Think i may need help soon!

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I remember I used a clarifier(blue liquid) helped me get it cleared up (didn't know about this TFP web site at that time) but not sure how the experts here,on TFP feel about those, but might be faster than the slam process since that is a few days process at best. lowes and home depot has them if you decide to give them a try. the ones at Lowes got good reviews for clearing up cloudy water. ( I just checked the web site for Lowes products) if that helps. Looks like $12.00 so make be worth a try. good luck
 
I forgot that...i did put some clarifier in the water to try and help...so as i go thru the next few days, i will be trying to recover from pool store actions and making the switch over to this process...i really do appreciate the time taken by everyone guiding me
 
Your cloudiness is most likely dead algae carcasses, indicating the SLAM, along with the fact you had zero FC for a period of time.

If trying to clear it, keep the pump running 24/7 and brush to keep the dust suspended and headed to the filter.

I tried several clarifiers for plaster dust. Most didn't work for me, but one that did was called poly-diallyldimethylammonium chloride. The natural eco polychite types did nothing for my plaster dust. If trying either, stick to the recommended dose. More is not better; it can be worse. Some people have success with it filtering algae carcasses. No one here that I've noticed recommends regular use, so don't buy more than one jug in any event.

It's entirely your call of course. But here's the recipe if you refill. I have little sense of USA prices, so someone else can correct me easily enough.

4 lbs CYA (aka stabilizer, aka cyanuric acid) to achieve 50 ppm CYA so the chlorine won't burn off - Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, pool $tore - around $15

2 gallons 8.25 bleach (plain, unscented, not splashless) to hit 16 ppm FC (shock level) to kill off whatever is hiding on the walls, etc.
9 gallons to cover 30 days at 2.5 ppm FC loss per day
11 gallons total - $2.50 per gallon - call it $30

Needs test numbers on fill water to refine this, but...

Guess TA is 50, raise it to 70 - 3 lbs baking soda $??? - say $10? I have no idea
Guess pH is 8.2 - lower it to 7.6 - 20 ounces of 15% muriatic acid (MA) or 10 ounces of 31% - buy a gallon and will last a long time - $??? - say $10

Ready for swimming at this point, when water is warm enough and clear. Optional: Buying a cover will heat it faster and keep it warmer, maybe $70 to $100.

Fill water at $10 per thousand gallons - $100

Total $165, pretty much a sure thing ready for family visit

If you SLAM:
Drain/refill half assuming CYA is high $50
Total guess 15 gallons for SLAM - that's around $40
9 gals bleach for next 30 days $23
Other stuff to have on hand for maintenance - $20
Total $133

You would also need a pool brush and pole, leaf scoop, vacuum, but sounds like you have that gear. Maybe some small scrub brushes, have all the family jump in the day after you fill it (brrr, hope it's hot out) and scrub it around any algae hidey places. An old toothbrush for hard to reach places.
 
Thank you very much for all of your effort on that. I plan to give it at least a couple of days and try to recover. If that doesn't work then I definitely will need all of the information that you put together for me. I don't keep a solar cover on it but I do have a solar heating system that we created in place.

- - - Updated - - -

And actually I think my cloudiness is a direct result of suspended powder in my water because my water was clear and fine before I started and became cloudier and cloudier as I added more product. I plan to spend my day tomorrow sweeping and vacuuming the pool with pauses in the process to clean out the filter and remove residue.
 
Happy to do it - a family visit vacation needs a pool!!

Just so you know, you won't see live green algae in the water until it gets real bad. When you kill a lot of it by shocking, the cells get bleached to white, and the pool turns whitish/bluish cloudy. You won't kill it all without SLAM'ing.

It's somewhat possible it's undissolved and suspended calcium if it was cal-hypo shock. If it is, lowering the pH will help clear it by putting the calcium back into solution. Chlorine raises pH temporarily, which can cause it to show up. As the chlorine burns off, pH will drop and it will go back into solution.

With the test kit, you'll be able to diagnose this type of situation. With your pool running on TFPC, it won't happen!! All good :)
 
I am teally sroked on this forum! I hate going to the pool store and having people who work for the same place tell me different things on different days so to have a solid answer that makes sense and has some science behind it really helps my little brain comprehend it all !
 
Hey, don't worry. Almost everyone here has been in the same boat, including the experts. It's because of a lot of things, but including decades of misinformation from the pool industry and the failure of regulatory bodies to recognize the importance of the chlorine-CYA relationship.

"What? I can't even pronounce sayonara acid. Does that come from Japan? Children sharing a little pink-eye and ear infections? Who cares? Wasting millions of gallons of water? Who cares? Pool owners are all rich people. They can sort it out themselves. It's not causing cancer is it? By the way, how much did that chemical company donate to my last campaign?"

The whole thing is very, very frustrating to so many people. Don't feel alone!!
 
It has been cloudy and raining here for the last 3 days and today is the first time the sun is peeking out and I think it will do that off and on today so I'm hoping that the Sun will help the situation. I just did a test with a poolmaster premier Deluxe 5 way test kit and here are my numbers as of now:

Water temp 78
Fc - this read as a really dark yellow or orange and was basically off the chart for the colors so I did a reading with a test strip and it shows around 6. After waiting for a color change to see what my total chlorine was I didn't see one so I'll have to wait till that number comes down to be able to do that I guess.
Ph 7.6
Ta I'm not a hundred percent sure on this reading that it came out to 20 drops which from what I read indicates my ta is 200
Unless I don't understand the test I don't see anything about cya so I did that with the test strip and it shows between 30 and 50

The water at this time is milky due to all of the product that was dumped into it so I'm spending time today vacuuming and sweeping as I can and hoping that between that and the sun it starts bringing things back to normal for me
 

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I just think my best solution is to drain and refill, and then just use the tfp process from fresh and not try to backtrack and resolve things that happened due to pool store stupidity..think i am just going to do that actually. At least that way it will have a few days to get warm before my family gets here Friday. When I try to vacuum I can't even see the bottom to see what I'm getting done so I'm really just working blind. I'm finding that there's not a lot getting trapped in my filter so waiting for it to do the job is probably going to lead to a lot of frustration
 
Reading your thread, you've received some good advice already. The key will be that test kit when it arrives. Like so many others before you (us included), the pool store had us running in circles dumping stuff in without proper cause or indication from accurate testing it would work. We see this everyday. Whether you chose to drain now to expedite things because of your situation (Friday) or wait for the kit, we'll be here to help guide you. I can just about bet that once you run your first set of tests and see how everything comes together, you'll look back and wonder why you ever hesitated before to take full control. It will all work out, and you'll be a pro at this before you know it.
 
I cannot begin to thank everyone that has chimed in enough for all of the time that they have taken for me. I have turned off my pump for the moment to see if anything settled and the top of the water complete. Either way I'm not going to wait past tomorrow should go ahead and drain if I need to. I honestly think there's just too much baking soda in the water and it won't dissolve because it's over saturated and that is what's causing the water to look this way. Every little bit that I put into the water I was just watching it get more more cloudy so I really think that's what it is as opposed to algae that's been pulled off. By tomorrow morning I will know for sure if I'm going to drain and refill or if I'm going to wait it out for another day but I have a very strong feeling I'm going to drain and just start over. I'm not too happy about the $80 I spent at the school for doing what they told me to do and believe that they will be hearing about it but I'm sure it will fall on deaf ears.
 
Here are your options:
1 - You wait for the test kit so we can see "for sure" what your true readings are. We show you how to adjust them and/or "SLAM" as needed to remove algae. If you have to SLAM, that could take a week or two. The pool is still usable, I'm just letting you know. As illustrated earlier, you'll use a fair amount of bleach for the SLAM, but it's just a matter of watching the FC level each day.
2 - If you drain most of the water, you are essentially starting from scratch with "some" chemicals. FC will be very low and CYA will be almost non-existent. Those are easy additions. The pH is relatively easy to test and adjust, and the TA can wait for a few days until your good test kit arrives. To add CYA to new water, you'll use the Poolmath calculator to add the amount required for your new "target" and assumed it's there. FC will need to be tested each day still.

So it really is your choice. We at TFP always try to save people time & money when maintaining their water, and this is no exception. I'm confident your water can be cleared once you get your test kit, but if you have other priorities (like Friday) that need to be expedited, then that's your prerogative to drain and we'll certainly help you either way.
 
I just went out and took a look around to see what I still have in hand and it looks like I have stabilizer to get my cya levels up but would need to get some bleach and baking soda which I can get on Wednesday if i decide for sure to drain. :) I figure it will take most of two days to fully drain clean and refill the pool
 
Yeh, sorry we can't provide more options. Pat (Texas Splash) laid the options out really well.

With reliable test results we could pin it down, but even then you'd might want to verify algae over chemistry, which takes an extra day, plus the SLAM. There's a webpage at poolsolutions.com that lists 100 reasons why a pool could be cloudy. But what we see here at TFP from pool $tore pools, around 95%+ of the time, is dead algae carcasses and shock efforts that only kill most, but not all, of the algae.

I don't think it's the baking soda (bioguard balance pak). That excessive addition of 12 lbs is a pool store trick that causes you to buy more acid. It almost never causes a problem so its a reliable trick for them to use. It's also fair to mention it may not be the person at the counter, but rather the training and software they get from the chemical companies, which is why you get the blank stare. If you tell them about us, they'll just say think and say "How can people on the internet in their pajamas know more about pools than the chemical company? You're talking about bleach for crying out loud. If you put bleach in your pool, your water might catch on fire!" Pardon my sarcasm, but that ain't far wrong.

Sometimes when lots of Cal-hypo shock is added, the pool turns cloudy because the pH jumps up from the chlorine and the calcium combines with things like sulfates in the water, and it's suspended in the water and slowly sinks. This normally goes away as the chlorine is burned off and the pH falls, allowing the calcium to go back into solution and to our eye, it disappears, just like salt dissolving in water. But I noticed your pH at 7.6 which should be low enough for this to happen, so we're back to dead algae carcasses.

From what I've seen so far, you're absorbing the correct information quickly, and your instincts will tell you the right answer for your situation. We're here to walk you through it either way. We all help for different reasons, but I know for a lot of us, it's because we want more children and families to be safe in their pools, and love seeing the thrill and satisfaction of people saving money and having beautiful sparkly water they would never get from a pool store or weekly pool service.
 

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