- Jul 7, 2013
- 7
A little background, a few weeks ago my pool turned the dreaded green. At that time I was relying on my pool store to help. So, I kept putting in pound after pound of the shock material I bought from them. It appeared as if all was dead. but the pool was not clearing up. They had me floc it which made the water crystal, for a couple of days. Then, the pH jumped and the water became cloudy. The next day, the green returned.
I found this site and decided to try to do it myself, based on the SLAM process. Since I did not have bleach yet and wanted to get a jump start, I dumped in a lot of the shock (5 lbs on Sunday morning, another 4 on Sunday night, and 5 more on Monday) without measuring chlorine. Normally this much would add about 28 ppm to my pool. Monday after my wife bought the bleach, the green was gone, replaced with the milky white of dead algae and the FC was only 10. (I was at work at the time.) I had them add bleach to get it to shock level (about FC=18 based on CYA=14). We kept it there all week (brushing sides and vacuuming) until finally we got CC=0 and overnight FC drop was negligible. The water had cleared up a bunch, but was still cloudy.
So, here we are now. Water is still cloudy, but much better. We can actually see the pool's main drain, but it is still hazy. My questions:
1. Should I still be maintaining shock levels of chlorine at this point, or can I let it come down to normal level?
2. When can we use the pool? Do we need to wait for the water to clear up? My kids ask ever day if they can swim. Is there anything I can do to speed up this portion of the process?
3. We had a bunch of thunderstorms yesterday. When I measured the FC levels, it had dropped significantly during the day. We still had some FC left, but not much. I added bleach to bring it up to normal FC level (FC=8). Could the rain bring down my FC level or do I still have a problem? Do I need to bring it back to shock level?
4. Not exactly algae, but my pool pH tends to go high. I am adding acid on a regular basis (nearly ever other day) to keep it down. What can be causing this?
Thanks all for your help in advance.
Brian
I found this site and decided to try to do it myself, based on the SLAM process. Since I did not have bleach yet and wanted to get a jump start, I dumped in a lot of the shock (5 lbs on Sunday morning, another 4 on Sunday night, and 5 more on Monday) without measuring chlorine. Normally this much would add about 28 ppm to my pool. Monday after my wife bought the bleach, the green was gone, replaced with the milky white of dead algae and the FC was only 10. (I was at work at the time.) I had them add bleach to get it to shock level (about FC=18 based on CYA=14). We kept it there all week (brushing sides and vacuuming) until finally we got CC=0 and overnight FC drop was negligible. The water had cleared up a bunch, but was still cloudy.
So, here we are now. Water is still cloudy, but much better. We can actually see the pool's main drain, but it is still hazy. My questions:
1. Should I still be maintaining shock levels of chlorine at this point, or can I let it come down to normal level?
2. When can we use the pool? Do we need to wait for the water to clear up? My kids ask ever day if they can swim. Is there anything I can do to speed up this portion of the process?
3. We had a bunch of thunderstorms yesterday. When I measured the FC levels, it had dropped significantly during the day. We still had some FC left, but not much. I added bleach to bring it up to normal FC level (FC=8). Could the rain bring down my FC level or do I still have a problem? Do I need to bring it back to shock level?
4. Not exactly algae, but my pool pH tends to go high. I am adding acid on a regular basis (nearly ever other day) to keep it down. What can be causing this?
Thanks all for your help in advance.
Brian