Battling the mean green...Advise?

[Muslickz]

Hi all,

Ok, so I am guilty of lurking and hoping to get things fixed on my own. Well I almost made it :P lol

I have a gunite pool, Freeform.. 17,000 Gals.

History...

3 weeks ago it was sparking, Went on vacation for a week, came home and it was green I shocked.. Added algecide... pool went from green to milky white.. 2 days of filtering and it was perfect.

Last week Chem #'s were on but it started looking cloudy... went from cloudy grey to cloudy green.. so I shocked again.. this time it did nothing?

THEN I found this forum.. YAY!

So I read up a bit and went right out and got me 6 Gal of bleach, dumped it in.. and it helped. went from green back to grey..

But, it remained cloudy.. tried to keep the chlorine level up for 2-3 days and kept filter cartridge clean but to no avail it started getting slightly green and now I get a daily buildup on the bottom that is light green. I vacuum it and also have one of those auto vacuums that hops about all day.. I can see clean tracks where the vac has gone but there is still green settling on the bottom, and the water in the deep end (8ft..) is green and hazy to the point that I can barely see the drain on the bottom.

Now I am figuring that I need to shock more and longer, but I REALLY want to jump to the BBB Method as I have 3 kids and the pool store is sucking the $$ out of me.

Question.. At this point I would like to go with the bleach method, yet I am unsure of how much to use? And how much to use and when to use it to maintain?

Again.. here are my Numbers and pool size and such.

Inground pool
17,000 Gals
Gunite/no metal ladders only gunite steps.

TC - 3ppm
FC - 3ppm
CC - 0ppm
PH - 7.4
TA - 95ppm
Cal - 185
Stab - 40ppm
TDS - 1400 ppm

Pool is currently light green with I would say 7-8ft. visibility.

Any input would be Soooo Welcome.

-Mike

[Muslickz]

After pluggin in all my #'s into the pool chem calculator... I have basically one question.

I know I need to shock, should I use Powder shock? Or 6% Bleach?

I want to get over to the BBB Method.. so should I start now?

As in.. will Powder shock (The stuff in the 1lb bags) cause my CYN to go up?

-Mike

[Watermom]

Hi, Mike and welcome! Glad you found us.

With a cya of 40, you need to be shocking up to 15ppm and try and sustain that reading to clear your pool. In 17K gallon pool, each quart of 6% bleach will raise the cl by just under 1ppm (0.9). So, when you test, add enough bleach to get back up to 15ppm. Try and do this as many times a day as you can; at the very miminum morning and evening but more often is better and will clear the pool faster. When the water clears and you are not losing more than 1ppm of chlorine between sundown and sunup the next morning, then you can let the cl drift down. Then, you'll need to keep it between 3-6 all the time so you won't have another algae bloom. Also, run the pump 24/7 while you are trying to clear it up.

Again, glad to have you on the forum. Hope you'll enjoy being a part of our pool community.

[Muslickz]

TY!

I will begin tonight and keep this thread updated as to progress made!

Thanks again!

-Mike

[Muslickz]

Ok, yesterday afternoon we had a FC of 3

So last night around 9:00pm I added 14 Quarts (just to be sure it would hold until 12:00pm) of 6% Bleach (On sale at publix this week 3 - 3qt. jugs for $5.00) I also added 20oz of borax and 20oz of baking soda to bring the TA and PH a point or two up to what the calculator recommends.

This morning I have a FC of 15-17, Just to be sure I dropped a 3qt jug in and got an FC of 20ish.

The water went from green last night to grey this morning, still very cloudy but a noticeable change in color is great!

Since it was so high I will check it again tonight just before sundown and add 6% bleach as needed, I Figure 2 more days or so...

BTW, The pool store guy won't talk to me anymore :P I wanted to get a CYN lvl check, and he told me that CYN has nothing to do with chlorine amounts, and the only time I need to even worry about CYN is if it's causing CL lock. He then told me I needed over $70 worth of algaecide, flocculant and Tabs. (This was yesterday). I asked him if the ppm of chlorine needed to shock had anything to do with stab or cyn levels and he said no, (I know it does) I argued for about 10 seconds and then thought it better to just bite by tongue and leave.

I won't mention the name of the store, but it is a major chain in Florida and a darn shame at at that.

Total cost so far with my current method.. $14.00

I will give a shout tomorrow as to progress!

-Mike

[aylad]

You'll find it harder and harder to keep your mouth closed when listening to the pool store--the last time I had to go wait a few minutes in line to pick up my Polaris from repair, I actually had a headache before I left from listening to all the cr#p they were spouting, and trying to just be quiet and leave before starting anything.

Keep up the good work with your pool--just keep an eye on your filter pressure, because the gray you see is dead algae, which can gunk up a filter in a hurry. Let us know how it goes!!

Janet

[Muslickz]

Sorry I haven't been back to report in a week or so.. I have been SWIMMING!

This has got to be the best resource on pool chemistry available.

I went from a green that would not go to a sparking clear pool in 2 weeks. All for under $50!!

I cannot thank all of you enough!

-Mike

[CarlD]

Yeah, I'm only willing to talk if they are willing to listen, like the guy who told my I should use copper for algaecide and it's bleach that turns hair green...very insistent. I shut my mouth and got my two carboys of LC.

However, I'm long past the day when anyone can talk me into buying anything I don't want or need for my pool.

[Watermom]

This has got to be the best resource on pool chemistry available.

Glad you got it cleared up. Happy swimming!