Green, Cloudy, Disgusting Pool? You have ALGAE!!!

If you are a new member and you are looking for help with your water being green, dirty, cloudy, ugly, etc, here's what you need to do:
You need to give us starting information.

1st: The basic layout of your pool.

• Is it vinyl, fiberglass, or concrete?
• How many gallons of water do you have?
• What kind of filter -- Sand, DE, or Cartridge AND -- make and model
• What kind of pump -- make and model, so we can trouble-shoot your filtration
• Do you have a chlorinator or a Salt-Water Chlorinator?
• How about a Nature2 erosion system?
• How do you chlorinate, or do you use bromine or baquacil?
• How do you test your water?
• Which of these questions can you answer and which are a mystery?

The best place to put this info, is in your signature, so we can see (without trying to scan the whole thread) what sort of pool you have. Go to your personal settings page to fix this.


2nd: Your current pool's chemistry.
You'll need to tell us what's going on in your water. If you cannot do these tests, take a water sample to a local pool store and have them do them -- but you need a kit. Pool store testing is NOT reliable.

• FC: This is Free Chlorine--the good stuff that kills viruses, bacteria, algae and is the ONLY thing that safely neutralizes fecal matter.
• CC: Combined Chloramines--this tells us you are fighting something.
• TC: Total Chlorine. This FC + CC. If it's not, something is measured wrong.
• pH: This is just what it was in High School chemistry--the measure of the acidity and alkalinity--1 is acid, 14 is alkaline, 7 is neutral (in the lab), 7.2-7.8 is normal for a pool.
• TA: Or T/A, Total Alkalinity, or Alkalinity. This is mis-named and confused with pH. It's not. It's a measure of the buffering of pH. What this means is when set at the right level, your pH will resist bouncing around and will stay pretty consistent. Normal range is 80 to 125ppm. It's easy to raise TA when it's low--you add baking soda--yup, from the kitchen. Lowering it is a pain in the patoot; we have a special page for that.
• CYA: Cyanuric Acid or Stabilizer, or Conditioner. CYA prevents your chlorine from burning off too quickly from sunlight and from dropping to 0. But it works by slowing down your chlorine doing its job. So it's a two-edged sword. Too little is a problem, but so it too much. Typical target range is 30 to 50 ppm if you are running stabilized chlorine; 50 - 90 ppm with a SWCG; 100 - 200 if you are running a HiC2 pool. CYA is closely connected to FC. The correct level of FC is determined by the level of CYA.
• CH: CA or Calcium, Calcium Hardness, Hardness. Calcium is necessary for plaster / concrete type pools to keep the water from leaching the calcium from the mortar. For those pools, 200 to 400 ppm is best, but for vinyl or fiberglass, you don't care as long as it's below 500ppm.

There are other tests pool stores like to do, but unless they are testing for copper, iron or salt, those other tests are useless. TDS used to be the buzz word; more recently, it was phosphates. But now phosphates are going out of fashion, so we're expecting something else to be introduced!


3rd: Algae--that's probably why you are reading this!
Cleaning up algae is quite simple, but what it's not is easy. Simple, not easy. Mostly you need 3 things--a good test kit, lots and lots and lots of liquid chlorine, usually in the form of bleach, and P.O.P.P That stands for POOL OWNER PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE!

• Forget the pucks, the bags of chlorine mis-labled "Shock" the algaecides, clarifiers, flocculants and snake oil sold to you by pool stores. You need lots of bleach--pool stores will swear up and down it will hurt your pool and then sell you the same darn thing labeled "Liquid Chlorine" or "Liquid Shock". It's all Sodium Hypochlorite Solution--Laundry bleach.
• What you need to do is figure out how much CYA you have in your water, read off the "Best Guess" table the shock level, then shock your pool to that level--and keep it there. That means add enough chlorine so that when you test your chlorine, you get that shock level as your reading.
  
• One problem is that most pool store test kits -- and strips -- can't measure the higher chlorine levels. The test kit info page will tell you how to get kits that will do the job.
• Before that you'll want to get your pH to the 7.2-7.8 range. If it's higher, you add acid--muriatic acid (be VERY careful -- the muriatic acid post can explain how) or dry acid sold at pool stores. If it's lower, you raise it with 20 Mule Team Borax from the grocery store.
• So your pH is good, and you've added lots of bleach so your pool is at shock level. Now what? You test your pool 3x a day if you can; if not morning and evening --if that chlorine level drops, you raise it back to that shock level.
• Then you have to brush that pool everyday--sides, walls, bottom, stairs. This knocks algae loose so it can't bed in and lets more chlorine get at it--and kill it.
• Every day you need to vacuum your pool and if you can, you want to dump that vacuumed up water to a drain.
• Now you add the P.O.P.P because without it, you'll never get past the algae. You may be at this for a week, or even two weeks, but eventually, the algae will die, and you'll get that dead algae out and your water will sparkle. It's a very simple process. Simple, but not easy.

Now, you are fine. Unless, of course, something ELSE is causing cloudy water...

Carl.

Thanks for the great summary. I am about 80% through your algorithm and I just realized I need to be testing three times a day! :eek: I have read that chlorine does not always kill mustard algae. True or false? What I read here is that high levels of chlorine over a long enough time (POP) will take care of it.

Testing 3x/day is recommended when you are battling algae, but certainly not for normal, healthy pools. For that I recommend once a day--just chlorine and pH, and once a week a full suite of tests. In reality, most people--even moderators--get by testing water every other day or even just 3 times a week.

There are exceptionally tough algaes that even brushing and lots of chlorine work VERY slowly on. In that case I recommend that you posting asking Ben to chime in for how to handle those very unusual situations. Ultimately, there isn't a quick cure--it's the same amount of work.

Great summary! I just handled my first algae completely with bleach and I had a crystal clear pool in less than a week and that has to be a record! But this forum has been a Godsend for me!! Thanks for everything, my pool is more beautiful now that it has EVER been!!
I tell everyone I know who asks me what I do for my pool about this forum!!

Vacum to waste, so the dirty gunk goes down the drain instead of to the filter.

CarlD's first post here should really be crossreferenced to a sticky at the top of the Algae forum - since it is really a great post about how to clean up from an algae outbreak.

if u have a filter how do u vacum and not get the water back in the pool.

You don't. The dirt, dead algae, etc. is removed by the filter and the water is returned to the pool. However, if you 'vacuum to waste,' the water is pumped out through your backwash line instead of going into the filter.

Do you have to vaccum everyday? Will it eventually get clear with filtration and brushing?

No. You do not have to vac every day. Dirt that is settled on the bottom usually will not reach the filter unless it is stirred up though. How often you vac just depends on how quickly your pool gets dirty.

If this discussion needs to continue, let's start a new thread instead of tacking on to the end of this "sticky."

Thanks.