How long should it take to clear black algae

[joecus]

Thanks Ben, I was talking to my father today. He's calling me crazy with all this stuff. He's always had an above ground, 28' round. He said, he never went to stores and used powder chlorine for the whole time, 30+ years. He had a simple ota/ph tester. So, how did BBB start. Was it due to the cost of CL? Safety, or any other reason. Also, I was wondering what type of pool do you have, size, above or below, how much sun, cya level, and daily bleach consumption? I hope you don't mind answering. I lost about 20 ppm during the day, very little at night. The smell has gotten a little better. I'll keep you informed

[PoolDoc]

It is entirely possible that your Dad did just as he claimed. Many, many long time pool owners stumble or luck into a 'recipe' that works. And there are MANY recipes that will -- I've used 6 or 7 different patterns of pool care during my career working with commercial pools.

But, here we have to pick ONE method that
+ will work for 99% or more pool owners,
+ is based on products they can buy and methods they can follow,
+ can be used as an end point for solution processes that pull them out of the holes they and their pool stores have gotten them into,
+ and, is fairly easy to communicate.

Actually, I'm in discussions with my moderators and some of my long term users now, about moving PoolSolutions to a TWO recipe 'pool kitchen', and one of the issues is, "Won't that be too confusing?"

If your Dad was using "powder chlorine" that was calcium hypochlorite, he might be interested to know that I once ran a heavily used indoor commercial pool for THREE YEARS with NOTHING but cal hypo and a gallon -- one gallon -- of muriatic acid.

Regarding me, personally, I don't have a pool. I've worked with LARGE commercial pools, and if I could have a pool myself, it would be a 'z' shaped pool, with a 2 lane 75' main section going from 6' deep to 13' deep, with a maxiflex board at one end, and a shallow 15' by 20 swim out and kiddie area at the 6' end. My wife was a water aerobics instructor for 10 years; both of my boys are competitive swimmers (you can see one in the Rat Race post in the general interest area); and I like to SWIM, but don't really like just bobbing around in a shallow small pool. We all LOVE the ocean, and have on occasion hung-out as a family 100 yards off shore in the Gulf.

What I have enjoyed about other people's pools is making them run right, especially when others had tried to do so and couldn't.

The "BBB method" was CarlD's name for a group of methods I came up with to help poolowners escape the pool store driven problems they were having. Actually, the concept of a single unified "method" has always been somewhat clearer in the minds of members here, than it has been in my mind . . . because I can ALWAYS think of another way to do it, that might be a little better.

However, I know most people don't want to swim in my 'pool test tube', and that constantly changing recommendations will result in confusion and less enjoyable pools. So, I try to restrain myself.

[Watermom]

Ben,
Come on over to my house. Party is tomorrow night. A few weeks ago, my oldest son asked me if he could have some friends over for a cookout and to swim. "Sure Honey," says I. Two days ago he tells me he has invited 25-30 people. HUH????? Exactly where do you plan to park all these cars, etc.?? Don't worry, Mom. It will be ok. So --- if you don't mind hanging out with a few dozen 20-somethings who all like to drink beer I'm sure, then come on over. My contribution is to make part of the food and clean the pool. My house is clean. His responsibility in addition to taking care of food and beverage arrangements is to make sure that everybody goes home by midnight, that my clean house is put back in order by noon the next day and that no glass containers get near my pool!! I reminded him how costly it will be to have to buy a new liner and have it replaced and mom isn't gonna pay for it!!

He typically does one cookout party per year - but not usually so many people. Last year on party day, I remember about 3:00 in the afternoon and he was leaving the house. I asked him where he was going. To the grocery store. He had yet to begin to shop. Nothing like waiting til the last minute! Nothing like being a 20-something kid where having fun is what life is all about. (Actually he is getting ready to start law school in a few weeks, so have fun now, son, cuz by this time next month, I don't wanna hear about any fun you are having. Just working your butt off in law school!)

OK. Sorry to hijack the thread. Back to your regularly scheduled Pool Forum discussion!

[joecus]

Thanks Ben, I'm doing OK, not great, with the pool. I'm still using quite a bit of bleach. Huge variations between sun-up to sundown. Thanks for the breakdown; it makes good sense to me. I do think my father was just lucky and found a good schedule. He would mostly base it on how much we were in the pool. He told me he would put 1 "cup" every 3-4 days and a little extra (no measurement) if we used it a lot. I remember him doing it; he had this old plastic cup, not an exact cup. He kept it for years and years. Funny, what we remember (and forget) from our childhood.

Here’s a little story about my father that you might like;
One day when I was very young, he picked my sisters and me up from school. He said, “when you get home you can go in the new pool”. Of course we were so happy. When we got there, he was in the middle of removing tons of dirt to partially bury the pool, by hand with a shovel. We filled buckets of dirt and dumped them in the back of our yard. He called everyone he knew and said come over to "go into the pool". It was really funny when people got there and saw us inside the 28' round pool (hole). They helped and we all worked for hours that day and all of the following day, and finally got it done. It was a standard round 28x4-foot pool, he put it two feet below ground, two feet above. It tapered to 5 feet in the middle. He's a perfectionist and it had to be exactly 2/2. He used a standard 2x4 and a level to smooth the dirt and pitch it to get the center to 5feet. When the pool was about 15 or 20 years old, he had to replace the liner. When he pulled the old liner out, he found the walls rotting on numerous areas of the sub surface wall. One would think he would go buy a new wall or new pool, but he didn’t. Instead, he got a 3-foot wide, role of roofing aluminum and used ordinary caulk to glue it onto the old wall. He then used a 3-foot role of this soft, foamy stuff, to go between the old/new wall and new liner. I have no idea where he got it or what it’s called, it was about ¼ inch thick. It worked great and lasted until he removed it about 3 yeas ago to add on to his house. It lasted a total of about 30 years, with his repair. He was a master (cheap) at things like this. He brought the old pool wall/parts to scrap yard and sold it for $105.

I'll report back with CL levels in a few days. The foul smell is slowly getting better. If I could, I would empty and refill the entire pool. If I decide to do a partial drain, how much (in feet) can I go below skimmer? It's in-ground, vinyl linear, with steps. Thanks again.

[PoolDoc]

I don't like to make recommendations about draining IG liner pools: they can go wrong.

But . . . USUALLY, you can drain to within 1ft of the HIGHEST horizontal surface. On most pools, this is the shallow end. But some pools with liner covered steps, it's the top step, and as a result, the pool can't be drained at all.

Your pool story sounds like something my father-in-law might have done!

[PoolDoc]

Must drain = have a pool guy come out and drain it. It's possible for a pool owner with a strong shop vac to do it, but you can lose your liner if you don't have enough suction to keep the liner in place.

Regarding the article, can you post a link? When I put such things up, I like to archive the original article for reference.

[Watermom]

In a high CYA pool, if the cl gets too low, you'll get algae.

[chem geek]

Also in a pool with a lower FC/CYA ratio the kill times against pathogens is lower, but in practice it's still pretty high and for most pathogens the kill time is faster than reproduction time. So there is no uncontrolled bacterial growth. For residential pools, this is probably fine, but for commercial/public pools a faster kill time is desired to prevent person-to-person transmission of disease. Algae is harder to kill so that's why in practice for residential pools it's the main reason for the minimum FC level relative to CYA.

[PoolDoc]

I'm moved the drowning episode to here:
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?13288-Shallow-water-blackout

[joecus]

Hello all- can someone tell me if Arm and Hammer super washing soda can be used instead of Borax? The supermarket ran out of Borax. Thanks

[PoolDoc]

If you are just wanting to raise your pH, "Washing Soda" would be a better choice. But, you can use baking soda.

[joecus]

I don't know if you saw the full question, I bought A&H Super Washing Soda, is this the same as Borax? I want to use it to raise my PH.

[SalemCastles]

I don't know if you saw the full question, I bought A&H Super Washing Soda, is this the same as Borax? I want to use it to raise my PH.

No it's not. Washing Soda raises the TA significantly more than Borax will for the same PH increase.

[PoolDoc]

I don't know if you saw the full question

Sorry;
washing soda = sodium carbonate (strong effect on pH; moderate effect on carbonate alkalinity)
baking soda = sodium bicarbonate (moderate effect on pH; strong effect on carbonate alkalinity)
borax = sodium tetraborate (strong effect on pH, no effect on carbonate alkalinity; some effect on total alkalinity)

Borax is inhibits algae; carbonate alkalinity encourages it.

[joecus]

thanks everyone.