high ph/ alkalinity and green pool

We have a 24 foot above ground pool, vinyl liner, sand filter.

The water in my pool is a nasty green color, with no visibility of the bottom of the pool. I tested the water (with one of the strip tests) and it says i have No chlorine, ph and alkalinity are very high, cya is fine. I went to the pool store today to have them test for the specific levels, but once i said the pool was green i was told that they didn't even need to do that, that i needed to shock with 5 lbs of shock and add floc.

Is there a better way to clear up the pool without having to floc, since i was told with the floc you have to vacuum to waste, and i just hate the thought of wasting so much water.

Hi Vjeff;

1. Don't use their shock without knowing what's in it -- it may make things worse, by adding calcium, alkalinity and raising the pH!
2. Complete the Pool Chart, so we have the info we need to help you.
3. Get a good test kit; test the pool, & tell us what you find.
4. If the HTH 6-way is not available locally, get a cheap OTO/pH drops kit, so we can get started.

Ben

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+ It's much easier to answer your questions, when we have the details about your pool in one place. We often 'waste' the first few posts back and forth collecting information. So, please complete our new Pool Chart form -- it takes about 30 seconds, but will save much more than that.

Pool Chart Entry Form

+ Get a cheap OTO (yellow drops) / phenol test kit, or if available at YOUR Walmart (check availability), get the HTH 6-way DROPS test kit, which is compatible with the Taylor K2006. Test the pool as soon and you can, and post the results. If you get the 6-way kit, ALSO test the water you FILL the pool with, especially if it's a well, and post THOSE results as well. (The HTH is the best available kit you're likely to find locally, but it's not the K-2006. It can only provide rough measurements chlorine levels above 5 ppm, and it measures "TOTAL" hardness, rather than "CALCIUM" hardness, which is not ideal.)

+ Having a good test kit makes pool care easier for EVERYONE, but is an ESSENTIAL tool for pools with problems. A good test kit means a kit that can test chlorine from 0 - 25 ppm, pH, alkalinity, calcium hardness, and stabilizer with reasonable accuracy. Test strips (AKA 'guess-strips' ) do NOT meet this standard. Some pool store testing is accurate; most is not. The ONLY way you'll know whether your pool store is accurate or bogus, is by testing accurately your own self. On the other hand, pool store 'computer' dosing recommendations are NEVER trustworthy -- ignore them. They are designed to sell more chemicals than you need, and WILL cause many pool problems.

+ We recommend the Taylor K-2006 test kit, which meets the requirements above, for many reasons. The HTH 6-way drops kit is a great starter kit, and is compatible with the K2006 (it's made by Taylor). There are a few alternatives; for example Lamotte makes an FAS-DPD kit that's OK -- but it costs 3x as much. But, we're not aware of any test that is better, and since we are all familiar with the K-2006 (and can help you with it) we recommend it exclusively ( Test kit info page )

One caution for the 2012 season: Amazon does not stock the kits directly. So when buying at Amazon, Amato is our current preferred seller. However, they often don't list enough stock to last the whole day, so try order mid-morning. You should expect a delivered cost under $60 for the K2006A and under $95 for the K2006C. If you can't find that, wait a day.

+ Here are links to the kits we recommend (you can check local availability on the HTH kit, using the Walmart link):

HTH 6-Way Test Kit @ Walmart
Taylor K2006A (3/4 oz bottles) @ Amazon
Taylor K2006C (2 oz bottles) @ Amazon

1. Shock brand : All Clear Shock / ingredients: 68% Calcium Hypochlorite , 32% "other" (it doesn't list what the other is)
2. Finished the pool chart
3. I used AquaChek 7 test strips, and the results were : Total Hardness - very low (0) / Total Chlorine- 0 / Free Chlorine - 0 / ph - high (approx. 8.4) / Total alkalinity - high (approx 180) / CYA - ideal (approx 30-50)

I tested the fill water as well and the results were: Total Hardness- very low (0) / Total Chlorine- 0 / Free Chlorine - 0 /ph -low (approx 6.8) / Total alkalinity - ok (approx 120) / CYA - low (0)

1. Give your test results, you CAN use that shock. (The ingredients are OK.) BUT, you should confirm them with a 6-way drops or a K2006

2. In your signature, as you can see.

3. CYA test results from 'guess-strips' are completely unreliable.

Ok great, I will go buy the 6 way drops next time i go into town.

Will just the shock and regular vacuuming/filtration get rid of the green, or will i still need to floc and vacuum to waste?

Sorry, I'm buzzing through a bunch of posts and threads, and didn't finish yours.

To get rid of algae, you have to kill it first. To kill it you have to add enough chlorine. So, do this:

1. Start adding 4 gallons of PLAIN 6% bleach LATE each evening.
2. Add bleach and then brush immediately after the 2nd dose
3. Run your pump 24/7; only backwash when the filter pressure is up at least 4 psi over the clean pressure.
4. Continue dosing in this manner until the algae has all turned gray or brown.
5. Dose 1x after that happens; then turn pump off overnight and see if the algae will settle.
6. Maintain dark yellow to orangish yellow chlorine levels for several days after.

Let us know how it goes, so we can suggest modifications as needed. No floccing yet!

No need to apologize, I am just thankful for your quick response. :) One last question before i begin this evening. If and once the algae settles to the bottom of the pool, do i do regular vacuuming/filtration. Or is vacuuming to waste really my only option?
Again thanks so much for the help, I will let you know of the progress

If your filter will catch the algae, it's much less wasteful to just vacuum to filter.

If you find that your filter isn't catching all the algae, you can try putting a little bit of DE (like they use in DE filters) in through the skimmer and let it coat the sand (just use enough to create a 1 psi rise in your pressure). That will help the sand catch smaller particles. It's a trick that the other 3 mods have all used in their filters.

Ok, so i added the first 4 gallons of bleach last night and when i tested the FC level this morning it said it was .5 , i know that the point of adding that much was to raise the chlorine to high levels to kill the algae. How much bleach should i add tonight?

4 gallons each evening, till the algae is all dead.

Ok, progress report, I added the second batch of bleach last night.when i tested the chlorine levels this morning the TC was a 3, and the FC was a 5. I retested before adding the third batch of bleach tonight and the levels were back to what they were the morning after the first batch, TC 1 and FC .5 On a good note, the water is a much lighter green and the visibility has improved greatly. So i guess i will add the forth batch of bleach tomorrow night and see how it goes from there.

Ok so my levels tonight are: Hardness - 0 / TC - 5 / FC - 5 / ph - 8.4 / TA- 120 / CYA- 30
After the forth night of bleach we were able to turn the pump off, After 1 full day of being off the water is still cloudy. We have been vacuuming the pool all day today, and it's still cloudy. Any suggestions on how to clear up the pool?

Was the pressure rising on your pump/filter while it was running? When was the last time it was backwashed? Why did you turn the pump off? Keep in mind that the chlorine killed the algae, but it's the filter that will remove it from the pool. If your pressure was rising on the filter, then you need to keep it running and backwash it as the pressure indicates. If the pressure was not rising, you can try adding a cupfull of DE through the skimmer to help coat the sand and help it pick up finer particles.

Pressure never rose above the running level so i didn't backwash. Last time it was backwashed was when we put it up this year at the beginning of July. I turned the pump off as instructed by Pooldoc on the first page. So should i try just filtration now,as we've already been vacuuming?

Did you try vac'ing to filter? And did the pressure still not rise then? Did you see any of it blowing back into the pool through the returns? If you vacuumed to filter, and either saw it blowing through the returns or the pressure did not rise, then you may have a problem. A 1.5 HP pump is awfully big for that pool, and I suspect it is just blowing the stuff back through the filter instead of allowing the filter to catch it to remove it from the pool.

When you turned off the pump, did ANY of it settle to the bottom, or did it look equally as cloudy as when you turned it off?

Yes , vacuuming to filter, pressure rose a little, i really can't tell if anything is shooting back out of the return. When I turned off the pump, the water was cloudy enough i couldn't see the bottom of the pool. When i went out this morning to vacuum, it looked exactly the same. So I couldn't tell if any had settled to the bottom or not. So I would say equally as cloudy.

You're probably going to need to go with a floc and vac to waste, but some flocs will just make the problems worse. Let me ask Ben to check back in on this thread so he can advise you with the best next steps to take...

Vjeff; pardon me if I've overlooked it, but it appears you are still flying blind, and have neither an HTH 6-way or a Taylor kit. We can try things, but we're just shooting in the dark, without reliable water chemistry information.

You can buy and add a floc if you like -- I'm not going to recommend one -- some work sometimes; some work other times; none work all the time.

Since your cloudiness didn't settle, there's nothing to be gained by leaving the pump off. Given that you have an AG pools the odds are that you have an oversized pump and an undersized sand filter -- that's is what is usually installed, for marketing reasons. Worse, that combo tends to blow sand out of the filter every time you backwash, so if your filter has been in service more than a month or two, odds are it's missing a lot of its sand.

Good luck!