Pool at a stand still

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x2rider

x2rider

0
LifeTime Supporter
Jun 19, 2011
236
Bartlesville, OK
I think I'm on my 4th week of SLAM. I've got a small investment in bleach bottles. We've had a LOT of rain this season, and at times it came down so fast and with the ground being soaked, all this water comes down the hill, and goes into our in-ground pool.

It seems I'm stuck. The pool is slightly cloudy. There have been mornings it's clear, but then i put the robot in to suck up the dead algae on the bottom, and it turns slightly cloudy again. I've been adding DE to my sand filter, which helped a bunch initially.

Stabilizer level was in the 60-70 range (SWG Pool) before all this rain came, but with all the rain and overflow that disappeared, so I added 4 puounds which brought it back up to the 60-70 range, but 2 weeks later with only maintenance backflushing, it all disappeared, so I've put 4 more pounds back in a few days ago, and it looks like it's in the 30-40 range.

This morning, I brought the FC to about 23 (thinking my CYA was still 65), by noon thirty it was at 15, and this is with the SWG on at 90%.

Me & my wife are about fed up with this. Several years ago when this happened, it only took 2 weeks to cure. On top of this, the neighbor up the hill from us cleared out a lot of trees and has about 20 cows back there, and now all of that is washing down onto our property, and I wonder if some of that got in the pool too :(

Last night I put some floc in so I could at least try to get ahead of this cloudiness issue. Let it run for 2 hours last night, shut it down, but when I went out this morning, there was no cloud at the bottom of the pool. Nothing to suck out, which really perplexed me. If there are still elements in the water, why didn't they clump together?

I bought the last 10 bottles of bleach at our atwoods at $1.99 each, so all other options now are $3.64 a bottle, and the wife is upset enough with what we've put in so far as this shouldn't have gone this long.

any ideas?
 
Can you put in drains or retaining walls or landscaping to divert the runoff water away from your pool?

Post a complete set of tests.
 
ajw22 said:
Can you put in drains or retaining walls or landscaping to divert the runoff water away from your pool?

Post a complete set of tests.
Click to expand...
I put some boards along that side to divert, which helped. The rain has stopped and doesn't look like we have any large amounts in the forecast. This may possibly be the last year of the pool, the side near where the water comes down is moving in as well as the wall on the deep end. We had a guy come out and he said it appears our wall braces are shot and it's just a matter of time. He said we need a french drain on that side up from the pool, however, putting in the french drain will most likely put pressure on the pool wall and cave it in.

I'll get some numbers tonight after the sun goes down. As it is now CYA is 30-40 and FC is 20, I didn't measure CC.
 
So were you testing the CCs?
What was the pH doing?

My thinking: CYA does not typically just disappear, but there is a bacteria found in soil (which it sounds like have been washing into your pool) that can convert the CYA to ammonia (making it completely disappear). This ammonia would show up a high CC levels and the FC would disappear very quickly, which is also a very acidic process. It is hard to say for sure as it sounds like you left the SWG running at high output and you never reported CC or pH results. Plus, continually adding the CYA if you did have ammonia would just result in further conversion.

Given that you waited a month to report things, it is kind of hard to figure out what has really been going on in your pool
 
jblizzle said:
So were you testing the CCs?
What was the pH doing?

My thinking: CYA does not typically just disappear, but there is a bacteria found in soil (which it sounds like have been washing into your pool) that can convert the CYA to ammonia (making it completely disappear). This ammonia would show up a high CC levels and the FC would disappear very quickly, which is also a very acidic process. It is hard to say for sure as it sounds like you left the SWG running at high output and you never reported CC or pH results. Plus, continually adding the CYA if you did have ammonia would just result in further conversion.

Given that you waited a month to report things, it is kind of hard to figure out what has really been going on in your pool
Click to expand...
jblizzle said:
So were you testing the CCs?
What was the pH doing?

My thinking: CYA does not typically just disappear, but there is a bacteria found in soil (which it sounds like have been washing into your pool) that can convert the CYA to ammonia (making it completely disappear). This ammonia would show up a high CC levels and the FC would disappear very quickly, which is also a very acidic process. It is hard to say for sure as it sounds like you left the SWG running at high output and you never reported CC or pH results. Plus, continually adding the CYA if you did have ammonia would just result in further conversion.

Given that you waited a month to report things, it is kind of hard to figure out what has really been going on in your pool
Click to expand...

Ya, I never expected it to go this long.

Is this bacteria something the health dept can test for? I spoke with the county commissioner and he said this runoff which might include animal waste could fall into their realm of expertise.
 
I have no idea if they can test for the bacteria or not. I am not sure we even know WHAT bacteria does this.
I would certainly figure out a way to prevent their runoff from getting to your pool though.
 
x2rider said:
Stabilizer level was in the 60-70 range (SWG Pool) before all this rain came, but with all the rain and overflow that disappeared, so I added 4 puounds which brought it back up to the 60-70 range, but 2 weeks later with only maintenance backflushing, it all disappeared, so I've put 4 more pounds back in a few days ago, and it looks like it's in the 30-40 range.
Click to expand...
Per pool math, 4 pounds of stabilizer will raise your CYA by 18. Your test kit can't measure CYA below 30. If the test liquid was cloudy but the dot is still visible with the tube all the way full, that means you do have CYA in your water, it's just at a level below 30 so you can't measure how much is there. Basically what is happening is all that rain you have been getting was diluting the CYA in your pool. Based on your test results after adding 4 lbs of stabilizer, your level never went to 0, it just dropped below what you could test.

x2rider said:
Several years ago when this happened, it only took 2 weeks to cure.
Click to expand...
Did you also have that much rain in the middle of your SLAM when it only took 2 weeks to cure? It sounds like the rain and runoff is what what has been slowing down your progress.
 

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aeh0603 said:
Per pool math, 4 pounds of stabilizer will raise your CYA by 18. Your test kit can't measure CYA below 30. If the test liquid was cloudy but the dot is still visible with the tube all the way full, that means you do have CYA in your water, it's just at a level below 30 so you can't measure how much is there. Basically what is happening is all that rain you have been getting was diluting the CYA in your pool. Based on your test results after adding 4 lbs of stabilizer, your level never went to 0, it just dropped below what you could test.


Did you also have that much rain in the middle of your SLAM when it only took 2 weeks to cure? It sounds like the rain and runoff is what what has been slowing down your progress.
Click to expand...
A week after putting in the 4 pounds, it was up to 60-70 range. A week after that, it's unmeasureable.
I've added 4 more pounds, and today, it's hinting in the 30-40 range.

The last episode, we had a lot of rain, and some water run over into the pool, similar to this year, yes. We have had more rain this year than then, but after the first overflow, i put up some boards along that side of the pool, and I don't think any more got in that way. That one overflow did bring in a LOT of grass clippings though to where the pool net was heavy, maybe 1/4 full of clippings.
 
jblizzle said:
I have no idea if they can test for the bacteria or not. I am not sure we even know WHAT bacteria does this.
I would certainly figure out a way to prevent their runoff from getting to your pool though.
Click to expand...
So any idea how to handle this, if that's the case? drain & refill, or continue SLAM? I won't be able to drain for a while as I'm sure there's still a lot of water in the ground.

Just got off the phone with Atwoods, they received 200 bottles of 10% bleach in today. Yay, I'm going to go get 4 or 5 cases.
 
Stop adding CYA and potentially making the problem worse until you confirm whether you have ammonia or not.

If you can add FC up to SLAM level and then test the FC and CC about 15 minutes later and have high FC and not so high CC, then you do not have ammonia and just need to follow the SLAM process.

The bacteria is the only explanation I can come up with for the CYA dropping so much in a short period of time, rain alone would not do it.
 
pH test us not reliable with FC over 10. Just test FC & CC during SLAM.
 
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