Timmy
05-31-2011, 07:21 AM
I have opened my solid covered IG 30k gallon liner D.E. pool for 7 years straight with the water being crystal clear and roughly a 2-3 FC. This year, not good. Water was very cloudy (could barely see the bottom at the shallow end) and there was 0 FC. Connected filter (Hayward EC65) Saturday morning and added roughly 6 gallons of bleech. Let it run for hours then we pulled the cover. Cloudy mess, but not green. I was stumped as I did not change my fall covering procedure at all. I found this site and saw a few others with similar problems, so I kept shocking and adding bleech as my FC would read .5-1 throughout the day. I was also running the filter non-stop. By Sunday morning, it was a little clearer, but FC was still around .5. Added more bleech (good thing recycle pickup is this week) and by mid-morning noticed some white crap that looked like boogers floating around the pool. I assume it was dead algae that was being killed by shocking the pool. Also, CYA was 0. I was going to adding some floaters with tablets, but saw it was recommended to hold off and use bleech only.
This then caused my pressure in the filter to rise 15-20, so I backwashed. Kept adding bleech, backwash. Also tested for CC and noticed a little.
Woke up Monday, shallow end was clear and could now see the drain at the deep end, though still cloudy down there. I also could now see a huge pile of worms at the bottom of my pool. Since I fertilize my lawn which is roughly 5 feet away, I wonder if that is where my problem started. Have always fertilized that area, but never saw this many worms before. I could now see the white crap on the floor of the pool in areas. I brushed all those areas, along with the walls a few times on Monday. Backwashed again mid day and skimmed dead crap off surface. By 8PM pressure was still holding steady around 8psi and pool was pretty clear. FC was still around 2 or so. CC was zero. I was still not sure if I should add stabilizer or tablets, so I hit it with another 4.5 gallons of bleech to run overnight.
Woke up this morning, FC was around 3 which was lower than I had hoped for since my addition of bleech last night should have had it up around 7-9. CC was still at 0. Added another 4 gallons this morning and off to work.
So after all this you are probably falling asleep, but here is my question (finally). Since the pool is now crystal clear and obviously does not have any stabilizer in it yet, is it safe to add a couple of floaters with 1" tabs and add a little stabilizer? I would also like to put my solar cover on to help hold the FC as much as possible since the pool gets full sun from 10-5, but saw the mention of gas release with the ammonia breakdown.
Thank you everyone.
This then caused my pressure in the filter to rise 15-20, so I backwashed. Kept adding bleech, backwash. Also tested for CC and noticed a little.
Woke up Monday, shallow end was clear and could now see the drain at the deep end, though still cloudy down there. I also could now see a huge pile of worms at the bottom of my pool. Since I fertilize my lawn which is roughly 5 feet away, I wonder if that is where my problem started. Have always fertilized that area, but never saw this many worms before. I could now see the white crap on the floor of the pool in areas. I brushed all those areas, along with the walls a few times on Monday. Backwashed again mid day and skimmed dead crap off surface. By 8PM pressure was still holding steady around 8psi and pool was pretty clear. FC was still around 2 or so. CC was zero. I was still not sure if I should add stabilizer or tablets, so I hit it with another 4.5 gallons of bleech to run overnight.
Woke up this morning, FC was around 3 which was lower than I had hoped for since my addition of bleech last night should have had it up around 7-9. CC was still at 0. Added another 4 gallons this morning and off to work.
So after all this you are probably falling asleep, but here is my question (finally). Since the pool is now crystal clear and obviously does not have any stabilizer in it yet, is it safe to add a couple of floaters with 1" tabs and add a little stabilizer? I would also like to put my solar cover on to help hold the FC as much as possible since the pool gets full sun from 10-5, but saw the mention of gas release with the ammonia breakdown.
Thank you everyone.