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
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