What NOT to do...

I've been reading this forum for a couple of years and "participating" for several months now...you'd think I'd know better, BUT...I got lazy.

We just got our IG pool this past March. The water temps had been in the 70s and low 80s for the most part. After several weeks of testing pH & Cl daily at first, then every other day, then every 3 days I noticed my Cl & pH were staying very steady and predictable. With our solar cover on to chlorine loss due to evaporation & sunlight I was able to go a week or more before my Cl would dip below 5 after raising to about 8 (my CYA is around 50-60, so I've been trying to err on the side of caution and use the 60 for calculating my chlorine demand), so I was only needing to add 3 quarts of bleach every 7-10 days.

We've had a run of warm weather (warm for South Carolina) for the past two weeks (air temps above 90 daily). My water temps have also risen and are consistently remaining in the uper 80s to low 90s. I failed to take that into consideration and have only been testing twice a week...(full tests on the weekends and pH/Cl mid week). Well, my husband and daughter wanted to go swimming today, so we rolled off the cover and discovered we had algae. :eek: It was all over the bottom and the water was getting cloudy.:( So, while my idiotic family was swimming (you can't convince my husband it's not alright to swim in the water because he says it no different than swimming in a pond or something) I jumped on the BleacCalc and figured out how much bleach I would need to get up to 20ppm and ran out to Wal-Mart (I only had 6 quarts of bleach here at the house) and bought 10 big jugs of bleach and promptly put the pre-determined amount in the pool and began to brush the sides and bottom. Everything was quickly stirred up to the point to where I could not see the drain on the deep end anymore. That was all about an hour ago. So, now I'm waiting another half hour or so to re-test and add more bleach accordingly.

I feel like such an idiot. :o

Lesson learned...take CarlD's advice!
Stay ahead of your water!
Take 2 to 5 minutes every day for pool maintenance!

I think that is how I got this nasty mustard algae too, got slack, and sloppy with my testing on a daily basis. Good luck with your clean up!

John

Mea Culpa! I've done it too--let the solar cover sit too long without looking underneath. I only had a little algae, but I HAMMERED THAT JUNK with bleach and kept hammering it and in 24 hours it was gone. VERY embarassing..:eek: Oh well...:rolleyes:

Ditto to the 'we should know better mantra'! Tested my water this weekend after a good hard rain, chlorine DID NOT REGISTER!! No CC, though, and water crystal clear. My CYA is 90-100ppm and I feel as if I just dodged a bullet! Had been testing every 2nd day and adding accordingly, but realized I missed testing Friday......a little sleep deprived and distracted from too many Carolina Hurricanes hockey games!

Maybe in the back of my mind I really want an algae bloom to eat up my CYA??? Nah, that can't be it.

CaryB
Go 'Canes!

Same here! For us its the rain and cloudy weather. Wind up going a few days without swimming and bingo, cloudy water. This morning (after about 4 days of rain), I noticed the water was getting cloudy. Immediately flipped the SWG to superchlorinate and brushed/Pool Rovered. Hoping it all clears quickly.

I noticed with my SWG that it is better to run longer at a lower % than shorter at a higher %. When I try to save on the electricity by cutting my night time run down a few hours, the pool becomes much more sensitive. I also noticed that when we use the solar cover, the spillover from that can trigger cloudy water too.

One good thing about having the pool directly out back... makes it hard to ignore testing duties. I too found after this weekend of hard rain that I had 0FC but 0 CC... dosed it up yesterday.

Quote:

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Mea Culpa! I've done it too--let the solar cover sit too long without looking underneath.

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I got to thinking about that today before I even read your post...wondering if leaving the cover on for almost a week without letting the pool "breathe" exacerbated the problem since I did still have a little chlorine left in the pool and have never had a CC reading this year...???

Just a quick update...

After I got home last night (and it was almost night...8 PM), I uncovered the pool and the water was clear but there was a very slight film of algae all over the bottom and sides. I gave it a quick but thorough vacuum & brushing and added more bleach and some Borax (pH was 7.2, but I would like it to be 7.5). When I was done the water was no longer clear...it was a very cloudy green again since I'd stirred up all the algae. :( .

I took the cover off today and my water was CRYSTAL CLEAR. Filter pressure was up over 30 again though, but a quick backwashing took care of that (not surprising since there was so much algae in the water last night. My water hasn't looked this good since the day we filled it! I can clearly see the "x" on the heads of the screws on my main drain (8' deep end)!

BLEACH WORKS!:D

[QUOTE=CarlD]Mea Culpa! I've done it too--let the solar cover sit too long without looking underneath. QUOTE]

Hey, if all we had to do in life was take care of our pool, I'm sure they would never go out of whack. I'm sure that very few (if any) of us have that luxury though. If that's the only problem you have, there's no need for embarrassment - I'd say life is good! You know what to do - you know when to do it! :cool:

Peter