Milky cloudy water - concrete dust? At a loss.

[lady.k]

Hello - ok. First off, 3rd season w/the pool & used the BBB method last year nearly 100% except for an opening dose of flocculant due to a lot of iron in our fill water. Our pool was extremely stable & we had an extremely good year with chlorine stability. I've spent a fair amount of time searching the resources on this site to see if I can figure this out on my own before posting.

This year, things aren't starting off so nice. We had a new pool deck installed and during the tear out some of the old concrete pieces got in the pool - and when they cut the new deck's control joints some dust got into the pool. FWIW, it's my husband's concrete company, and he's the guilty party for getting all that mess getting in the pool. He know's better and did his best to prevent it knowing it could mess up #'s.

After they were done, we brought the water level up with our softened water from in the house. We learned that in the last 2 previous seasons the softened water helps with the iron issues. Our iron is BAD here. After the fill, the water was dirty but relatively clear and all of the concrete dust and chunks were settled to the bottom. We got some bleach in there and proceeded to vacuum. Figured it would be a few cycles of bleach & vacuuming before we got it all cleared out due to the concrete dust. Well, got all the visible concrete out and the water was a little cloudy so we tossed in in ~1/2 cup of DE in the skimmer.

Fast forward 2 weeks and now the clarity is terrible. The water is a milky white and you can't see past ~2.5 ft. I'm not sure if it's residual issues from the concrete dust or there's something else I'm not considering. I gave the walls a feel and they aren't slimy at all.

Here's the #'s from this morning's test. I did have the chlorine up to 12 a week ago and it was still cloudy. I plan to dump in a jug of bleach today to get rid of the CC. Generally it takes little to no effort to get rid of any CC.

-also, pump & filter run 24x7. Water temp is ~ 64F

FC: 8
CC: .5
PH: 7.4
TKA: 120
CH: 50
CYA: 50
*Testing w/Taylor K2006

Any ideas? I did read briefly about suspended calcium carbonate (lime dust from the concrete) - however, shouldn't my CH #'s be higher then? Plus I don't know how to fix that if that could be the case...

[PoolDoc]

1. If you are testing with the 10ml sample (=> 1 drop = 0.5 ppm Cl), than a CC reading of 0.5 ppm should usually be ignored.

2. Milky water with high chlorine and low / moderate pH/alk/calc points to filter malfunction. OR, over use of clarifiers or HEDP based metal products. If you've used those, let us know. Otherwise, it's time to check your filter for adequate media level (enough sand or Zeobrite)

Remember, I'm *guessing* about your pool from 1,000+ miles away, based on the info you provide . . . so I can't give any certain, "That's it for sure", answer.

[lady.k]

Thanks Ben.

Absolutely no clarifiers or metal products. Aside from the floc used over one year ago we're strictly BBB here. Will have DH take a look at the filter & report back.

[lady.k]

No luck - DH took the filter apart & all look good - sand/zeobright is full.

[PoolDoc]

I don't know what to tell you.

You could try over-chlorinating, and putting some tablet floaters in the pool, and then turning the pump off for a couple of days, to see if whatever the cloudiness is will settle out. That's the only idea that occurs to me at the moment.

For what it's worth -- this sort of problem is one of the reasons we're very reluctant to recommend floc products. I don't know that your floc is the problem, but I do know that floc use is a common factor in many of the really puzzling cloudy pool cases.

What makes it worse is that we have absolutely NO idea what you put in your pool -- with unregulated products, like "floc" and "clarifier", which do not have to specify any of the chemical ingredients, companies can put anything into the product. If you want to tell us the EXACT product and brand name, we *may* be able to find an MSDS sheet that will give us a clue.