Cleaning up a very dirty pool with a DE filter

Hi, I'm helping my brother in law out with an inground pool. They just bought the house over the winter and are now in possession of a 16x32 inground pool with a vinyl liner, an Older Hayward Perflex 65 DE filter and Hayward pump. The pool hadn't been used in at least 5 years and was never covered. There were frogs in it and was very dark green.

We were able to get everything hooked up and the pump and filter appear to be working. We scooped out as much muck from the bottom as we could with a leaf bag, added 10 gallons of liquid chlorine, and couple packs of shock and ran the filter. The water lightened up a bit, but not much better. We have been trying to run the filter as much as possible but after an hour it gets pretty clogged to the point of very low return flow, so we have to bump and recoat very often. There is no one at the house during the day, so the pump is only run for a few hours every night. Does anyone have any recommendations to get this pool cleaned up as soon as possible?

DE filters are *not* ideal for cleaning swamps; as you've discovered, they clog very rapidly under those conditions.

1. Put the filter on bypass ("recirculate") if you have a multiport valve; otherwise, install a filter bypass.

2. Vacuum to "waste", if you have a multiport; otherwise, install a valved waste discharge line, and use it.

3. Chlorinate with at least 3 gallons of bleach EVERY night; if you give the pool a 'break', the algae will just regrow rapidly!

4. Get a local cheap OTO/phenol red drops (yellow/red) test kit; use it to get the pH in range (7.2 - 7.8). Use muriatic acid (down!)(link in signature) or borax (up!) to adjust.

5. Order a K2006 testkit. You don't need it yet, but you will as soon as the pool is cleaned up.

6. Do not let a pool store sell you algaecide, clarifier (never needed with a DE filter!), floc, etc. Do not buy calcium UNLESS it's a concrete pool.

Thanks for the reply!! We don't have a multiport valve, so we will see about installing a by pass and the waste valve. Should we being using the liquid chlorine from the pool store or just use Clorox?

They are the same thing --- sodium hypochlorite --- just at different concentrations. Most of us just buy generic bleach at Walmart which is 8.35% sodium hypochlorite. Just make sure you don't buy scented.

Thanks, We bypassed the filter and have been running the pool 24/7, we have been chlorinating every night and it is beginning to lighten a bit. The ph looks ok, do we need to worry about adding any stabilizer for the chlorine?

You'll need stabilizer. But while your pool is slimed, if you add the bleach at night -- so it can 'work' all night -- you'll have lost most of it by AM anyhow. And, the chlorine is more 'active' without stabilizer. So for now, it's not too critical.

Once your pool is fairly clear, though, it will need to be stabilized.

I started another thread, but thought I would post here as well to follow up. We ran into a leaky return line fitting. We dug down, drained the pool down to the fitting level and removed the fitting. When we went to install the new fitting, we can't fit it through the hole in the liner as the flange is too big, is there a trick that nanyone knows to do this? Should we try to diconnect the liner and slide the fitting between the pool wall and the liner from the top?

thanks