oops I caused a perfectly clear pool to be cloudy

[Cords]

This morning after a round of testing I got CYA <30 (something less than 30, dot almost went away), PH 7.8, FC 1.5, CC .5
I added 1 cup of powdered CYA and 13oz of leftover HTH Super Shock 'n Swim. I have 5 more bags of this stuff so I thought I would alternate it with bleach till it is gone, or use one if I am temporarily out of bleach. Well the pool went cloudy right away, and has been cloudy all day. The shock is calcium hypochlorite 52%, Other 48%.

-Will the cloudiness go away, or do I have to do something about it?

-How should I dispose of the 5 bags of Shock? I can't in good faith give it to anyone, I would rather "preach bleach" to them.

[aylad]

If you added this all through the skimmer and it went cloudy, then you might need to look at your cartridge and make sure there is no tear or hole in it. If you broadcast it into the pool, then the cloudiness might clear up with more filtering, unless your CH is already high--you didn't list levels for Ta and CH, but if they're both high, then you might have calcium precipitating out. If this is the case then you need to stop using the cal-hypo and switch to either bleach or trichlor/dichlor. Lowering your TA and pH with Muriatic acid might help, IF the CH and the TA are high. Otherwise, you're going to need to drain some water (not all) and refill to dilute it.

You can give the bags of shock to anybody that needs calcium in their pools--generally, anybody with a plaster/gunite pool, or those with vinyl pools with low calcium (like me!!). Cal-hypo has its place in the pool chem world--just not if you have high calcium already.

Janet

[waterbear]

pH was 7.8 when you added the cal hypo. How high was your TA and calcium hardness at the time? High TA, elevated pH and high calcium can cause oversaturation of the calcium in the water with the addition of more calcium (cal hypo) and cause calcium carbonate to precipitate out and cloud the water. Dropping the pH to around 7.2 can help clear the water by causing the calcium carbonate to redissolve but we really need a full set of test results to know what is going on.

[aylad]

Hey, I think I saw this somewhere before !!! :)

Janet

[CarlD]

Yeah, water that goes cloudy from Cal-Hypo with high pH sometimes clears up just by lower pH with muriatic acid. Evan got there first ! :):)

Carl

[Cords]

Still can't see the bottom, but hopefully I'm making progress. I drained 25% while sweeping the settling white crud. Refilled and have been putting in muriatic acid a cup at a time to carefully get the PH down. Also started the bleach & CYA process again because they were both low from draining during a really sunny day.

The GOOD NEWS is I figured out why the new pump was so weak- there is a strainer built into the connector that goes thru the pool wall. Any bugs that make it past the skimmer basket get stuck there and fairly quickly plug the connector. Now the filter system has a fighting chance at clearing out the cloud. When I spray out the filter it looks like milk coming off the bottom of it. I have been spraying the filter out hourly.

[PoolDoc]

Well, if the filter is getting dirty, that's a GOOD thing. All of that is dirt you removing from the pool.

Ben