Cloudy Pool ... getting there slowly but surely?

I balanced all my numbers for my pool... AG 24" round sand filter on opening. I have been working a couple of weeks at adding chlorine, chlorine, and chlorine. I haven't tested the chlorine in a week, but have been adding 12% ... 3 gallons a day. My other numbers I balanced. I'm going to do a reading today and do the 1/5 , 4/5 distilled. I know when I was running all my other numbers and had the chlorine high and tried to use the walmart bought kit the colors was orange not yellow for the test. My question, my water is getting clearer... It's about 80% there... When I started shocking it was probably about 60% there. Can I still be adding 12% bleach blindly. Should I up it to 4 gallons a day until it clears? Does it sounds like I'm not keeping the shock level up long enough for it to clear? In any event, I'm going to go buy more of the 12% Mega bleach shock on sale at $2.49 a gallon at Ocean State Job Lot.

Wow! 3 gallons of 12% bleach at a time in a 24 ft AG??? That would increase your chlorine level by about 27 ppm. I sure hope your cya is really high to compensate for that kind of chlorine level or else you are probably killing your liner. We need some numbers instead of just 'balanced' to be able to advise you. In the meantime, don't add any more 3 or 4 gallon doses of bleach.

Oh boy... I'm in trouble. Here are my attempt at numbers. I diluted 4 parts diluted... 1 part pool water... the chl level was higher than five still maybe 8... so times that by 5 is 40...

Now for the PH... it is off the charts... it was very pink... way above 8.2


Alk.... 35 drops and still didn't have a hint of red color in it

Hardness... Never changed color during testing


CYA... I ran out of the cya stuff and the only thing I can conclude is it is above 100


Now what do I do.

Like I said before the water looks good... except cloudiness

Again, I say WOW!! We really need some accurate numbers. How old is your kit? What kind of kit is it?

If your cya really is above 100, you should do a partial drain. Otherwise, you are going to routinely have to run really high chlorine levels. Since you don't know how much above 100 it is, we can't predict what the cya level will be after draining. If it is WAY over 100, you may need to do a couple of partial drains. DO NOT drain your entire pool at once, however, or it will ruin your liner.

Obviously, you need to get your alk and ph down. But, I think we should wait until after you decide if you're going to do that partial drain or not before we advise you about dealing with those.

We're doing a partial drain now. My CYA is all out. I was using walmart kit. We are going to do the partial draining... Refill and take the water down for testing tomorrow. So my thought was to add the bleach because of the cloudiness. DOes it mean the cloudiness wasn't related to the bleach?

Who knows. It may be really high alk, calcium and high ph. We really can't know for sure what is going on with your water until we get some reliable testing results.

It would probably also be a good idea to test your fill water and see what you get.

Did I cause all the numbers to be whacko by over chlorinating? My numbers were good last week, but I have been dumping alot of chlorine in.

Over chlorinating will often bleach out numbers but shouldn't give false positives. Out of curiosity, what were your numbers last week? Did you test them or have a pool store do it?

I can't recall my numbers last week, but at one point I lost chlorine, so that's when I started this onslaught of shock. All my other numbers were in the right range of okay, if that helps. Nothing extreme... Right in middle. I'm still draining... I have run two test on water for chlorine and ph... first one the ph was still high.... second one ph is 7.2... chlorine on both are immeasurable with what i'm using... the color of the test is still orange, but not as orange, so i know it's gettinge better. I am back washing and at the same time i am running a hose with water in my pool. I'm going to run another set of these two tonight.

peggles - I'm going to have to let someone else walk you through this in the next few days because I'm going to be out of town. Lots of good people here who can help you get this clear. I'm sure you'll have several people who will jump in here and give you advice as you get some good numbers. Keep posting your progress. Good luck.