brown water from jets

pool opened late, green...having been adding bleach and it is clearing. however, when it is filtering, the water from the jets is clear but when i try to vacuum up debris, brown water comes from jets and clouds the pool worse. clorine isn't holding, right now it is 0 and it is light green with hazy deep end. i do have brown metal stains...questions

--why does brown come from the jets and how to correct that? i have backwashed.
--do i need to add a metal out while the clorine is low or do i add clorine first then metal out

i cannot give true water numbers as i have not been able to get my good testing kit in...all i can find is the testing strips, which i know isn't accurate but it is showing low cya. cloriine is at 0, ph is at6.0.

please advise as soon as you can so i will know what to add first.
thanks.

Here is the link to mbar's metal treatment sticky: http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=7923

She advises to add the metal out while the chlorine is low, since the metal out will eat up your chlorine and you'll just be wasting it. Understand, though, that once you add the metal out, you have to carefully control the chlorine and pH levels to keep from re-staining your pool, so I would address those first, starting with the pH. I'm assuming you have a vinyl lined pool, and if so, an immediate issue is your pH at 6.0--you are risking your liner with the pH that low. You need to add Borax immediately to get it back up to above 7.0 to prevent liner damage. Even if the strips are off, which is entirely possible, it's much better to have the pH a little high than too low, since high pH is a LOT less expensive to cure than a ruined liner. Once the pH issue is cleared up, I would keep the pool at shock level long enough to clear it, and THEN address the metal issues.



The fact that you have brown coming from the returns while you're vacuuming suggests that the debris is blowing right through your filter and back into the pool. I would check to make sure that you have enough sand (and the right kind of sand) in your filter, that you don't have any broken laterals (a common culprit for sand blowing back into your pool), and that you rinse for an adequate amount of time after backwashing or vacuuming to waste so that the remaining debris rinses out of the lines before you turn it back to filter.

Also keep in mind that without CYA, a huge part of your chlorine is being consumed by the sun during daylight hours, so you're going to have to be VERY diligent about keeping your chlorine up to shock level to clear your pool. I would go ahead and add enough CYA to target at least 20 ppm so it can start dissolving, since it can take up to a week to be fully dissolved in the water. If you add it via the skimmer, make sure that you've backwashed beforehand, because the CYA will sit in the filter and dissolve, but be washed out if you have to backwash after adding it, and you'll have to start over.

If it were my pool, I would add a box of Borax (dissolved in water and then put into the skimmer), let it circulate for a couple of hours, then get a water sample and take it to the pool store for testing, so you have a basic starting point. While you're at the pool store, get a drop-based test kit so you can do your own testing, then you can get your pool cleared up.

Janet