Hot Weather Came quick! Green pool needs attention :)

The last few days it has been 90+ and I've been remodeling a house the last month and didn't start the annual pool clean up. Its been sitting covered for 6ish months, smells like ass and is green!

I didn't get an prelim readings today. I put in 10 gals of bleach and am wondering if I should get the chlorine count up before I dump some algicide in there.

Pool is 19000 gallons gunite inground pool w/sand filter. I'll post up some numbers tomorrow after filtering overnight, but any guesses on how long it will take starting from a 0 FC/CC reading to hold strong through the initial shock or how much bleach i should add per day?

thanks...I love this forum!

also does bleach=sanitizer?

Woody, welcome to the forum, it's a great resource for pool owners who have the time and inclination to take control of their investment.
10 gal sounds like a good start, especially since you didn't have any 'numbers' - chem test #s.
When you get the #s:
free cl
total cl
pH
total alk
cal hardness
CYA - stabilizer
it will help the folks here help you better. Also it'd be nice to know what % the bleach is. mwsmith (a highly respected member here) has a bleach calculator which can be linked to from any of his posts (just do an advanced search for his name), which should be able to help you with dosing the pool.
Good luck with your 'swamp' - hopefully if you post next week, it will be to say you had a great pool party Sunday!! :) (Oh yeah, chlorine is a sanitizer - there are others but cl is the preference here and I sincerely hope you didn't have Baquacil as a sanitizer last year, it doesn't play well with cl)

actually last year i converted from baq to chlorine and it was a small nightmare. This year starting without the baq should be give me a quicker swamp to swim time :) thx for the response :)

TESTS ARE IN!
AFter 10 gals of bleach

FC 1.5
CC 3.5

PH 8.2
ALK 160
CAL 200

I have the ps223 test kit and couldn't figure out what the #9194 cya dispensing bottle was and by the time I did I had to leave for my tee time. Im sure its close to 0 though.

Where should I go from here, should I add more bleach and crank of the FC, add some ph decreaser, and then my algicide? I think the alk and calcium can wait until I get the algae under control.

thanks

I would keep slugging bleach in there. Any presence of CC indicates that you aren't done yet. :D I'd try to get your pH down to the 7.6 range. Since it's at the top of the measurable range, you really don't know how high it is.

Also, getting a CYA number from you will be very helpful, as that will guide our next steps. If the CYA is 0, then you have other fun to deal with!

michael

FC=1
CC=4

CYA=8

ALK 120
CAL HArd=190

PH= 8.4

YIKES, so I just put in some ph decreaser. SHould I put the cya in next and continue on with the onsloght of bleach or should i wait for the PH to stabilize?

No kidding...your CYA is 8? I'm wondering how you can even measure that -- usually it's in increments of 10. It needs to be in the 30-40 range in order for your chlorine to hold in the pool and do its job. Right now, with that 90 degree heat, you probably lose half your chlorine every dayto sunlight, before it can kill the bad stuff. Some is doing its thing, though -- the CC of 4 shows that. Run some pucksand keep using bleach.

The pucks will raise your CYA automatically and will keep a continuous dose of chlorine going into the pool. It'll help you keep caught up without pouring gallons of bleach into an unstabilized pool.

Both the pucks and the bleach will lower your Ph a bit on their own, as well. I'd work on clearing the water before worrying too much about Ph. Yours is high, but not out of sight. Plus, you may plummet into acidic range quickly by chlorinating so heavily.

In any case, it's best to move slowly and handle as few variables at a time as possible.

thanks for the advice. I took my water too a pool place to get all the measurements and compare them to mine.

Well in a frenzy before i had to go back to work. i added 3 lbs of ph decreaser and added 3 lbs of cya in the skimmer. I read that the cya will decrease the ph a bit too, so i didn't want to add their full recommendation to decrease the ph. I'm going to keep checking and let the filter run for a couple days before i do any backwashing and I'll keep an eye on the FC/CC.

On a side note, after further review of their recommendation sheet it looks like they wanted me to add 6 lbs of ph decreaser to bring down my alkalinity (it was 125, i guessed 120 from memory).....then it recommends I put in an idditional 3.75 lbs to decrease the ph. I think these guys are wanting me to swim in acid. Seem odd to anyone else?

Just want to clear up a couple of things...

The pucks do contain CYA, but the CYA will NOT build up quickly enough with just pucks to help you keep chlorine in a green pool. You do still need to keep slugging the bleach in there. The pucks will also help lower the pH, but the bleach has a high pH, so the bleach is not going to contribute to a pH drop--in fact, it may raise it, although by a negligible amount. So chlorinating heavily will NOT cause you to "plummet into acidic range". Also, the CYA does not lower pH--the only thing you've added so far that will lower your pH are the pH decreaser and the trichlor pucks.

In addition, you need to wait closer to a week or so before you retest for CYA or backwash your filter--the CYA sits on your filter and dissolves VERY slowly, so if you backwash earlier than at least 4-6 days from now, you're just going to wash your CYA right out the drain.

Forget their advice for now for lowering alk--your alk is fine where it is, and the method they've told you to use will not work. If you need to lower your alk in the future, look at the sticky at the top of the Alkalinity forum for the steps to lower it. Recommended range, though, is 80-120 ppm, so you're fine just where it is.

Keep at the bleach!

Janet

Dal, was it a typo when you said that bleach would lower pH? Yes the pucks will lower pH while increasing cya but bleach (sodium hypochlorite) raises pH (I think it's pH is ~ 11)
Woody, I'll refer you to the "stickied" post by Ben at the top of the 'dealing with alkalinity...' section for the proper way to reduce TA, you do need acid but not used the way your pool store is telling you.

Here's the link to Ben's method of alk reduction (sorry tried 2x and didnt get it right - who would ever have expected that :rooleyes:) anyway Janet beat me to the answer

word. I wasn't to worried about the alkalinity. I just want to get the cya up, so I can hold the chlorine. I'll recheck in a couple days and see where its at. I need to do a thorough vacumming of the pool it is loaded with deceased algae. Dang if I was thinking about it i would have done that before I put the CYA in. Oh well live and learn :) I'll post back results ina couple days. thanks for the help.