Cloudy - shock????

Hey Rob:::
I'd bring the TA level up with the baking soda...little at a time directly into the skimmer....
try this tonite though:
When the sun goes down, shine a flashlight into the water and check if you can see the tiny particles that in fact make up the "cloud" in your cloudy pool....If so, the nylon sock should do the trick....but be sure to check the sock every so often so it doesn't clog the skimmer then ultimately the filter.
After doing such, perhaps you may want to shut the filter down for the nite to see if the cloud settles to the bottom of the pool....Although I would NEVER reccomend a pool store for ANYTHING, you may want to get a clarifying agent to see if that can bring the "cloud" together.....

I feel your pain....BELIEVE ME !!!.....(but that's why God created Budweiser)

I would keep the chlorine up at 15 for a while longer - be consistant, don't let it fall until it holds steady overnight. Your water will clear with the high chlorine levels.

Can you swim with chlorine levels that high?

You can - but it may fade your suit.

Even the high FC of 15 in the presence of 40 ppm CYA won't likely fade your swimming suit or have other ill effects. The CYA makes the disinfecting chlorine (HOCl) concentration only 0.36 ppm and that is far less than the 1-1.5 ppm (of HOCl, 2-3 ppm FC) typically found in indoor pools that have no CYA. When my wife uses the indoor pool at the local community center during the winter, her suits do wear out (usually the rubber goes before the suit fades). She does not find any such problem with our outdoor pool that has 15 ppm CYA and typically 3 ppm FC in it.

Now on the other hand, I wouldn't want to swallow this water with higher chlorine levels, but then I wouldn't want to drink pool water in any event. Bottom line is that I think you are safe though this is not conventional wisdom.

Richard

I must add to what I said in my previous post. I would not go into the water if the CC > 0 (> 0.5 or so) OR if you are still losing a lot of chlorine overnight. Having a high FC with CYA may not be a problem, but if the CC > 0 or you are losing chlorine overnight then this means there is still a lot of stuff getting killed or oxidized in the pool and you don't want to get exposed to that stuff if you can help it.

Richard

thanks for all the great advice. We've finally had some rain today. I turned off the filter this a.m. to hopefully let anything that was still being circulated fall to the bottom. I had to pump off some water this morning to keep it from overflowing but my FC was still at 15 this morning. I'm guessing that with the 2 backwashes and letting some off this morning I'm going to need to add some CYA. i'm keeping my fingers crossed to seeing some improvement when I get home.

Just reporting in - water finally cleared yesterday. I did end up putting some 3" pucks in the autochlorinator because due to the 2 full 5min backwashes/1min rinse cycles, my CYA had gotten down to around 30. Thanks for encouraging me to stick with the consistent shock level as I'm quite sure that's what eventually solved the problem. robin

Since your cya is 30, you are fine to use the pucks for a while. But, keep an eye on the cya level. It is amazing how quickly the trichlor pucks can cause it to get to a level that is higher than you want. 30-50 is what we usually recommend. I like mine 40-45.