Cloudy Pool Water - Could use some help

[mbar]

I am not exactly sure what is going on, but it sounds like you may have had water mold. Water mold takes mega doses of chlorine to kill it. I would take my chlorine up to 20ppms and keep it there until it holds overnight (not losing more than 1ppm) It could also be just dead algae that will take a while to filter out, but lots of chlorine will break down the dead stuff too. So my suggestions is to add regular bleach to get your chlorine up to 20 and hold it there by testing as often as you can and adding more to keep it at 20 until it starts to hold. Backwash and keep the filter running 24/7 until you have clear water.

[Watermom]

Marie, I think you may be right about it possibly being water mold. I have heard of that before and his description of it does sound like it.

[bcooper27]

Thank you both for responding. Being so new to this stuff I really can't tell you what that stuff was floating around but there was a TON of it. Small tissue white looking stuff. That's how I describe it. I don't see it anymore however I don't see much anyway because it's so cloudy.

The Chlor Brite Step 2 Sanitizer is from Leslie's. The Active Ingredients is listed as:

Sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione dihydrate = 99%
Other Ingredients = 1%
Total = 100%
Available Chlorine = 55%

I put one of those in the other day when I opened the pool. Outside of that it's only been the 3-gallons of bleach. If I want to get this size pool up to 20ppms any idea how much bleach I'll need? Part of my issue is calculating what is needed. I've read about people putting 10-20 gallons of bleach in so I'm just trying to gauge what I need to buy today.

Thanks again!
-Brian

[sturev]

Brian, here's a handy calculator... http://www.poolcalculator.com/

[Watermom]

Brian, in your pool, each quart of 6% bleach will raise the cl by about 1.2ppm. Also, it is OK to use the dichlor for awhile but it does add to the cya. For every 10ppm of cl it adds, 9 ppm of cya is added. You won't be able to use if for too long or you'll have too much cya in there. (We like cya of 30-50.) Plus, dichlor may contribute to cloudy water problems so you mught just want to stick with bleach for your daily maintenance chlorine and for your shocking and not use any more of the dichlor.

[bcooper27]

Thanks everyone for your help. I'll follow your suggestions and let you know how things work out.

Brian

[bcooper27]

Update........last night I put in (2) 182-oz jugs of 6% bleach at about 6pm and let it run for a while. I tested the water about 2-hrs later and saw my FC actually was down to 4.0 (and my test did show the presence of CC this time around.) So about 8pm I put in two more 182-oz jugs of the 6% bleach and let the pump run all night.

This morning I tested the water and this is the reading:

FC = 4.4
CC = 4.0
PH = 7.1
ALK = 90
CA = <30

The water looks just as cloudy as it did yesterday, no significant change at all.

Am I not being patient enough or did I not hit this pool with enough bleach to do the job? At this rate I should purchase a pallet of the stuff if I continue to need more.

As always I would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks,
-Brian