Opening Day Help Needed.

[madwil]

1- yep, bleach is good
2- hard to say- a couple days to a week maybe; maintain your shock levels until you pass on overnight chlorine test and CC <.5 and water clear
3- you can add CYA at any point- I would add some now to help you not lose as much FC to sunlight -but once you add, don't put more for a week and retest; just remember once you add CYA you need to adjust your shock/FC levels accordingly
4- CYA is at the pool store; sometimes at Walmart/HomeDepot/Lowes sold as stabilizer- read the contents and look for CYA, isocyanuric acid, or cyanuric acid

If your walls are clearing, you're definitely on the right track- now some patience and work will clear it all soon!

[Watermom]

I would wait a bit before adding the cya. Since you are dealing with a green pool and a dirty floor, you will most likely need to backwash some in this first week and backwashing will remove the cya. (Backwash when your filter pressure rises 8-10psi over your clean filter pressure.) Once you get your pool cleaned up, then you can either add some cya directly or use trichlor (or even dichlor) for awhile as your source of chlorine, both of which have cya in them. BTW -- cya is sometimes called conditioner. Check the label ingredients.

[CarlD]

Actually, there is a very clear way to tell when you are done shocking the pool. The way to tell when you are done is if you add bleach at night to raise your FC, and in the morning it has stayed high and not dropped to near-zero. Sunlight breaks down chlorine but starlight and moonlight don't.
In other words, your FC can drop during the day due totally to sunlight's UV rays breaking it down. But nighttime, if your FC falls, you are fighting something. So if FC stays up, or doesn't drop too much, you've killed what ever you are fighting. At that point you can think about adding stabilizer.

As Watermom says, it's sold as Stabilizer, Conditioner, or Cyanuric Acid. You don't have to use stabilized chlorine.

Carl

[herb396]

Thanks Carl & Watermom for the guidance. Hopefully you can hang with me for a few days to help me thru. My updated conditions as of 8:30 pm. This is after adding 14 gals of bleech over the last 24 hrs. The last 4 gals of bleech was at about noon today. (we had a cool, very over cast, cloudy day here in central NJ)
FC - .8
pH - 7.1
ALK - 130
CC - 3.2
CYA - did not test

Pump is on 24/7, backwashing 4 times a day (or as pressure rises). The water is basically clear, however it is has lots of suspended green silt floating thru it from the walls and bottom being brushed early today (so much so you can not see the botom in deep end). If I'm reading my chart correct, it is telling me to add about 3 lbs of baking soda to get my pH up a little.

Questions:
1. Do I add more bleech
2. Does it sound right; the 3lbs of baking soda?
3. Will continue with filter/backwash
4. Should I be doing anything else

Thanks, you folks are great.

[Watermom]

I think you need to add larger doses of bleach at a time. In a pool your size, adding 4 gallons of 6% bleach will raise your cl to about 9.6ppm. Since your pool is so green, it is immediately being consumed killing the algae. Try adding 6 gallons of bleach. If you are home in the afternoon, test and add more bleach. As many times a day as you can test and add bleach is going to clear the pool that much faster. Regarding the low pH, Borax is what you want to add, not baking soda. Baking soda is used to raise alk. Add a box at a time slowly to the skimmer breaking up any clumps. After several hours, retest pH and redose as needed. Do NOT test your pH when your chlorine is high however because you won't get an accurate reading. Test it before you add the bleach. Continue filtering 24/7 and backwashing as the pressure rises. Also, brush the pool walls and floors. That will help the chlorine get at the algae better. It may take a lot of bleach to clean this pool up but keep hammering it! Since this is a large pool and since you have no cya, you may want to consider shocking it with dichlor for awhile as it will add chlorine and cya at the same time. You won't want to use dichlor all summer however or else your cya will get too high. If you do decide to use dichlor, monitor your pH as it is acidic and will cause pH to drop and also monitor your cya. When you get to cya around 40 or so, discontinue using any form of stabilized chlorine and stick with bleach. (Of course, if you prefer not to use dichlor, you can just use large doses of bleach now and add the cya later.) Hope this helps.