <30

So, on top of adding clarifier, I need to lower my alkalinity and calcium hardness, and raise my CYA. This is fresh water from my well, so draining and re-filling is not going to change any of the numbers I don't think. Should I flock it again, or wait for the clarifier to kick in and just keep adding that every few days? Should I just add straight CYA to raise the CYA level? Also, should I add some kind of stabilizer for the chlorine? I added 3 gallons on startup 3 days ago, but then today it dropped to almost nothing so I added 1 gallon and it jumped to 8ppm. Once I get the levels all balanced properly I will keep the cover on the pool when it's not in use. Definitely going to keep a journal for this pool.. Thanks for any help!


Pool details:

roughly 15,000 gallons
full tile finish
1hp pump, 2 skimmers, 5 returns
19" sand filter
maytronics robot

 

[Bperry]

I just finished building my tile pool and am having trouble getting the water totally clear. Also am looking for advice on balancing levels and getting the alkalinity and hardness down because it is well water

In my excitement to get the pool up and running, I added about 1.5 qts of flock instead of 28 ounces (roughly 150 ml / 10 cubic meters of water) Maybe it was a bit too much? I let it run through my sand filter in recirculate mode for a few hours and then let it settle overnight. In the morning there was a crazy amount of rust colored dust at the bottom that I vacuumed to waste. That cleared it up enough that I could see the tiles at the bottom of the pool, but it's still what I would consider cloudy. The water was still cloudy (maybe still flocculant in the water?), so I again ran the filter in recirculate mode without adding any more flock and then let that settle overnight. Again, I vacuumed to waste this morning and got a little more, but nothing compared to what I got before. It's still decently cloudy though, so I added some clarifier in hopes of that filtering around for a while and vacuuming to the filter (right?) so I don't have to dump out 500 gallons of water while I clean the bottom of the pool out.

As far as my test kit shows, my numbers are:

Free and combined chlorine: 8 ppm free, maybe around 3 ppm combined
Ph: 7.3
Alkalinity: 350-375
Calcium Hardness: turned purple around 250 and blue at 500
CYA: <30

So, on top of adding clarifier, I need to lower my alkalinity and calcium hardness, and raise my CYA. This is fresh water from my well, so draining and re-filling is not going to change any of the numbers I don't think. Should I flock it again, or wait for the clarifier to kick in and just keep adding that every few days? Should I just add straight CYA to raise the CYA level? Also, should I add some kind of stabilizer for the chlorine? I added 3 gallons on startup 3 days ago, but then today it dropped to almost nothing so I added 1 gallon and it jumped to 8ppm. Once I get the levels all balanced properly I will keep the cover on the pool when it's not in use. Definitely going to keep a journal for this pool.. Thanks for any help!


Pool details:

roughly 15,000 gallons
full tile finish
1hp pump, 2 skimmers, 5 returns
19" sand filter
maytronics robot

If you have more than 0.5ppm of combined chlorine, you have an algae problem brewing. That means you should follow the SLAM process. The floc and clarifiers aren’t needed and can wreck lots of stuff if you use them wrong.

 

[Texas Splash]

A few notes of my own:
- Stabilizer is CYA, but yet, you should have at least 30 of not 40 or 50 if it's really hot in your area.
- If using floc is your preferred method at start-up, you're ion your own territory on that one. We almost never recommend floc for the reasons you are describing now - residual floc in the water that could ruin the sand.
- Have you tried polyfill to remove the iron? I'll post some examples in my next post.
- You mentioned your fill water is soft, but your CH is already on the upper end. How? Did you use any cal-hypo?
- Cloudy water is almost always related to organics/algae. If it is algae, a SLAM Process is the way to go.
- Which test kit are you using?

 

[Texas Splash]

Some success stories with polyfill.

From brown to 😍😍. Thank you polyfil!

We filled our pool from our well. We knew the risks and knew we would have a battle when the water was 12" deep as it looked green from the metals. Our fears were confirmed when we added chlorine and the water turned brown almost immediately. Enter 5 gallon polyfil filter. It worked...

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[RussMaGuss]

A few notes of my own:
- Stabilizer is CYA, but yet, you should have at least 30 of not 40 or 50 if it's really hot in your area.
- If using floc is your preferred method at start-up, you're ion your own territory on that one. We almost never recommend floc for the reasons you are describing now - residual floc in the water that could ruin the sand.
- Have you tried polyfill to remove the iron? I'll post some examples in my next post.
- You mentioned your fill water is soft, but your CH is already on the upper end. How? Did you use any cal-hypo?
- Cloudy water is almost always related to organics/algae. If it is algae, a SLAM Process is the way to go.
- Which test kit are you using?

I’m using the taylor test kit. Also, the fill water is well water so it’s actually very hard. I do have a softener but didn’t want to fill 15,000 gallons from a hose hooked up to a sink lol
I’ll check out the polyfill post, thanks for the tips!

 

[RussMaGuss]

I’m using the taylor test kit. Also, the fill water is well water so it’s actually very hard. I do have a softener but didn’t want to fill 15,000 gallons from a hose hooked up to a sink lol
I’ll check out the polyfill post, thanks for the tips!

So if I’m understanding right, I just stuff this into my skimmer baskets and rinse them out every day or so, and it’ll just clear up after a week or 2?
To lower my TA, should I add muriatic acid and then aerate the water to bring Ph back to where it is now?
Will the polyfill help hardness? Should I add softener salt in via a pvc piped chlorinator?

 

[RussMaGuss]

My pool is roughly 15,000 gallons and TA is crazy high but pH is right where I need it. Do I dump 6 gallons of muriatic in and then balance pH by aerating?? TA is at like 300 still. I dumped a gallon of muriatic last night but alkalinity stayed the same while pH dipped. This is driving me crazy, any help is appreciated!

 

[mknauss]

TA is reduced by adding acid to get your pH to 7.2 and then aerating to raise the pH. Repeat.

Do not go below a pH of 7.2