New Homeowner - CLEAN POOL [back to shocking.]

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

After the last post I added two more gallons of 12.5%, emptied the skimmer basket of many many dying diver bugs, let the air out of the filter, and cleaned the filter basket too, again, many dying diver bugs. Then I did the whole manual skimming thing with a vengeance, and after that was done there were no more little diver bugs in my water anywhere. It's possible that the little buggers were what was eating up all that chlorine overnight an so quickly. I will test again shortly - after adding 2 gallons with a starting fc of 12, I should get a reading of somewhere around 23 give or take if my bleach is good.

I am as close to volume as I can be without getting in and actually measuring. I know that the pool is 16x32 as taken by the property inspector when I bought the house. I made the following diagram based on tape measure inserts to get the depth in the shallow and deep ends, and paced to get estimates of the lengths of each section. At the bottom of the deep end where the walls slope inward, I estimated those to be 3' in from the top of the wall. Here's the diagram I used in SketchUp to get a volume estimate:

 

[Swampwoman]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

Nice sketch! Your well looks identical to mine (except mine's octagonal/grecian style) and I'm at 22k gal so I suspect you're accurate.
I am starting to get my threads mixed up so forgive me if this is redundant, but have you checked behind your light recess, etc. for algae. Your CC suggests you're still killing off a lot of something, methinks!

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

I don't have a light, surprisingly. It looks like there may have been one at one time, but the last time the liner was replaced it looks like they covered the light assembly with the liner so yeah.

The only other thing I can think of is that the pool drain isn't actually connected to anything, it's cut from the plumbing at the pad and capped off. The drain at the bottom is open though, so it's very likely that there is water down in there. It is POSSIBLE that I have algae down in there, but I haven't the slightest idea as to how to go about getting the water out of there, so...

 

[Swampwoman]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

Too bad about the drain capping -- not sure I understand why that is such a popular phenom. Mine has the two drains to be hydrostatically balanced. Benefit with the bottom drain for me was to close it partially to get better top skimming abilities.

That said, I'm sure the chlorine will eventually reach it. I'm just off-the-cuff wondering if you can remove the cap and pour some bleach in...or is that crazy? What says ye other, more experienced BBBers?

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

Time for a full test panel.

fc: 14
cc: .5
ta: 340
ch: 340
cya: 40
pH: 7.5 - these last two readings taken with the taylor k-1000 kit in the tf-100 kit.
tc: 5+

 

[linen]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

Remember that ph is not accurate when the FC level is above 10 ppm. The next time your FC happens to dip below 10 ppm check it then.

 

[curreyr]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

It is POSSIBLE that I have algae down in there, but I haven't the slightest idea as to how to go about getting the water out of there, so...

One option would be to "backflush" it if the cap can be removed.
Have a helper hold a pool hose over a return, and the other end stuck over/into the capped end. Bubbilng and gunk are likely to then flow up from that bottom drain.

In mine I had this issue and the "mud" that came up wasn't pretty. Mine wasn't capped but the pool also didnt have any diverter in the skimmer pot to draw from the bottom.

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [day 7: -9fc in 1hr, bad blea

Remember that ph is not accurate when the FC level is above 10 ppm

roger. it's been staying at 7.5 for a while now even when I was getting low fc readings... I was doing the oto drop test, figured I'd run pH too even though it may not be accurate.

One option would be to "backflush" it if the cap can be removed. Have a helper hold a pool hose over a return, and the other end stuck over/into the capped end. Bubbilng and gunk are likely to then flow up from that bottom drain.

This is a great idea, and since my vacuum hose fits nice and snug in my returns I can even do it without assistance! I'll check to see if I can get the cap off, thanks for the tip!

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [still shocking]

I was frustrated and didn't want to do anything yesterday, so I didn't. I also wanted my fc to drop a bit so I could get an accurate pH reading. Here are my levels after not doing anything for at least a day.

fc: 2
cc: 4
cya: 50
pH: 7.8

My target shock is 16, so I overshot a bit and added enough 12.5% to get me up to 18. I also added about 64oz of 31.45% muriatic acid to drop the pH some. Per previous posts I checked to see if I could uncap my bottom drain and flush it out. I was able to uncap the line, but it appears that the drain is also plugged since after filling the pipe I couldn't get it to give any sign of flushing anything out of the drain. This is good news though, as it mean that there's not stagnant algae water sitting in that pipe. I'll see about actually checking out the drain next time I'm in the pool, but for now I'm going with that assumption.

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [still shocking]

fc: 8
cc: .5
pH: 7.5

Going to add another 2 gallons of 12.5%. I can't believe I'm still getting cc after all this time and with the pool being so Dang clear! Going to vacuum too, make sure I get everything I possibly can out of the pool.

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

So I finally went out and picked up an ammonia test kit... Ammonia is reading off the charts, greater than 8ppm. That would likely explain why the heck my chlorine is being used so quickly. I'm going to do some reading at pool school to see what the heck I'm supposed to do, but any advice would be awesome.

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

According to a few posts I've read by chem geek, both here and from various google searches, if my ammonia is reading at 8ppm I need to bring my fc up to 8x that, so I'm looking at getting to at least 64 fc. That's my plan at this point, but first I need to go check to see where my fc is at before I go dumping all the bleach i just bought into the pool.

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

fc: 9
cc: .5
nh3: 8ppm or greater

If what I've read is correct, I need to get my fc up to at least 64ppm (if not greater) to neutralize all of that ammonia. I'm back to 6% bleach until tomorrow, so it looks like I need to add 21 gallons of 6% bleach. I don't have that, so I'll add 17 and hit the store again tomorrow morning - hopefully it won't be too much of a waste.

 

[jblizzle]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

I would hold off on that until someone can confirm ... I am not sure if the 8x has to happen all at once (ie a FC of 64ppm YIKES) ... or just eventually over time. I would not want you to damage your liner by adding it all at once, if that is not the proper procedure.

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

I'll raise it up to mustard algae shock level for now and wait to see what the proper procedure is for adding any more than that. The liner is basically done at this point anyway. There are several wrinkles and it's pretty hard to vacuum because the liner is loose and ends up getting stuck to the vacuum sucker. AND there's a 2' diameter bubble in the shallow end.

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

Wow. Just, wow. No sun anymore. After my last post I added 6 big jugs of 6% bleach or 8.5 gallons. This should have gotten my back up to 31ppm fc... An hour later and these are my results.

fc: 11
cc: 2
nh3: 4-8ppm

Going to add another 6 big jugs of 6%. Tomorrow morning I will pick up a bunch more 12.5% from my supplier and keep going with the ammonia reduction. Hopefully the overnight break in chlorinating isn't going to screw me too badly.

 

[chem geek]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

You don't have to, nor should you, add all the required chlorine at once. Look at what I did in this post where I logged my handling of a bacterial conversion of CYA to ammonia and how I used chlorine to clear it. Also, your estimate of how much chlorine it will take may be low as was mine because there may be partially converted CYA that doesn't show up as ammonia but still will get oxidized by chlorine. So your estimate is just for the minimum rough cumulative amount of chlorine you will need, but you do not add it all at once. Just add it frequently and regularly to try and target some reasonable FC number, which with a zero or near-zero CYA would be in the 10-20 ppm range (in other words, add about that much if the FC is around zero). Don't worry about that added amount being too low -- as you can see from my post, it gets consumed rather quickly, especially at first (you can add it and check again in an hour, for example, assuming you've got decent circulation). Don't bother adding more CYA until the FC starts to hold at least somewhat (remember that it will breakdown quickly in sunlight losing about half in an hour of strong sun).

 

[jblizzle]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

Wow is right! Given how quickly the FC is being consumed it seems, damage to the liner does seem likely. Still not sure I would raise it to 60+ at once though.

Surprised the CC is not reading higher actually.

When was the last time you tested to see if you have any CYA registering or if conversion is the source of the ammonia?

Ah I see the expert has posted

Posted from my Droid with Tapatalk ... sorry if my response is short

 

[RockstarSD]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

I got my reading of 50 cya at about 3PM yesterday. I'll test again tomorrow, hopefully my supplier will have the liquid chlorine so I can keep shocking this bad boy.

 

[UnderWaterVanya]

Re: New Homeowner - Green Pool [HOLY AMMONIA BATMAN!]

With a 50 CYA you will be trying for between 20 and 30ppm correct?