This year's opening is going to be a challenge...

[joshs2000ss]

Decided to go cover-less this winter after the snows of the last few years demolished my aging cover. The plan was to circulate the water when needed and keep it relatively clean through the winter. When the pump gave out, that plan ended and I put off replacing the pump until now. As as result, I have a lovely green swamp. Pump parts are here and I'll be putting that back together in the next few days (I hope). I'll post up pictures as I go. I'm gonna need a pallet of bleach.

 

[Mr Bruce]

Show 'em how it's done! Picked a good time, it warms up next week.

 

[aftrshok99]

Welcome to the "Lovely Green Swamp Club"

Looking forward to seeing how you progress from swamp to crystal clear TFP water.

 

[joshs2000ss]

As the saying goes, "Here goes nothin'."

Day 1

Time to tackle this beast. I began with rebuilding the pump. I'm 6'8" and this pump is nestled in a lovely location that makes angles and reaching the parts difficult but nevertheless, I did it.

Turn it on, water circulates, check. Now, lets dump some of this crud to waste (I realize I probably didn't have to drain it as much as I did, but I wanted to get a little fresh water in there). I drained down to just above the returns. During that time I also connected the vacuum and ran it blindly to just remove what I could. I ran the leaf rake through the bottom several times as well. After I felt like I'd done enough blind cleaning, I let the draining continue then started the SLAM process. Got some CYA going as it was zero'd out and bumped my FC level to 13 (shock level for a CYA of 30). I let this sit over night (last chlorine add of Pool Essentials 10% was at around 11:30 pm).

Day 2

Woke up to this. I'll be honest. I didn't think it would clear that quickly. I can see the bottom and I can see how poorly my blind vacuuming went, haha. FC was at 7 when I tested this morning so I quickly bumped it back to 13.

I want to vacuum the rest of the crud on the bottom but I don't like to vacuum into the filter and I can't backwash since I just added CYA. (I think I probably did that step out of order). Can I vacuum to waste and be ok other than losing a little more water volume, to get additional crud out?

 

[joshs2000ss]

Not going to have time to vacuum so I just stirred it up. Back to green again but not nearly like it was. Here’s to progress.

 

[Flying Tivo]

You can vacuum to waste, CYA is cheap, dont expect the CYA to be 30ppm. Since you have a SWG you will eventually have to go higher. So if you miscalculate a bit is no problem.

Felipe

 

[zea3]

If you used the sock method to add CYA you can vacuum if you wish. If you are going to vacuum to waste you will lose CYA anyway, probably more than just backwashing.