JBonnette's Thread - New SWG

[Jbonnette]

Hi All, I'm Joel from Denham Springs, Louisiana (just outside of Baton Rouge). We recently bought a new house with and are trying to get the pool up and running. I've been reading a good bit on the site and figured that I need to start posting questions since this is my first pool :).

I'm trying to get my pool under control after being a pond for the last 8-10 months. I had a SWG installed last week. Should I wait until I get the pool water under control before adding the salt?


Thanks!
Joel

[PoolDoc]

You can add the salt, if you're sure you aren't going to have to drain the pool. Or not. Doesn't matter.

But, you should get your pool up and running BEFORE you turn on the salt units.

PoolDoc

[Jbonnette]

You can add the salt, if you're sure you aren't going to have to drain the pool. Or not. Doesn't matter.

But, you should get your pool up and running BEFORE you turn on the salt units.

PoolDoc

Great! I'll probably start adding it tomorrow after I give the pool a vacuuming. I'm getting closer to getting the pool under control (I think). It's finally a pretty blue today but still really hazy. So I started working on the pool at the beginning of last week. On Friday, I had my water tested at the pool store (on a pinpoint machine). The numbers were:

FC 10
TC 10
TA 158
pH 7.7
CYA 9

At that point my pool was light greenish and cloudy. I was counseled by the pool shop to add 6lbs of chlorine, then add a floc (drop out) and let sit. Did that friday night and left it until Sunday afternoon. A decent amount of junk dropped to the bottom. I vacuumed out the shallow and as much of the deep that I could see to waste. I then added about 10lbs of chlorine because it was still very light green. This morning the water was a pretty blue and a lot of dead yellow/brown junk in piles on the bottom (yay!). But it is still pretty cloudy... and I still can't see to the bottom of the deep very well. I bought a Taylor test kit from Leslie's at lunch today and did a really quick test for chlorine and pH. FC was 5+ (off the chart... need to do the dilution method). The pH was 7.2ish. I'm assuming that the drop if pH was because of all the water that I added while vacuuming on Sunday. I'll do a full range of tests this evening when I get home. Any ideas on what the problem might be?

Thanks,
Joel

32,000 gallon vinyl liner pool.

[aylad]

If the 6 lbs of chlorine you added was dichlor, then that's probably why your pH dropped. However, 7.2 is actually ideal, so I wouldn't mess with it.

Keep in mind that when you have algae in the pool, the chlorine kills it, but the filter is what actually removes it from the water. That's more than likely the source of your cloudiness. I would avoid all the flocs and other additives that the pool store would have you add, and just keep your filter going 24/7, watching your pressure and backwashing as needed, and it will clear up the pool, provided that all the algae is dead.

That being said, you really need to shock the pool (Cl up to 12-15 ppm if that CYA number is correct, which I'm doubting) and hold it there until you can measure less than 1 ppm chlorine loss between sundown and sunup the next day. As the chlorine is used, add more as often as possible to maintain that 12-15, which is what it will take to kill the algae. Brush the pool daily, keep the filter running as I described above, and it will be clear in no time.

Janet