waters still cloudy

I've been keeping the pool shocked for about 48 hours now. It's basically blue, not nearly as green. Still very cloudy. I'm vacuumming & brushing daily. Latest levels PH=7.6 alk=120 CYA=30 hardness=150 Having trouble determining the exact level of chlorine, will try my new kit & see what I come up with. The guy at the pool store did say the free chlorine & total chlorine looked good when I asked if I needed more CYA. He told me to stop shocking & start on the clarifier. This is opposite of what I've read here. I should just keep shocking. Right?

I believe you should ignore the pool store advice. Being able to accurately test your chlorine levels (plus other parameters) is absolutely critical to the process of converting to the BBB method of pool water maintenance.

According to the Best Guess Chart often referred to here, you would need to test to a maximum of 15 ppm when you are shocking your pool. I hope your test kit will allow you to test to this level. Many will only go to 5 ppm. If your kit has this limit, you can try diluting your pool sample with distilled (not necessarily bottled) water. The more you have to dilute to get a reading, the less accurate your reading will be.

I am a relative newcomer on these boards, but I can vouch for the results of BBB. Look for more complete advise from some of the more experienced and informed members. They'll be along soon I'll bet.

Keep the pump running 24/7 and give the filter some time to work--the chlorine is killing the algae, but the filter is what gets it out of the pool. Forget the clarifier, use the money on bleach.

Janet

You are getting there if the green is going away. It will be cloudy - that's the dead algae. DON'T add the clarifier - that can make matters worse. You need to get a good test kit to make sure you are really staying at the right chlorine levels.

In your last thread you stated you had CYA of 10 - did you add some since last time? If not - then one of the tests was incorrect - I would guess the lower one - since you are not having faster results.

Get your chlorine to 15ppm-20ppm. The higher your CYA level - the higher your chlorine level needs to be to compensate.

check you filter medium - it may need to be back washed (if sand) or sprayed off (cartridge) - it needs to filter out all the dead algae.

You need some POPP - simple yet difficult for most (Pool Owner Patience and Persistence)