Water cloudy, have test results

We opened the pool last week. It was a green nasty mess. Added lots of bleach (about 12-15 gallons) and got it to a blue cloudy mess. I thought it was on the way to clearing up but it has not got any clearer. I took some water to be tested, but I don't know if I should follow the recommendations (using BBB) of amounts to use.

I have an octagon 16,000 gallon, vinyl, in ground pool.

Temperature 73
Saturation index -0.7
TDS 1400
CYA 0
TC 0.6
FC 0.5
PH 7.1
Tot Alk 68
Adj Tot Alk 68
hardness 211

Recommendations:
17 lbs Balance Pak 100 (Alk), wait 3 hours then apply 1 lb Lo N' Slo (ph), wait 15 mins add 5 lb Stabilizer 100 (CYA), then 2 bags of Burn out 35 (I have no idea what this is supposed to do).

What are your recommendations? Should I add 17 lbs of baking powder????

Absolutely do NOT add 17 lbs. of baking powder! Hopefully, you meant baking soda but even then, you never want to add that much of anything all at one time!

Did you buy all the stuff you mentioned above? I hope not! If you did, can you take most of it back? The only thing you needed to buy from the pool store was the CYA and 5 lbs. of it is about right. That should take you to around 40ppm which would be a good level.

Go to Walmart or whatever and get several boxes of 20 Mule Team Borax (in the laundry aisle) and some more bleach. If they have big bags of baking soda, get one. I think they are 10lb. bags. If Walmart doesn't have the baking soda, Sam's Club does. You're going to need to bump up your pH some. I'd start with a half a box of Borax at a time added slowly to the skimmer while the pump is running. Test it several hours later and redose if you need to to get your pH between 7.4-7.6. Don't worry about the alk for now. You can adjust it a little later.

Keep adding bleach while you are trying to clear your pool. Since your CYA level is 0, you'll want to keep your chlorine level around 10ppm.

I assume you don't have a good test kit. Do yourself a favor and buy the Taylor K-2006 or 2006C from the Amazon link in my signature. And, in the meantime, pick up a cheap OTO/Phenol Red kit (yellow and red drops). Each evening, add about 3 gallons of 6% bleach unless it is showing dark yellow on your OTO kit. In that case, I'd add a gallon.

Go ahead and put some of the CYA in an old sock and hang it in front of the return jet. It takes several days to dissolve and you'll likely not be able to put 5 lbs. in the sock all at one time. If you give it a squeeze every now and then, it will help it dissolve faster.

Run the pump 24/7 while you are trying to clear the pool. Order the kit so you get it ASAP. Keep us posted how it is going and let us know when you get your kit.

What kind of filter do you have?

The 17 lbs of Balance pak they want you to add is what we use the baking soda for....however, if you're going to use any chlorination method except for trichlor/dichlor, your alk is fine where it is. If you're going to use trichlor tabs or dichlor powder for chlorination, then you'll want to bump it up some later, but you don't need to worry about baking soda at all for right now. Just follow Watermom's advice to keep the chlorine high and bump the pH up a little bit, while your CYA is dissolving.

The bleach that you added to your pool is killing the algae, but it's going to take filtering to remove it from the water. If you can keep your pump running 24/7 without danger of the skimmer getting clogged up, that's the best thing you can do, but watch your pressure gauge and make sure you're backwashing (sand or DE filter) or cleaning the cartridges (cartridge filter) when the pressure rises between 6 and 8 psi over your "clean" reading.

Janet

Thank you for the reply. I did mean baking soda, LOL. I did not buy any of it because I knew there was a better way to do it...I just didnt know what "it" was.

I have a Hayward sand filter. I will begin adding borax and bleach again this afternoon. Thanks for the help. I will run to the pool company later this week and retest.

Thanks again. SB

You would be doing yourself (and your pool!) a HUGE favor by getting and using your own test kit rather than relying on pool store testing. We highly recommend the K-2006 (link via Amazon can be found in mine and Watermom's sigs). It is an investment, but one that will pay for itself multiple times over during this swim season in less frustration, less green water time, and more swim time.

If you get it through the Amazon link, only buy it if Amato Industries is the seller--some of the other companies are substituting the K-2005, which is NOT the same thing.

One more question. I was telling my husband all the info. I told him CYA is cyratic acid. He ask cyratic or muratic, I didn't know there was such a thing. Which should he get? Thanks again for all your help.

Cyanuric acid is known also as CYA--it's the stabilizer that you need to protect your chlorine from the sun. It might be labeled cyanuric acid, balancer, condition, or stabilizer, but if you look at the ingredient list, cyanuric or isocyanuric acid is what you want. Muriatic acid is a very strong acid that is used to lower pH. You don't want that one, at least not for now.

Janet

We have been waiting, watching, and testing. The water still looks basically the same. We got a new test this morning:
Temp: 75
CYA: 15
Total chlorine: 8
Free chlorine: 0
Ph: 7.9
Total alk: 97
Adj tot alk: 93
Total hardness: 238

How much run time are you operating your pump/filter?

We are running it 24/7

You need to buy the good kit! I can tell by your numbers that these are pool store numbers and may or may not be reliable. There is no way to get a reading of 15 on CYA or 97, 93, or 268. Those tests are simply not that precise. In addition, unless you have a total green slime pit, there is no way that your chlorine numbers can be right. FC + CC = TC always. So, for your readings to be right, then your CC would have to be 8ppm which I highly doubt. I'd also be a little wary of a pool store that wouldn't recognize that those chlorine numbers were wrong ----- unless it might have just been a typo on your part.

Have you backwashed your filter any? If so, did you note your clean filter pressure afterwards and is the pressure rising to indicate that the filter is actually filtering particles out?

Do you see your pressure rising at all? If so, the filter is catching it and it will just take some time and patience. If not, you can try the DE trick-- take a cup or so of DE (just enough to raise your pressure by 1psi) and add it through the skimmer. First check your returns to see if it comes back through. If so, then you may have a problem with the filter that needs fixing. If not, then the DE will settle in the filter and help filter out smaller particles than sand can do alone.

Janet

The night that I posted my last reply I had to leave town to see my Grandmother that feel suddenly ill then passed. While were were gone my BIL tried his best to take care of the pool with no real directions, just doing what he thought needed to be done. He couldn't find any chlorine so he bought some and started using that instead of bleach. He sucked all the leaves out and kept it brushed down for me. It is a little cloudy but I can see the liner well. To answer the last questions posted the sand filter runs 24/7. My husband suspects he needs to replace the sand next weekend. There has never been a pressure gauge on the filter so I dont know about the pressure. I ordered a kit Thursday night when I got back. While I was gone a Leslie's Pool Company opened in town (until this point I was using Ace Hardware to test the water cause that is all we had) so I took the water there to be tested until I get the kit. These are the numbers I got from Leslie's:

FAC 2
TAC 2
Calcium Hardness 50
CYA 40
TA 60
PH 7.2
Phosphates 50

She said I had a "chlorine lock" and need 30 pounds of Calcium because my water was "hard." From reading this website I think I need to add bleach regularly to break this "lock" but I am not sure how much. I am not sure about the calcium. Thank you all for your help!!!

You don't need calcium in your vinyl lined pool. Given your two readings, 211 and 50, if either is correct, calcium shouldn't be causing the cloudiness.
Sounds like your Brother In Law did well.
I'm pretty sure that "chlorine lock" is a pool store myth, sounds like you may suspect that as well. However, if you have algae (and you did) and it's not all dead, you could be just holding it at bay with all the chlorine you're putting in without making real headway.
As you supect, you do need more chlorine. According to Ben's Best Guess Chart, your regular operating Free Chlorine level should be between 3 and 6 for CYA of 40 and 15 for shock level. If this were my pool, I'd raise the FC to 15 and keep it there until the pool loses less than 1ppm FC overnight (sundown to dawn) with nearly 0 Combined Chlorine. It willl take about 3-1/2 gallons of 6% bleach to move your FC from 2 to 15, and you'll need more to keep it there so stock up.
You will need the K-2006 kit to measure these values. Have you ordered it yet? You may have noticed the the pool store tests show a wide variance, you really do need to be able to make accurate measurements yourself.

In addition to what Big Dave said, and I agree with it all, you don't need to change the sand. The only time sand needs to be changed is if it's really gunked up from something like a Baq conversion or filter additives that have rendered it useless. Before you go to that much trouble and expense, you need to get a pressure gauge on the filter--that will tell you (us) a whole lot more about whether the filter is operating properly.

Don't buy the calcium, and don't buy into the "chlorine lock" philosophy--they're equally useless in your situation!

I'm sorry for the loss of your Grandmother...

Janet

I did buy a test kit. It has shipped and should be here by the end of the week. I have a question about testing and adding more bleach. If I am supposed to test it a couple times a day (prob will do it at 6:30 am & pm) do I add the bleach needed at 6:30 am to get it back up to 15 ppm even in the morning? I read where you are supposed to add it at night so it will do a better job. Thanks for all the help.

For maintenance, evenings is always best for chlorine additions but when you are trying to clear the pool, you can always dose it morning and evenings to keep the chlorine levels as consistently high.

To add to what Watermom said, the more consistently you keep the chlorine levels up, the faster the pool will clear. So you can just dose once in the evenings, but it will take much longer to clear that way than if you dose multiple times during the day,.