New pool owner

[haychtee]

Hi everyone I’m a new pool owner so whatever I do know is very basic from google. So as the weather is getting warmer we decided to turn the pool pump on, pool has obviously been green since it’s been shut over the winter. I shocked the pool with the granular chlorine and added floc (I am now slowly reading we don’t like floc do we? ) had the filter running which I’ve also now learnt it shouldn’t be. Pool turned a grey/blue colour. Have been checking all the levels and everything is good except the pool is still cloudy. It had only been 3 days since the initial shock and we did a bit of liquid chlorine the day after as the FC levels were low. I can now see past the first step in the pool (there’s three then pool floor) but wondering why it’s still cloudy. I have a sand filter, I backwashed rinsed till water was clear. Have cleaned out everything I physically can clean and now just waiting for tomorrow morning to see if there is some progress, if still cloudy what do I need to do? Thanks in advance

 

[PoolStored]

Did you run the filter with FLOC in the water?
How are you testing the water?

if still cloudy what do I need to do?

Get a test kit. Here are the recommended kits. Order one now. This is the one to get in AU. Total Pool Water Testing Kit, Fresh Water – Clear Choice Labs
Add 3ppm of liquid chlorine per day until the kit arrives. Nothing else.
Turn the pump off for 6 hours, let the FLOC settle. Vacuum the FLOC to waste.
When the kit arrives, follow the SLAM process to clear the pool. Link-->SLAM Process

 

[haychtee]

Yes I ran the filter with flic the first time I did it three days ago-however I’ve been doing this for the last 2 years and it always cleared up so I didn’t think anything of it. Come to learn your ment to vacuum to waste so i backwashed/rinsed a lot and tried again. It’s been 24 hours I’ve had filters off just waiting for the water to clear and everything to settle still cloudy. I use a test kid that only checks FC acidity alkaline and ph but will be getting the recommended test kit

 

[PoolStored]

Generally speaking, when floc gets sucked up into a filter it will stay there for a time and remain captured. The problem is that over a short period of time, days or so, the floc will start to break down and, as it does, it releases all of the fine particulate matter that it originally trapped. So, for a sand filter, the breakdown of the floc will eventually cause “dirty” water to start to stream out of the returns. Then the pool will cloud up again. This is why with flocs you must always vacuum to waste - the floc needs to be removed from the pool.

SLAM the pool and make sure that the water is clean (no algae or anything that will consume chlorine). Then, if clarity is an issue, you can work on cleaning out the filter sand using the deep clean method. A single round of floc is not going to harm the filter sand and it can be cleaned rather than replaced. You can then use pool grade DE as an additive to the sand filter to help clear up fine particulate cloudiness. The nice part about using the DE in a sand filter is that once you get the desired clarity, you can quickly and easily flush the DE out using the backwash feature on a sand filter.

Add DE to a Sand Filter

A clean pool filter will increase the efficiency of your pool! ... your filter are to backwash it, clean the manifolds and grids, and add new DE.

www.troublefreepool.com

Deep Cleaning a Sand Filter

This post will walk you through the anatomy of a sand filter, and then provide a video at the end for how to deep clean your sand filter. The filter used in the photos and videos is a Hayward S180T top mount sand filter. The images are of a similar filter. Obviously not all filters are...

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[haychtee]

Ok so as of now I still haven’t turned the filter on, I’m going to vacuum to waste and then do SLAM. And hopefully clarity will be fixed by then