Brown pool walls after shocking

Never grew up with a pool and bought a house a few years back with no pool knowledge. I was told that the nearest pool store would help me with everything. Well they did, they helped me clear out my vacation funds in order to fund the pool!!

This year I told my hubby that it's my last try, we are about to fill out that big hole if I can't get this right. I have a 22 000 gallons pool with vinyl walls (so I've been told)with municipal water. Every year the journey starts with a trip to the pool supply guys that sell me buckets of this and buckets of that that repeats itself all summer long. This spring my pool started out with CYA that was so high they could not read beyond 250 (all that granular stuff they told me to add and 3" tablets in skimmers, floaters and was told to drop a few at the bottom of the pool). Not to mention that the visit right before that they had me buy a bucket of soda ash ($54) to dump in my pool so i could just wash it away on my 2nd visit after I'm told my CYA was high. They couldn't tell me that before??

After reading your forum i was shocked at the way they had taken advantage of me. I drained/filled/drained/filled the pool to get it to 60ppm CYA. I was then told to shock the heck out of it once again with at least 6 bags of super shock, NO WAY!!! I came back on here and have been reading for days,,,I discovered liquid Chlorine was best and used it. My pool was sparkling and then got cloudy. I added the blue stuff to clear it and it did ok but the deep end still remains slightly milky but i can still see the drain.

I am now trying to figure out how to prevent algae formation. I started getting a bit of a green cast in the pool and added tabs to my floater with no response and then decided to add a lb of granular chlorine in order to get a jump on it. Tada! it happens every time, brown stained walls which does clear out overnight with ascorbic acid followed by a bottle of iron out but it's getting costly that every time I've to shock my pool this happens. I have no idea where the metals are coming from but it's always been there. I've been buying this stuff by 8lb buckets. My ph reads good and then goes up to 8 overnight and my liquid chlorine does not last.

I am terrified of using muriatic acid, can you help me from hiring a bulldozer?

So, the moral of the story is, don't ever let your chlorine levels drop too low so you'll never have a need to shock the pool!

I assume you filled from a well?

Do you have a drops-based test kit? If so, what kind? Give us some current numbers.

Exactly what all have you added to the pool --- meaning ingredients and not just 'blue stuff' or 'granular chlorine.'

I'm sorry that your experience has been that the pool store has been there to make money off your troubles. We hear that too often. But, you have come to the right place to learn how to do this on your own.

When you repost, also tell us what size your pump is (hp) and what kind and what size filter you have. Then, someone here will try and help you get this under control. We do NOT want you to hire that bulldozer! ;)

Welcome to the Pool Forum!

Most likely you have iron in your fill water, either from your well, or from rusty water pipes carrying water to you from the plant. You can check and see, with the metal bucket test: http://pool9.net/bucket-metal/

Please don't give up too soon. Managing a pool like yours is possible, but there is a learning curve, and thanks to your useless pool store, you haven't been on that curve.

Start by getting a K2006 test kit (http://pool9.net/tk) and by filling our the equipment form (http://pool9/net/pf-equip-form/

. . . membership updated.