Confessions of a newbie: dead algae, clarifier, persistent cloudy water

[desertH2O]

Hi. Sigh. I wish I'd found this excellent resource before I attacked my algae problem:

Above ground easy-set pool, 6K+ gallons, wimpy pump with cartridge filter. I went out of town (on the river!) and since intex is out of stock on regular covers, I left the pool covered with a solar cover. It was very warm and slightly green upon my return, with areas of thicker growth on the vinyl walls that I had to scrub. I think I've killed it all (probably, I now read, with the wrong algicide but that's water under the bridge, or more-accurately, water still-in-the-pool)).

So the green is gone, the readings (on strips, I see now that's another bad thing but it's what I've got) are reasonable (for me, that means high pH and over-the-top total alkalinity, it's a desert here and that's the water that comes out of the well, although I see a thread about LOW pH and aeration but first this problem).

After I scrubbed and cleared up the green-ness, the water was still really cloudy - whitely cloudy. I tried for a few days to filter and vacuum and shock and such. Part of the trouble is the wimpy pump which doesn't really vacuum well.

Then I used a polymer clarifier that I found in the pool aisle at Rite-Aid. Now, I have cloudiness that settles to the bottom when the water is still, but when I try to vacuum it up, it spews back out of the filter outlet, seeming not to get caught in the filter at all. As soon as I get in the water, the cloudiness/polymer/dead algae/whatever stuff gets easily stirred up and the water is milky again.

Is this safe to put my body into? Can I get rid of it, short of draining the pool? I can't really do that, unless I throw in the towel for the season, because our water supply at this time of year is limited.

Thanks so much for sharing your expertise.

Debbie

[PoolDoc]

Dead algae at the bottom of the pool is not a sanitation issue -- if you keep your chlorine up, that's all that's needed.

There's an aesthetic problem, of course: it doesn't look good.

Perhaps more importantly, if you have small children they can disappear dangerously into really cloudy water.

But, from a sanitation point of view, if the green is gone, and the goo settles overnight, and the chlorine is kept up (3ppm or more), you're fine.

Ben
"PoolDoc"