Hey all. I've been at this for weeks and now I'm getting desperate— supposed to have my kid's birthday party this weekend and water clarity is still terrible.
For context: I have a 24' x 54" above-ground pool with a Hayward S180T sand filter and PoweFlo LX 1.5HP pump. I use liquid chlorine (and sometimes cal hypo) to sanitize and a Taylor K2006C FAS-DPD test kit for testing water chemistry. I never covered the pool after closing last season (I will never make that mistake again) and so I began the pool opening process with a green swamp, two dead squirrels thank sunk to the bottom, and I also started it late due to life getting in the way.
I had been scooping up piles of dead leaves (and at least one of the dead squirrels) and muck for over a week whilst keeping chlorine levels high. I tried to gain some visibility by adding a drop-out flocculent a couple of weeks ago, but whatever is making the water cloudy remains suspended in the water. A clarifier added recently did not seem to have an effect.
I finally got over my apprehension about getting into the pool with a potential dead animal carcass and scooped up all of the remaining leaves and sticks from the bottom. I continued to SLAM the pool and slowly achieved this milky teal color. Not much has changed since then:
I wound up opening the sand filter and found the sand to visually look normal and relatively clean, but after grabbing some with my hand I found that it left a very sticky residue (biofilm/body-oil? flocculent/clarifiers? silicone lubricant?) on my hands.
I drained all of the water from the filter with the help of the wet vac on the winter drain. Replaced the winter drain cap, mixed a full bottle of filter cleaner with approx 5gal of water, enough to cover the top of the sand, and poured it in. I let this sit overnight for >12hrs. The following day, I checked the condition of the sand. It felt a lot better and squeezing it didn't leave a sticky residue on my hand. I ran the hose down into the filter for around 30mins, prodding it around to agitate the sand and watched it until the majority of fine silt-like particles floated up and out of the top. I reinstalled the multiport valve and connections, then ran the pump while in backwash mode until the water in the sightglass looked as clear as it could. I did a rinse for a minute or so and have been running it in filter mode since. I have noticed that I don't need to backwash anywhere near as frequently, compared to every 2-3 hours from before cleaning the sand.
I'm about to do another full water chemistry test and will post the updated results. After that I will do a more thorough wall brushing followed by a vacuuming to waste.
Updated test results:
Free Chlorine: 9.4
Combined Chlorine: 0.6
pH: 7.5
Total Alkalinity: 90
Calcium Hardness: 140
CYA: 30
Salt: 1000
Borates: 10
Temperature: 80°F
Share link to PoolMath: PoolMath Logs
Also attaching the exported pool overview + recent logs from the PoolMath app.
If anyone has any suggestions on what I should do next, I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
For context: I have a 24' x 54" above-ground pool with a Hayward S180T sand filter and PoweFlo LX 1.5HP pump. I use liquid chlorine (and sometimes cal hypo) to sanitize and a Taylor K2006C FAS-DPD test kit for testing water chemistry. I never covered the pool after closing last season (I will never make that mistake again) and so I began the pool opening process with a green swamp, two dead squirrels thank sunk to the bottom, and I also started it late due to life getting in the way.
I had been scooping up piles of dead leaves (and at least one of the dead squirrels) and muck for over a week whilst keeping chlorine levels high. I tried to gain some visibility by adding a drop-out flocculent a couple of weeks ago, but whatever is making the water cloudy remains suspended in the water. A clarifier added recently did not seem to have an effect.
I finally got over my apprehension about getting into the pool with a potential dead animal carcass and scooped up all of the remaining leaves and sticks from the bottom. I continued to SLAM the pool and slowly achieved this milky teal color. Not much has changed since then:
I wound up opening the sand filter and found the sand to visually look normal and relatively clean, but after grabbing some with my hand I found that it left a very sticky residue (biofilm/body-oil? flocculent/clarifiers? silicone lubricant?) on my hands.
I drained all of the water from the filter with the help of the wet vac on the winter drain. Replaced the winter drain cap, mixed a full bottle of filter cleaner with approx 5gal of water, enough to cover the top of the sand, and poured it in. I let this sit overnight for >12hrs. The following day, I checked the condition of the sand. It felt a lot better and squeezing it didn't leave a sticky residue on my hand. I ran the hose down into the filter for around 30mins, prodding it around to agitate the sand and watched it until the majority of fine silt-like particles floated up and out of the top. I reinstalled the multiport valve and connections, then ran the pump while in backwash mode until the water in the sightglass looked as clear as it could. I did a rinse for a minute or so and have been running it in filter mode since. I have noticed that I don't need to backwash anywhere near as frequently, compared to every 2-3 hours from before cleaning the sand.
I'm about to do another full water chemistry test and will post the updated results. After that I will do a more thorough wall brushing followed by a vacuuming to waste.
Updated test results:
Free Chlorine: 9.4
Combined Chlorine: 0.6
pH: 7.5
Total Alkalinity: 90
Calcium Hardness: 140
CYA: 30
Salt: 1000
Borates: 10
Temperature: 80°F
Share link to PoolMath: PoolMath Logs
Also attaching the exported pool overview + recent logs from the PoolMath app.
If anyone has any suggestions on what I should do next, I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
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