New here, and need some help!

[Perpetual]

Hey all,

New person to the boards...and also a newer pool owner. Had the pool for less than a year and I have been a pawn of the pool stores as I have spent thousands on their recommendations and chemicals. Its time to break those chains...so I definitely need help like many others.

My pool: 27' round partially buried vinyl pool, 23-24k gallons approx, glass media filtration system, ionizer (yes I was an idiot and bought one from the pool store that recommended it...), located in Dallas, TX, Taylor K-2006 test kit FAS-DPD which is what I will be using for the numbers below.

My issue: Pool has went extremely cloudy (its not a green color I dont think, its more white/milky kinda looking, can barely see the floor in the 4' deep section, definitely cant see anything in the deep end (6 1/2' deep), had some black staining on the liner itself...removed the ladder in the pool to find green/black stuff all over it, also noticed a lot of water bugs (both boatmen and backswimmers) lately which means algae was growing to give those little buggers a home. Did a scrub with the brushes, continually skiming surface organics off, and using my dolphin nautilus cc to pick up excess stuff on the bottom.

My numbers:
FC: .6/.8 (took 3/4 drops...)
CC: .2 (took 1 drop)
pH: 7.2
TA: 100 (10 drops x 10)
CH: 350 (35 drops...turned purple? said turns blue...maybe im color blind)
CYA: 70
Copper: .5 (per pool store testing/ionizer)

I think these are all the numbers needed. This is my first time conducting all the tests myself...previously I have depended on the pool store to do this. I am fairly certain I got these numbers pretty accurate but bear with me as I learn. Please let me know if I missed any info or anything else is required. Today (per the pool store....) they said to add the 2 stage PRS clarifier stuff which I did 6 hours apart, 6 oz of each, then 4 pounds of "extraa/shock)". Thats where I have left off, filter is running now on high, has been all day. Skimmers were cleaned, backwashed, etc.

The clarifiers arent working which from all the research I have read on these forums, isnt a big surprise because they arent really useful.

I look forward to learning from you all and helping get my pool back to its crystal clear and balanced state, thank you in advance for all the wisdom and guidance!
Sean

 

[mknauss]

Welcome to the forum!
If your copper is as high as reported, you should drain your pool and fill with fresh water now to keep from staining your pool.
You need to SLAM Process if you keep this water but be prepared for the copper to stain your liner.
I suggest you read ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry and consider reviewing the entire Pool School eBook.

 

[Perpetual]

Thanks.

Should I turn off the ionizer that I have then since copper is bad? And use a metal remover to get rid of it?

I will have to read up on SLAM to figure that out, never done it or heard of it till now. From what that link says you provided, I need to have a minimum FC of 5 or target or 8-10 since I am @ 70 CYA at the moment. Then I see the shock FC is 28...holy cow. So basically go buy a bunch of household bleach and dump it in to bring up the FC. Any ideas how many gallons that would be for 23-24k gallons bringing it from .6ish currently? I checked a calculator and says to raise it to FC 10, I would need 362 oz of 8.25% bleach. So to bring it to 28...I would need 10-11 jugs of it just to get it to that point.

Thanks,
Sean

 

[Perpetual]

I just walked outside and looked and it actually has cleared up a significant amount. I can see the bottom in the deepend now...its still somewhat cloudy, but its lightyears better than what it was the last few days.

 

[mknauss]

Should I turn off the ionizer that I have then since copper is bad? And use a metal remover to get rid of it?

Do remove the ionizer. It is adding copper to your water.
To remove metals you drain the pool water and add back water that does not have metals in it. No product removes metals from water.

 

[Wobblerlorri]

Draining some of your water is an excellent first step, since your CYA is so high. That's what is pushing your amount of chlorine so high.

I think it would be worth it to do at least a 1/3 drain of the pool to get you down around 50 ppm CYA. That will make your SLAM level 20 ppm FC. In PoolMath I get 4 gallons 3 quarts of liquid chlorine to take you from 0.6 FC to 20 ppm. Better than 10 - 11 gallons.

 

[Perpetual]

Thanks for the input, its going to be raining over the next few days which will alter my water level and replace some water. Once we are back to sun and normal weather, I will retest everything and get you guys some fresh numbers and then look at doing the SLAM then.

Good news is, the water cleared up and is crystal clear BUT I want to make sure that doesnt happen again or at least do more to prevent it and stave it off.

I seem to be having some significant metal staning going on so I am going to be adding the ascorbic acid @ 1 pound per 10k gallons I believe is what it says. So approx 2.5 pounds or so to try to remove those stains. To drop the copper, should I add a metal sequester agent?

Thanks all, learning tons.
Sean

 

[Perpetual]

2nd question too, what will adding the 2.5 pounds of ascorbic acid do to my other levels? Will it knock anything out of wack badly? cloud up my pool? etc etc.

Thanks!
Sean

 

[Perpetual]

So I drained a little from the pool and refilled (really drained maybe 6-7 inches worth so not a lot by any means), plus we had a ton of rain...heres new test results which is confusing.

FC .2
TC .2
CC 0
pH 7.9
TA 119
CH 195
CYA 8

So I have added half gallon of the muriatic acid to drop the pH and then I added stabilizer (4 pounds) to raise the CYA...which is confusing considering I was at 70 or 80 a few weeks ago but I guess it changes? Water is horribly cloudy and there are boatmen and backswimmers everywhere....so eek.

Once the CYA has increased...I am going to do the SLAM. I have 9 jugs of liquid bleach here ready to go....so...let the SLAM begin. I am expecting my CYA to be around 30 or so, then ill raise the FC up to 12 with 4 jugs of the bleach.

The pool store told me that I have mold growing inside my pool...that the ground seeped through the liner and mold is growing. Interesting...

Let me know if I am missing something here or headin down the wrong path.

 

[Fast7]

I wouldn't add more stabilizer. You reported 70 CYA a few weeks ago and now you state your CYA is 8.
How did you measure it? CYA would not go down that much with only rain. Did you do significant water drain?

 

[Perpetual]

Very little was drained, did have an extremely heavy rain but that was it.

That was a pool store measurement on it that I just got back from, I was curious to see what their readings would be on the water.

Im going to grab my kit and test it, give me a few mins

 

[Perpetual]

I just ran it with my taylor kit and they werent off or at least not too overly crazy. It measures to 30...and I could still see the black dot at the bottom, water wasnt clear but mildly cloudy in the test. I would guess above 10 under 20.

 

[mknauss]

You either completely changed out your water or you have bacteria in the pool that consumes CYA.

Do this before anything else.
Raise your FC in the water using enough liquid chlorine to get to 10 ppm using PoolMath. Circulate the pool for 15 minutes. Test FC and CC.
Report the results here.

 

[Perpetual]

Will do, adding 4 jugs of the 6% bleach now. Ill be back in 15 with results.

Ok 4 juggs added, pump is going.

Will report back with readings in 15

 

[Perpetual]

Added 4 juggs

Took 22 drops x.2 = 4.4

Added the other and it barely turned pink...1-2 drops removed what little pink hue there was.

I added exactly what PoolMath told me to add.

 

[mknauss]

Does not sound like ammonia. CC normally jumps if ammonia.

Your CYA went somewhere. If you really had 70 and then nearly zero, your exchanged all the water in your pool to fresh. Did you do that?

 

[Perpetual]

No I didnt, I drained maybe 6-7 inches of it a few days ago and thats it. I refilled with hose water. It had a significant rain storm here about 4 nights ago but thats about it.

I definitely didnt exchange all the water though.

 

[mknauss]

Then there is testing error. Either with the 70 ppm result or the current result.

 

[Perpetual]

That could be on my part, my original reading was 70 CYA then I took it to the pool store to test and they had 60.

Today then I took a new sample to them and they got 8 and I got between 10-20 since it doesnt measure that. low (stops at 30 for me) The whole test tube was full and I could still see the black dot at the bottom.

 

[Fast7]

You can switch to 10 mm sample for FC. Use one scoop of powder and each drop will equal 0.5 FC. It will save you some reagents.