New pool owner -bought a swamp

[elsharick]

Hi m! We bought a new house that has a pool and it was left half all winter. We aren’t sure if the owners used it last season. It is black/green. We are estimating 38,000 gallons (12 foot deep). We started with 8 lbs chlorine (shock) added to deep end, added 4 more the next day. Then we did 15lbs calcium hypochlorite to the skimmer basket and then some sort of “floc” the local pool store sold us. We have been vacuuming to waste and basically can vacuum for 5 minutes before we have to shut it off and backwash. It is pulling out black sludge water. Here is what the pool looks like tonight and when we took another sample to the pool store they said to just keep vacuuming. Problem is we are low on water and at this rate it will take weeks because we vacuum until the water is too low then have to refill then try to vacuum some more. Tonight we put in 2 large scoops of chlorine. We have been running the filter almost nonstop except when we added the floc. What should we do? We have already dumped close to $300 in chemicals into the pool.

 

[elsharick]

Follow up question-Can you run your filter too much?

 

[Flying Tivo]

It seams you have a vinyl liner pool, so its not recommended to drain to much.
If you want to clear you pool you need to read up on some Pool Care Basics
Get yourself a proper Test Kits Compared and follow the SLAM Process.
Oh and stop going to the pool$tore.

 

[Texas Splash]

Definitely order a TF-100/TF-Pro Series test kit, or a Taylor K-2006C. In the meantime, scoop, brush, and sweep. If you are going to exchange some water, which I would recommend first, do it as soon as you can (carefully - not too low) then begin adding 1 gallon of liquid pool chlorine to the water each day. Nothing else until the test kit arrives. All that junk the store sold you not only depleted your funds, but may have made clearing the water that much harder. Read the links provided above and when you get the test kit post a full set of numbers. We'll walk you through everything.

Welcome! .

 

[elsharick]

So much learning for this new house….we left our hose running in it for a couple of hours to fill the water so we could have a really good vacuum session and we went through our water softener in our house without realizing it. This turned the water a brown/greenish color. Originally, I thought it was just algae growing back until we realized our inside water in our toilets and everything was brown/orange. Then we realized we filled the pool up with very heavy iron water. We put in 2 bottles of metal out. (Sorry I didn’t listen about not going to the pool$tore). Should we run the filter tonight with that in there??

We were really trying to get this pool running for ours son’s birthday this Saturday but at this time I don’t think it’s happening…. Just too much to vacuum and not enough water.

Here are my numbers:

Total alkalinity 73
PH 7.2
Total chlorine 14.29
Free chlorine 14.29
Cyanuric acid 13
Calcium hardness 122
Phosphate 49
Copper 0.2
Iron 0.2 (not as high as I would have thought??)

The good thing is we can now see some parts of the floor in the deep end and can see what we think might be an oar and some beer cans but there’s no dead body (which was legitimate fear I had)

 

[elsharick]

Hi! I’m sure the above numbers are probably not accurate at this point, but I also kind of gave up on trying to balance it. Right now I’m trying to remove metals (we accidentally drew too much from the well and the filter system did not filter out the metals ) and we are having a pool filter issue on top of it… brand new sand filter has been stuck on 9 for a few days and previously it was up to 20 and we were backwashing every 6 to 12 hours. It seems like The Pool hasn’t cleared at all in the last day and we’re going backwards. I watched a video yesterday on how to deep clean the sand in your filter and we did that this morning even though it was a brand new filter. I thought I would try it anyway. I don’t think it made any difference. Any suggestions or where we should go from here. Thank you, here’s a picture and you can see it is much worse than my post a couple of days ago.

 

[Texas Splash]

Just add one gallon of liquid chlorine each day and brush it around. That's about all you can do until the test kit arrives.

 

[Xentex]

can see what we think might be an oar and some beer cans but there’s no dead body (which was legitimate fear I had)

I went through a similar swamp experience with a pool when we bought our current house.

With ours, we discovered while draining it that there was, in fact, a dead body (of a deer) at the bottom.

We have an earth filter, not sand, so I can't offer much in the way of advice on that. I will say, however, that every year when we open ours it's not nearly as murky as yours and I end up backwashing and replacing the earth in the filter at least three times before we have a clear view of the bottom. I figure on five or six earth replacements before the water is really clear. Sand filters are different animals, though.

On mine I know when its time to replace the earth when I look out the window and can't see any ripples on the water above the outlets. Then I go out to put my hand in front of them just to make sure. Essentially no flow at all even though the pump is running full speed. If you put your hand in front of the outlets and there's no flow (and the pump is running) then I expect you have some cleaning to do.