Opening after Katrina

Its about a month before we close on a different house here in New Orleans that has a pool. I've never had a pool before, though my wife has back in her youth.

The pool has been abandoned since last August 29th. Its rather a mess. I can see just far enough into the water to verify that there are tadpoles living in there, and there also must be leaves, debris, mud, and who knows what else. The pool is approximately 32 x 15 and has a deep end for the diving board, so I estimate the capacity at 22k gallons. It is equipped with a Tagelus sand filter supplied by a 1/2hp Triton pump, and a gas-fired heater (in New Orleans?).

I am the kind of person who likes to have a plan, which is why I am starting this so far in advance. I'd like to get the pool cleaned up fairly promptly if only to eliminate the odor, but I also have some constraints.

1. I don't see draining and re-filling as an option. The water table here is quite high, and I don't know what hydrostatic relief is available.

2. I will have only part-time generator power, at least for awhile. The house took 24" of water and the local utility (and good sense) dictates major work before permenant power can be restored. I don't know how quickly temporary construction power can be obtained.

So far, from my reading, I think that the plan is to have Grainger deliver a pallet of bleach, a new pump motor (it was underwater for a couple of weeks) and several hundred pounds of borax. I guess my biggest concerns are the need to break up the mass of algae so the chlorine can get at it effectively and how to vacuum out, or otherwise remove, debris that the pump/filter can't.

I have seen a couple of sites (such as Steve Litts') about this kind of thing, but I would ask this group: Thoughts on cleaning up a swamp?

Just my personal opinion on it, but what I'd do is scoop out as much of the solid debris and "critters" as you can. I also wouldn't filter the water just yet, I'd it on circulate instead. Then, after a few days and it looks like the algae is dead then I'd think about switching it to filter.

But, I've never cleaned up a "swamp". Best of luck!

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Originally Posted by Daggit

The pool has been abandoned since last August 29th.
What happened on August 29th?

Its rather a mess. I can see just far enough into the water to verify that there are tadpoles living in there, and there also must be leaves, debris, mud, and who knows what else. The pool is approximately 32 x 15 and has a deep end for the diving board, so I estimate the capacity at 22k gallons. It is equipped with a Tagelus sand filter supplied by a 1/2hp Triton pump, and a gas-fired heater (in New Orleans?).

I am the kind of person who likes to have a plan, which is why I am starting this so far in advance. I'd like to get the pool cleaned up fairly promptly if only to eliminate the odor, but I also have some constraints.

1. I don't see draining and re-filling as an option. The water table here is quite high, and I don't know what hydrostatic relief is available.
Is this a gunite or vinyl pool?

2. I will have only part-time generator power, at least for awhile. The house took 24" of water and the local utility (and good sense) dictates major work before permenant power can be restored. I don't know how quickly temporary construction power can be obtained.
The more you can filter, the better. You probably need 8-12 hours of pump time under normal conditions for that pool; you'll need to exceed that in this scenario.

So far, from my reading, I think that the plan is to have Grainger deliver a pallet of bleach, a new pump motor (it was underwater for a couple of weeks) and several hundred pounds of borax. I guess my biggest concerns are the need to break up the mass of algae so the chlorine can get at it effectively and how to vacuum out, or otherwise remove, debris that the pump/filter can't.
The bleach and pump motor are a good idea. Borax is used to raise the pH so unless you know that your pH is incredibly low, that much borax might be overkill.

I have seen a couple of sites (such as Steve Litts') about this kind of thing, but I would ask this group: Thoughts on cleaning up a swamp?

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Dag,
Welcome to the forum. I'm a SE Louisiana resident too and there are a few others here too.

Your proactive approach is commendable and will certainly pay dividends.

I'd manually remove all of the junk in the pool that you possibly can with a leaf rake/hand skimmer. That will probably take many iterations as you'll be working blind.

You'll need to get your chlorine up to shock level (I'd shoot for 15-20 ppm since you almost certainly don't have any CYA in the pool) as soon as you can and bring the pH into the 7.2 to 7.8 range. It will take a bunch of chlorine to keep it at that level. The more often you can test and return the chlorine to that level the faster this will go; 3 times per day is probably the minimum that will get you good results. I wouldn't worry about any of the other chemistry numbers until you get the water cleared up.

Run the filter pump as much as you can. You'll probably have to backwash the filter quite often.

Keep manually removing everything you can throughout the process.

You'll almost certainly have significant staining that you may only be able to deal with by draining, but I think you can deal with that if/when you have to.

Good luck.

Kurt

August 29th 2005 is when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and surrounding areas. So this pool was abandoned after that particular calamity.

Just a thought here...
maybe a vacuum that is "stand-alone" - has it's own filtering system might be also a really good idea
on top of regular vacuuming through the filter

also some type of skimming machine/product ( like a pool devil) could also be useful..
plus filter socks in your skimmer basket
The more filtering, the better

Good Luck & Congrats on your new home :)

I think if it were my pool in your situation, I would strongly consider changing out the sand in the filter once you get the pool cleaned up. Normally sand doesn't really need to be changed, but my personal experiences with the stuff that was in the floodwaters down there lead me to believe that you need to be rid of all of it to truly get your pool clean.

I agree with the others...rake out what you can, bleach it, maintaining 10-15 ppm all the time, and vaccuum and brush as the water clears so you can get to as much of the debris as possible. Use a drop-based test kit for testing, so you have accurate numbers to work with.

Good luck!!

Janet

cygnus,
My question was tongue in cheek; I'm from there too.

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Originally Posted by KurtV

cygnus,
My question was tongue in cheek; I'm from there too.

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Sorry kurtv, I was wondering about that :-) I don't know enough of your posts to know when you're serious or not, without clues like winking smileys..

I figured that KurtV's question wasn't serious. Mandeville is close enough that the date is firmly fixed in everyone's mind. How many trees did you lose, Kurt? ;->

Thanks for the feed back. One suggestion that closely parellels my thinking is to set up filtration that is independent of the existing sand filter. Since that system is really a polishing filter, and not designed to take out large amounts of large things, I'd like to try to set up some coarser filtration.

I'm thinking about either a largish (4000 gph) bilge pump or a 2" gasoline powered rental pump feeding a temporary mesh, coarse sand, or even plate-and-frame filter. Anyone have any experience with, or heard of anyone using, something like that?

As for staining, the house sale disclosure said that the pool needed replastering, so I figure that it will get handled soon anyway. Oh, and I understand that the borax is to increase pH...I figured that by the time I had 50 or so cumulative gallons of bleach in the pool, I'd need some pH adjustment. I hadn't actually run the calculations to see how much would be needed, though.

Either way, when the time comes, if anyone's interested I can post progress reports.

I'll be looking for updates. I'm also really curious about what your beginning pH is....

Janet