a little cloudy

i have an inground 21,000 gallon sand filter. just starting opening this week..it is still just a little cloudy and looks a little dingy. i vaccum daily. you can see the bottom, but i have been trying to keep the clorine high, it has dipped some when i cannot keep a constant check on it. ta is 80, clorine is above 5 (i am out of reageants for my taylor 2006, waiting for those to come in). at this point i cannot test for cya, but it has always ran high. ph is high 7.8. do i just continue to add bleach until it clears and do i need to adjust the ph now or wait until i stop keeping the clorine high?

Hi poolhelp,

Don't worry about the pH for now...7.8 is at the upper end of the normal range, but that's actually where my pool stays most of the time, despite my efforts to change it. Besides, high chlorine levels often give falsely high pH results, anyway, so I would leave it alone for now.

There are lots of reasons for cloudy water, but a functioning filter will help take care of most of them...is your pressure rising on your filter? Are you backwashing when you get an 8-10 psi rise? You probably do need to keep your pool at shock level, but unfortunately I can't tell you what that level is without knowing your CYA. If you're not going to get your reagents in soon, do you have a reputable pool store around that might be able to test it for you--but with drop-based testing, not strips?

I should be able to get time to get to a pool store this week to let them run the numbers. my cya always runs pretty high so i am figuring i need to keep the chlorine very high also. it just seems like its at a stand still and just won't clear completely. it is just slightly cloudy. i was concerned about the ph, but as you advised i will wait until i get the chlorine and cloudiness cleared before i worry about that. thank you for your quick response!