Hi, everyone,
First time poster but long-time learner and lurker on the forum. My partner took pool school and we've searched all the forums and can't figure out why our pool is still green. We bought a house and started opening the pool on 8/17. It was a swamp, but all the equipment was properly winterized when it was professionally closed last fall. Sand filter, pump is one year old. Our first few days were kind of wasted with not adding nearly enough bleach, not vacuuming early enough, etc. We got everything together and started SLAMing the pool about 11 days ago now. pH (7.6) and Alkalinity (90ppm) have stayed stable. Our water is very soft -- no copper or iron at all. Phosphates come in around 38ppm.
Here's where we're getting caught up: our total chlorine levels have been consistently ~30ppm+ and stabilizer under/around 45-50ppm. Somehow combined chlorine keeps coming in at 0ppm. We thought maybe we had a defective test kit so we brought a sample to our local pool store and their results were the same -- free chlorine at 33.21ppm, combined chlorine at 0ppm.
If we're keeping these numbers stable, running the pump/filter 24/7 and backwashing when needed (1-2x/day), brushing the pool regularly and already vacuumed all debris... Why is the pool still a green, cloudy mess? Some days it's a duller green, other days it's more neon green. It's certainly not as murky as when we first opened it, but I haven't seen any noticeable change at all in the past 6-7 days.
We were hoping to open it so late in summer just so we could see the bottom, have peace of mind that everything works, and maybe take a dip or two before needing to shut it down for winter...
First time poster but long-time learner and lurker on the forum. My partner took pool school and we've searched all the forums and can't figure out why our pool is still green. We bought a house and started opening the pool on 8/17. It was a swamp, but all the equipment was properly winterized when it was professionally closed last fall. Sand filter, pump is one year old. Our first few days were kind of wasted with not adding nearly enough bleach, not vacuuming early enough, etc. We got everything together and started SLAMing the pool about 11 days ago now. pH (7.6) and Alkalinity (90ppm) have stayed stable. Our water is very soft -- no copper or iron at all. Phosphates come in around 38ppm.
Here's where we're getting caught up: our total chlorine levels have been consistently ~30ppm+ and stabilizer under/around 45-50ppm. Somehow combined chlorine keeps coming in at 0ppm. We thought maybe we had a defective test kit so we brought a sample to our local pool store and their results were the same -- free chlorine at 33.21ppm, combined chlorine at 0ppm.
If we're keeping these numbers stable, running the pump/filter 24/7 and backwashing when needed (1-2x/day), brushing the pool regularly and already vacuumed all debris... Why is the pool still a green, cloudy mess? Some days it's a duller green, other days it's more neon green. It's certainly not as murky as when we first opened it, but I haven't seen any noticeable change at all in the past 6-7 days.
We were hoping to open it so late in summer just so we could see the bottom, have peace of mind that everything works, and maybe take a dip or two before needing to shut it down for winter...
