Help! I'm ready to pull my hair out!

[mortimay]

This is only the third year I've had a pool (it's a rental house) and the first that I'm opening it myself. I've been working on my pool for two weeks. It is an above ground 27' x 4' round pool. I have a Hayward sand filter.

I started out with a dark green pool. It is now light green and cloudy. I was working with a pool company but they can't seem to give me advice to get my pool up and running. I used yellow-out, granular 56 and flox per their instruction. While it got me to the light green stage I've been battling the PH and Alkalinity trying to get them balanced. The pool company told me to get them in balance before adding chlorine. I'm lost.

I have company coming in two weeks and was hoping to have my pool ready by then. Please, please help.

[Watermom]

Pool stores at good at having you add a bunch of stuff you don't need and that often compound the problem! If you can supply some current water testing results taken with a drops-based kit, somebody here can try and help you. If you don't have a good kit of your own, you should get one. We suggest the Taylor K-2006 or 2006C. Ordering information can be found in my signature line below. Repost with some numbers and we'll get you started clearing this pool!

[mortimay]

Here are my test results from this morning. I'm using an HTH 6 way test kit.

PH 7.8
Cl .5
Br 1
Alk 120
Hard 360
CYA The black dot never disappeared but did become slightly cloudy

I live in Indiana and it's been cold and rainy the last 3 days.

[mortimay]

I added 5 1/2 gal of bleach after posting this morning. I just checked my clorine level. It's at 1 now. I didn't check anything else. Where do I go from here?

[Watermom]

Since it sounds like you have very little CYA, shocking to about 12 would be the target I would suggest. In this size pool, each quart of 6% bleach should add slightly less than 1ppm of chlorine. Adding 5 1/2 gallons should have taken your cl level up to about 19ppm which is plenty high! You actually don't want to go quite that high to avoid damaging your liner. As many times per day as you can, test and add enough bleach to get the cl back up to 12. A minimum of twice per day and more often is even better and will clear it faster. Run your pump 24/7 while you are trying to clear the pool. Watch your filter pressure and backwash when the pressure rises 8-10 psi over clean filter pressure.

For your calcium hardness reading to be so high, you must have used cal-hypo in the past. No more of that. Your reading is pretty high and may be contribute to cloudy water problems. Stick with bleach. (Also, you do not have a bromine reading.) I would suggest getting a good test kit. We recommend the Taylor K-2006 or 2006C.

Keep us posted how things are going.

[mortimay]

I checked my numbers this morning:

Alk 120
hard 350
PH 7.5
Cl 1
Br 2

I added 4 gal of pool shock this morning. I don't know how much it matters but I did fill the pool when I started all this with well water. We have all kinds of metals, etc in the well water. That was two weeks ago. I don't know if that has anything to do with the hardness, etc.

I am new to all this. Right now I'm just adding the bleach. What else should I be doing? Do I adjust for PH and alkalinity while adding the bleach or wait until the pool clears? How often do I need to test for CYA? The test kit I have only had two tests for that. I plan to get the Taylor test when I can, but in the meantime, what should I be doing?

[mortimay]

I just checked my numbers (11:00am) after adding the 4 gal of pool shock this morning (9:15am)

Alk 120
Hard the sample turned a dull yellowy color instead of blue
PH 7.8
Cl turned orange
Br turned orange

How often should I be testing and how long after adding chemicals do I test? At what point do I react to the test results?

Thank you for all your help!

[aylad]

I would say for right now, don't worry about all the other numbers, let's just concentrate on getting the pool cleared up. First off, when you say you added "pool shock" this morning, what were the ingredients? Second, here's a link to the method for estimating your chlorine levels with the OTO kit. http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthr...a-good-testkit)
I wouldn't worry for now about any of the other tests except for chlorine (you don't have bromine in your pool, so ignore that reading altogether). Wait an hour or so after you add chlorine to retest, and make sure you're taking your water sample from under water--take your collection container, turn it upside-down, then push it as far underwater as you can before turning it upright, so you're not getting your sample from the surface. Keep your chlorine as consistently as you can at 12-15 ppm, with the filter running.

I also would recommend that you take a sample of your pool water into the pool store to have it checked for metals--but don't buy any of the stuff that they'll want to sell you, except maybe some metal sequestrant, and only IF the water tests positive for iron/copper.

Janet

[mortimay]

The ingredients listed on the pool shock were 12.5% Sodium Hypochlorite and the rest was just listed as inert ingredients.

[Watermom]

So, the shock is just liquid chlorine. Usually shocks are powder. Regular bleach is just 6% sodium hypochlorite, so your shock is basically strong bleach which will be good to use.