New Swamp is mine - now I need to get it clean

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GDSmith56

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May 6, 2014
19
Troutman, NC
I couldn't find my original post but basically it said that I bought a house with a pool but the previous owner shutdown everything after the purchase agreement was signed. During walkthrough we found a GREEN pool but they wouldn't let us do anything to it 'due to insurance issues.' .. Anyway, the pool is now mine, I have the TF100 in hand and I've poured about 4-5 gallons (128oz) of 10% pool chlorine of the course of a few days to stop the algae growth. I've also thrown small amounts of DE into the sand filter, let it run with the skimmer and/or vacuum, backwashed, and added water ..

Today's tests:
FC: 2ppm
Chlorine (CC ?) 2 - 3
TA: 100 slight pink / 110 red
CH: 7 drops / 175
pH: 6.8 - 7.2 (right between the two colors, so 7.0 ??)
CYA: >100

c20140529s.jpg

So - where to from here? Water change to lower the CYA or (?) to raise the pH a touch ... and should I continue with chlorine or wait til the other numbers adjust?

thanks

---
Glenn S.
Troutman, NC
approx. 13K IG, sand filter, chlorine table thingie (not being used)
 
Drain to dilute CYA first is my vote. You can get a more accurate reading by diluting the pool water 50/50 with tap water and testing. Dilute further if it's still reads above 80 diluted.

Don't dump any other $$ in it til you drain and refill accordingly.

Also. AMAZING Slimer green you have there! Can't wait to see it sparkly blue! :mrgreen:
 
You also need to start raking the bottom to see if you have leaves or other debris on the bottom.
I also was surprised by the color. Maybe the previous owner just dumped in some dye to make it look like you had an algae problem.
 
!. Get your CYA down to around 50 ppm by drain/refill....Don't add more chlorine yet.

2. read "The ABC's of Pool Water Chemistry" up in Pool School

3. read "SLAM" in the "How To" section up in Pool School

4. SLAM the pool....ask lot's of Questions
 
...and you might want to grab a beer or two to help steady the nerves during the SLAM process, because it WILL test your last nerve from what I read. It takes time, but following the proper SLAM process will bring you around to clear waters. Good time to brush up on your POP (Pool Owner Patience) :cool:
 
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Process or definitions help needed : Just so that I'm sure on the non-chemical part of the clean-up, what I have been doing is,
1) Using the scrubber brush around the water surface and a little below
2) Using the pool brush WITH the vacuum hose attached to brush the lower sides and bottom
3) When not vacuuming, setting the ball valves to allow surface skimming and bottom drain water collection
-- occasionally I have shut off the surface skimmer and filter only from the pool bottom

There has been no further debris picked up by the vacuum so I'm hoping the bottom of the pool is 'clean'. Adding a cup of DE to the filter (initial increase to filter is 1psi) causes the pressure to increase much quicker and the GREEN water to be much darker when I backwash - all good things!
 

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One more vote for partial drain/refill to get your CYA down first -- since CYA>100 could be 110 or 350, might be worth diluting your test water 1:1 with tap water, running the test again and doubling the result just so you know how much drain/refill you're looking at.

The amount you drain each time is a function of pool construction, eg with a liner you don't want to take too much out or the liner can move around. Maybe add your pool construction type etc.. to your signature so folks can comment on that.

One definition that might help relates to chlorine -- Free Chlorine is "good chlorine" (available to kill & break down bad stuff), Combined Chlorine (or Chloramines) is "bad chlorine" (leftover from chlorine combining with bad stuff. Adding more FC gets rid of the CC, although if your pool has more bad stuff then you'll be constantly creating more CC's as well so the CC level probably won't go down until the algae is all dead.

As the algae gets killed you'll get a lot of white powder in the water and on the bottom, which will need to be vacuumed out or brushed up so the filter can get it. You're going to get told to read a lot of stuff; at minimum suggest you look at the following (under Pool School) :

Handy Reference => Chlorine / CYA Chart
How To => SLAM -- Shock Level And Maintain

Congratulations on the new pool, and +1 for that being a seriously cool colour and well deserving of dry ice & night pics.
 
So from my first test this morning:
FC: 0ppm
Chlorine (CC ?) 0
TA: 100
CH: 125
pH: 8.2
CYA: 70

The pH went up from my previous by adding Borax .. since my source water is lower, it will go down as I do refills after filter backwashes.

I added four gallons of 10% chlorine and have been adding 1 gallon every 90mins since then (60 mins cycle plus time to backwash, refill, etc). At each test, FC has been measuring 23ppm.
 
Two things that I've noticed -
1) the water is no longer a translucent green. It's now a cloudy green. I'm guessing that this is because the dirt/algae is getting suspended in the water colum
2) Even with the cloudiness of the water, I can now see the vacuum head at the bottom of the shallow end and partially down the incline to the deep end :)

FC this a.m. was 22 ...
 
Keep at it. You need to get that chlorine level up there and not let it drop to zero and continue to replace water to lower CYA.
Remember you can't test pH with high FC levels.

Have you continued to drain refill to lower CYA?


I can't wait to see the final pic compared to the first. Wow! What a color of green, like another poster said "Antifreeze".
 
The FC reading this a.m. was BEFORE adding the dose of chlorine ... my pool math calculator is using 30 as the target after the addition of chlorine. And yes, I'm doing frequent water changes because the DE that I add after each backwash (except the overnight running of the filter) causes the filter to quickly increase the psi.
 
Given the need to add more DE after every backwash, is that another argument for the "easily cleaned nylon stocking over the skimmer basket" trick when taking a lot of dead algae out of the pool ?

Not sure I understand connection between "DE that I add after each backwash" and draining/replacing water. AFAIK getting your CYA level down will require removing a lot more water than is used during a backwash...
 
WOW - big improvement this morning. When I first went out to the pool, I was able to actually see the bottom of the pool. As I 'swept' the liner, I was able to see the 'dust cloud' in the water from the algae that had settled overnight. This morning's FC reading was 25, up a bit from yesterday's first test but that's probably because I added my last dose of chlorine later in the evening.

More scrubbing and bleaching on tap for today.
 

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