Swamp to pool conversion

[shortdogOH]

Still waiting... Keeping FC near 12-14. pH fell back down to 7.1 so added some more Borax.

Filter still broken. It is disconnected and awaiting part to arrive. Color still looks like the last picture I posted days ago. Can visually make out the 3rd (and last) entry step so should not be long until I can see the bottom of the pool, perhaps.

 

[shortdogOH]

Update:
Filter is running!!

test results (last night)
pH 7.5
FC 9.5 <-- got a little too low
CC 1.5
TC 11.0
TA still 60-70
temp 86 F
untested, but should be approx using pool calc
CYA 24-25
Borate 24
CH 200
Salt 210

 

[Guinness418]

How's the color? At the very beginning of my swamp conversion I brought pool up to mustard algae level (just in case) and let it come down to shock level and after a few days found no more CC even as the color was still foggy green. Just a thought. Also I'm not *Sure* that it helped but the other day when I posted that the color didn't seem to be getting any better in my pool I added the DE to the sand filter and 4 days days later my water is clearing up and I can see the bottom of the shallow end. Just some thoughts as I'm a newer pool owner that went through similar stuff. The other more experianced people can tell you if I'm way off track or not.

 

[shortdogOH]

How's the color? At the very beginning of my swamp conversion I brought pool up to mustard algae level (just in case) and let it come down to shock level and after a few days found no more CC even as the color was still foggy green. Just a thought. Also I'm not *Sure* that it helped but the other day when I posted that the color didn't seem to be getting any better in my pool I added the DE to the sand filter and 4 days days later my water is clearing up and I can see the bottom of the shallow end. Just some thoughts as I'm a newer pool owner that went through similar stuff. The other more experianced people can tell you if I'm way off track or not.

It seems darker now that I have been hovering closer to shock level. Early on (last week) I was always a few points above shock. The color seems to be a large factor of the sun as well, the brighter the sun, the better the color, so it is hard to tell if the color is improving from day to day.

Where do you get DE? I know a friend who has some DE they ordered online for something, that maybe I can acquire a few cupfuls from. Also the filter has been in play just over 24 hours, so I hope to make major strides now that it is functioning. The steps are pretty clear in my pool and if I stood perfectly still and with the sun at my back I could make out the bottom of the shallow end of my pool It does not appear to be white as I had anticipated. I found my boat shoes and have been considering entering the swamp this weekend to get a good brush of the shallow end at least. I did find two dead animals when I originally was netting the bottom, so there is likely to be others around in there somewhere, which makes me a little nervous in entering "the unknown".

How is your temp? 86 F seems high for this area, but the water does feel warm for whatever reason.

Appeciate your inputs, I browsed some of the conversion threads last nght, and it is hard to beleive some of the transformations. The beginning pictures look familiar to mine in some cases, It is just hard to imagine my pool ever looking like the "after" photos. Looking forward to it though.

It seemed a common theme has been brushing and vacuuming the pool is very helpful in getting there faster, and is something I need to concentrate on now that I have the pool equipment running. I did try vacuuming earlier, but the pump did not seem to be able to create any suction in the vacuum hose. :|

 

[frogabog]

Ewwww... don't go in there yet! Get a really long pole for your brush instead.

Dead animals?? Doesn't sound safe to me. Sounds like you need more time shocking/circulating.

Can you feel any suction at the end of the vac hose after hooking to the pump? (under water of course) Seems odd that it isn't sucking. Or is sucking, depending on how you look at it...

 

[shortdogOH]

Ewwww... don't go in there yet! Get a really long pole for your brush instead.

Dead animals?? Doesn't sound safe to me. Sounds like you need more time shocking/circulating.

Can you feel any suction at the end of the vac hose after hooking to the pump? (under water of course) Seems odd that it isn't sucking. Or is sucking, depending on how you look at it...

Okay, good to know. The house does not have water yet, so I could not hose off or anything, which makes matters worse. I did get that telescopic pole I think I mentioned earlier, but broke the connector off in less than a minute. Does not seem like I can really get any pressure with it. Plus, it was metal and rusted all over the place, and did not really want that getting in the water either.

Guess I really need to visit the pool store, but they seem to close early of the weekends (????) so I have not been able to get in.

Need more patience I suspect, but anything I can reasonably do to speed things up I want to try.

I tried the vac hose a while ago, when I was first getting the pump to run, and the vacuum hose hooked up seemed to bring the pump to almost no flow (at the return). Maybe I need a lesson on how to use the vac hose. I have the skimmer (which the vac hose connects to) opening, and another opening, I assume at the floor of the deep end. For returns, I have two, one on the same wall as the skimmer in the deep end (about 15 feet from the pump) and one in the shallow end on the opposite wall as the skimmer (this one has a very weak stream, and seems to discharge an air/water mix). I have the ability to restrict flow from one or both of the openings (valve located at the pump). Perhaps I need to restrict the deep end opening completely, and have the pump only pulling from the skimmer, while using the vac hose?? Not sure if I tried that, I was more concerned with getting circulation at that point. Thanks. Note: I dont actually have a vacuum head that hooks onto the hose, perhaps I need something to hook to the hose that will also pump water so that the pool pump is not doing all the work?

 

[shortdogOH]

Adding 1 gallon of 12.5% per day, (usually in 2-3 applications).

Tried the skimmer vac hose again with little success. Thinking it is not going to do any good anyway, unless I have a way to get the end of the hose the the pool floor. Did fashion an 11 foot pole to use with hand-vac and was able to give entire pool a good vac/brushing. Able to skim a good handful of leaves/??/stuff that floated to the top and had to backwash twice afterwords (after not having to backwash for the first 48 hours). Added an additional 182 ounces of Bleach-6 to help deal with the mess that was stirred up.

This picture was taken prior to the cleaning.
[attachment=0:2mniqd7w]0715 pool.jpg[/attachment:2mniqd7w]

 

[shortdogOH]

Update: Only adding bleach now.

Got in yesterday, felt pretty good, and did a good brush of the shallow end and floors. Had to backwash twice. Cannot wait to see the results. Shallow end is vacuuming mostly clearnow,but still picking up quite a bit of sludge from the deep bottom still.

 

[frogabog]

::

wanna see wanna see!

 

[shortdogOH]

I was a bit excited too, but the clarity is still about the same as it was. The problem now is the deep end, been running my pool vac down there and it fills up in a pass or two. I will get a pic AFTER I vac it today and debris is floating around, maybe someone can tell me if I am taking a good approach or there is something else I can be doing.

 

[shortdogOH]

Trial and error is teacing me a lot anyway..

Picture is too big, but I swear it looks the same.

Good news is that I have removed enough sludge from the floor drain area, that the pump will now draw from it, for 10-15 minutes anyway, and then the pump strainer becomes so full of debris it stops pumping. But I am getting the garbage out of the pool!! Backwashed 3 times today, got in again and vaccuumed the deep as much as possible, a bucket and a half of sludge water removed. Think i am making some real progress, but down to 4 gallons of bleach-12.5% of the 27 I orginally bought.

 

[hayabusa3]

Sounds like a lot of work bud! keep it up - lookin forward to deein the finished product

 

[Bama Rambler]

As long as you're getting debris out you need to keep after it. Any debris in the pool will consume large amounts of chlorine. Once you get all that out, you'll see more progress for the amount of chlorine you're adding.

 

[JesseWV]

I tried the vac hose a while ago, when I was first getting the pump to run, and the vacuum hose hooked up seemed to bring the pump to almost no flow (at the return). Maybe I need a lesson on how to use the vac hose. I have the skimmer (which the vac hose connects to) opening, and another opening, I assume at the floor of the deep end. For returns, I have two, one on the same wall as the skimmer in the deep end (about 15 feet from the pump) and one in the shallow end on the opposite wall as the skimmer (this one has a very weak stream, and seems to discharge an air/water mix). I have the ability to restrict flow from one or both of the openings (valve located at the pump). Perhaps I need to restrict the deep end opening completely, and have the pump only pulling from the skimmer, while using the vac hose?? Not sure if I tried that, I was more concerned with getting circulation at that point. Thanks. Note: I dont actually have a vacuum head that hooks onto the hose, perhaps I need something to hook to the hose that will also pump water so that the pool pump is not doing all the work?

It's seems to me that you would have to close the valve to your floor drain in order to get maximum suction from your skimmer. Water likes to take the path of least resistance and that wouldn't be through the hose if it had another place to be pulled from. I don't have a floor drain so I'm not 100% sure about this so perhaps someone who does can chime in.

Also make sure the suction plate is sealed flush to the skimmer basket and that your pump does not lose it's prime while hooking it up. I always fill the hose up with water from the return before hooking the plate up to the skimmer.

See this post for a more detailed method to get started vacuuming.

 

[shortdogOH]

Thanks for the encouragement and words of wisdom. Never thought to use the return as a watefr supply to fill the vac hose, good tip Jesse. Truth is I really have no way to get the hose to the bottom where it is needed, so getting it to work has never been a priority, but I will check that post anyway, thanks for linking it in.

My hand vac seems to be doing the job, it was designed for a much smaller pool is all, so I am wasting alot of time and chlorine doing things the slow way. Last 3-4 vac runs resulted in 90%+ sand, so the organics may be getting thin in the pool. Color is about the same.

Something odd today, I stopped by the AM and had time to run the vac 2-3 passes and add about half a gallon of bleach-6%. I returned about 75 minutes later and the water looked like below. Almost as if someone had deposited there dirty water from a load of laundry. I have a close up I will also try and attach. Added more bleach-6% and left, when I returned 20 minutes later the pool was back to its green-gray appearance. Any explanation?
[attachment=1:1zx3vy1q]724 midday.jpg[/attachment:1zx3vy1q]
closer look:
[attachment=0:1zx3vy1q]724 closeup.jpg[/attachment:1zx3vy1q]

 

[dshurett]

I am new here too. I can only offer a couple of thoughts on the vacuum process we used when I was a kid.

1. Use returns to fill vacuum hose with water.
2. Turn deep end drains off. As posted earlier, you need all the suction you can get and the drains at the bottom will keep you from getting a good prime through the hose.
3. Keep hose as submerged as possible, put over skimmer and try/hope you can start pulling a prime. Once you get alot of air in the line (attempting to hook up or accidentally pulling vac out of water)....stop and refill with water and try again.

 

[hayabusa3]

How's it looking now?

 

[shortdogOH]

Looking about the same. I really needed to make vacuuming (with th hose)more of a priorty. Today I vaccummed more with varied results, thought I was really getting somewhere, until I snagged what looked like a hat or visor. I had it twice but was not able to remove it from the pool (it kept slipping back in). Determined to get that hat, I vacuumed until the batteries were drained with no success. Then i decided to attach my net to the vac pole I made and fish the hat out. My hope was that I could find the hat and maybe even my glasses I had kicked in the pool last week. Never did find either of those objects, but I did recover a wind/rain ornament, a roll of duct tape, a frog (ceramic), a plastic ash tray, a shower head (or maybe a hose nozzle), and about 2 gallons of sludge/sand. I removed more stuff in two hours than I had all week with the little vacuum. Was still getting large amounts of sludge when it got dark, but I added the nightly bleach and am hoping for a noticable difference soon.

 

[hayabusa3]

sorry its draging out..

 

[Beamup]

Wow, that's a lot of crud. The more gunk you can get out of the bottom with the net, the faster the chlorine can kill what's in the water. The net will serve you a lot better than the vacuum if there's that much crud. Personally I'd spend a while with the net until I wasn't getting anything else up, THEN try the vacuum.