New (old) house, new (old) pool

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Good questions :goodjob:

You can test TA about 30min - 1hr after adding baking soda. Baking soda will raise TA more than it will effect PH. If PH is still too low, after you have added the baking soda, we like to use Borax to raise PH further. Borax raises PH, with less of an effect on TA.

Working with the pool cover on for PH and TA is not a big deal. Although, you will want to remove the cover, while shocking. Running the pump 24/7 for TA and adjustments is not needed, just long enough to mix things up. You should run the pump 24/7 while shocking.

Good luck :goodjob:

Jason and I said the same thing...what he said :lol:
 
One more thing, remember when you add CYA (note using the sock method), it can take a week or more to show up on the test, so trust the amount you added is going to be right and give it plenty of time to stabilize before retesting, remember the only practical way to remove CYA is through water replacement or expensive reverse osmosis treatment.. They also make more expensive liquid stabilizer which I have read shows up on tests faster, but don't know how much faster.

Ike
 
Jason, dman, Isaac - thanks for the info all around.

I plan to adjust TA and pH today, will run the pump for an hour and retest. Hopefully I'll get good levels quickly.

Then Sunday will be the day. Will load a sock with the required amount of CYA and hang in front of a return, shock w/ bleach, and start netting and vacuuming all the junk and gunk out. Looking forward to see how the water changes over the course of that week.
 
Quick followup question -

I released the drain outlet on the DE filter in an attempt to install a valve so I could direct the water away from the house (not successful, but haven't given up). However, when I did that, did I lose all my DE as well? Should I add more material as if I had backwashed or does draining the filter in that manner not remove DE material the same way as backwashing does?
 
If all you did was drain the filter once, then some DE would have come out, but no where near as much as comes out when you backwash. The best thing to do might be to backwash the filter and add the standard 80% after backwashing.
 
So mixed results today. Hit it hard all day and luckily had my two brothers-in-law to help. I kept it at shock level all day, will check again tonight. Added CYA in a sock as well.

Water has gone from black to green which is a fantastic improvement, and for a while we were excited because we could see the second step, then the third, and now just barely the fourth, but there hasn't be any improvement in the past few hours in visibility.

We've been netting out all the gunk we can while working blind. Have a trashcan half full of leaves and sludge. There is still more down there but it is harder to get now. Also brushed along the water line all of the visible scum, but know I still need to do the entire pool

But what I'm most worried about is the DE filter. As far as I can tell the normal operating PSI is about 16 or so. Throughout the course of the day it would quickly climb to 26 or 28 or so and I'd stop and backwash it, but the water just comes out clear. Honest to goodness there was nothing I could see either through the viewing lens or at the end of the hose. So I'd do it by time, backwash 2 minutes, rinse 20 seconds, backwash 2 minutes, rinse 20 seconds, and then go back to filtering. This has minimal effect on the pressure if any at all. It'd go right back to 28 or so.

So I took it apart, pulled the filter and hosed it down completely. It was gunky no doubt. Put back in, added some fake DE fiber, and ran it. It was good for 10 minutes but then climbed back to 28. I repeated this cycle of backwashing, cracking open the filter and hosing it down, etc, at least 3 or 4 times today.

Finally I stopped adding DE altogether and it STILL goes to 28psi.

So, long story short, my water is green, still have some sludge on the bottom of the pool, and the filter has zero DE in it but is at 28psi.

What should I do tonight? Should I keep it on filter or change to recirculate? I'm concerned because the pump isn't pushing through water nearly as quickly as normal so I'm not sure the chemicals are getting mixed around as well. And of course I don't know what to do about the filter... grids seem to be in good shape (although they seem to trap water in the bottom 6 inches). Chemical clean?

As always, thanks for everyone's help.
 
It isn't good to run the filter without DE. Debris can get embedded in the grids and become impossible to remove. If you do that too much the grids will be ruined.

Cleaning a pool with a major algae problem means lots of cleaning of the DE filter. DE filters stuff out very efficiently and quickly, and you then need to clean the filter. This speeds up the cleanup process compared to other kinds of filters, but it does means lots of work dealing with the filter until the water is all clear.

Ideally you should be able to get backwash to work better than what you describe, but nothing you have mentioned suggests what might be going wrong. Regardless, you still have to get the filter cleaned out regularly, and if backwashing doesn't work then you need to do a full open up and clean out. Many people who own DE filters never backwash, because it just doesn't work well enough, so you are hardly alone.
 
lambo said:

Side view of that thing. Not sure what those two open holes are facing me or the larger black port facing the house?
Click to expand...

The bigger threaded hole is for a sight glass, as you've already discovered. The smaller hole is for a pressure gauge, the black threaded pipe facing left in the picture is to attach a hose to in order to backwash or empty water via waste.
 

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rcy - another pressure gauge? For the multivalve? Should I be concerned about pressure in the valve?

Jason - added DE and the pressure climbed to 30. Filter started rocking back and forth so I turned it to recirculate. Not sure I'll be able to clean tonight, but we'll see. If nothing else I'll have the water moving and mixing in the bleach. In the last hour I only lost 3.5.

So what I'm hearing from you is that this is just the nature of the beast with a DE filter and a pool as dirty as mine. Bummer! I don't trust it to run that high when I'm not here to watch it, so I'll have to leave it on circulate at night and when I'm at work and then switch to filter when I'm home and can watch it and backwash/clean the filter as necessary.

Thanks!
 
Don't know for sure. I'm just going by my own system, but I have a sand filter and the multiport valve is on top of the sand filter, so in my case I need the pressure gauge. In your case I don't think you do.
 
zea3 - checked it and nothing in there. In fact, I've rarely found anything in the pump's strainer basket. Not sure if that is weird or not.

But I ended up going back out, cracking the filter open, cleaning it (yes, it was filthy), and putting it back together.

Running at 22 psi right now, will let it go tonight and check first thing in the AM. Hopefully it isn't about to blow up by then.
 
It sounds like your making a lot of progress, the fact you can see that far into the water is proof the DE filter is doing its job, you just have a lot of gunk to clear, which means cleaning the DE several times, hopefully as you go along the interval between will get longer and longer. Thanks to the DE's filtering capacity you have probably removed as much gunk from the water in 12 hours as it would take a sand filter 2-3 full days to do.

Ike
 
Quick update. Ran the filter all night and it stayed at 28. First thing this AM I opened it and cleaned all the grids. Ended up staying home today to get a better feel for this pool.

I maintained shock all day today and continued my awful cycle of having to open the filter every hour. At lunch I went to Leslie's and bought some DE and a scoop. Switched over to the DE and it is MUCH better. Now when I backwash I can see the water get immediately cloudy and then clear out so now instead of opening the filter every hour I'm able to backwash.

Water color is still green but turning an off green... almost grayish greenish which I understand from Pool School is a good thing. I did a lot of vacuuming with the valve set to Waste and got a ton of gunk out but I know there is still some down there. Had to stop because the water level was near the bottom of the skimmer so I have a hose in there filling it back up.

Hope I see some more progress over the next day or two, but if there is still some gunk and leaves at the bottom, will the water color/clarity ever improve? I just don't know how I can blindly get all the junk from the bottom but I'm worried it is preventing the water from clearing up more.
 
You are making huge progress :goodjob:

Depending on how much stuff there is on the bottom you may or may not be able to clear up the water. If, for example there were several inches of muck down there you would not be able to clear the water until you got the majority of the muck out. On the other hand, there can be plenty of thin patches of muck and leaves and still have the water clear up fairly quickly. The issue is can the chlorine penetrate everywhere or is the a hidden safe zone with algae just waiting to come out again.
 

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