Cloudy water plan of action

[PoolDoc]

** ADMIN NOTE **
This thread is seeking help on a pool using a copper system that appears to be associated with old-style and illegal "chlorine-free" claims. For a variety of reasons, I'm declaring it off limits to all by myself, Chem_Geek, Waste, and Waterbear.

Hi Wsomm. . .

I'm going to jump in here, with both feet. I did a little checking on the Clfree system, and was very surprised. 10 - 15 years ago, a number of companies selling copper products were making "safe without chlorine" claims. Those gradually went away, as a result of various enforcement actions by the FTC and/or the EPA. I've archived the Clfree.com site, so I can forward the info to the right people, later in the year when things are not so busy.

For now, I'll simply state, as plainly as I can, that this claim by Clfree
"CL Free systems eliminate the need for chlorine in your pool water!"
[ http://www.clfree.com/pdf/clfree_pool_brochure.pdf -- archived 18May2011]
is almost certainly BOTH a lie AND an illegal claim.

Now, I have some views that tend, in certain areas, toward the libertarian. So I think that if you want to use Clfree in your pool, you should have that right so long as it only affects you, your family and your fully informed guests. After all, I grew up occasionally swimming in N Georgia creeks that were 'sanitized' with cow manure!

On the other hand, I absolutely believe it should be illegal (and I'm pretty sure it is) for Clfree to make the false claims they are making. Frankly, I'm amazed they are making them in writing.

If you like it, that's fine with me.

Of course, it's no surprise that you have been using a lot of citric acid, given copper level of 0.7 ppm! Those are levels pretty much guaranteed to cause staining.

Regarding your cloudiness, I'm not at all sure what the problem is. However I can tell you for a fact that if you do have a DE filter, and if it is working, your cloudiness is NOT "particles". "Particles" large enough to cause cloudiness do not make it through working DE filters.

What it sounds like to me is un-oxidized 'goo' -- oils, body wastes and other stuff that gets in your pool, that would otherwise by oxidized by chlorine (if it were present). If you want to try to run a genuinely "natural" pool, you can remove that stuff by setting up a swamp (that's pretty much literally what it is) that runs in series with your pool. There are some German sites that explain this technique, which essentially uses natural bacterial and plant processes to clean up this goo.

It appears that your Clfree system is generating copper at levels that will kill algae and prevent bacteria from growing. With a DE filter you are removing virtually everything that can be filtered out. So long as your bather load is very light, sunlight and filtration may well be able to take care of the rest.

Adding clarifiers and flocculants -- in a pool with a working DE filter -- is most likely a waste, and adds MORE stuff that has to be oxidized and removed.

The Clfree literature claims some sort of oxidation occurs within the "cell". I have no idea what they think might be happening, but I can tell that similar claims I've investigated over the past 20 years have all turned out to be bogus.

It's possible that you might be able to oxidize with hydrogen peroxide, available as Baquacil shock. It's my understanding that copper catalyzes peroxide decomp, so we'll have to wait to see if Chem_Geek knows whether this might work.

Other oxidizers are likely to precipitate your copper, causing massive staining.

An alternative might be to run your filter 24/7 and see if a week of sunshine -- and no swimmers -- will do the trick. UV breaks down a lot of things.

I'll ask Chem_Geek and the others to take a look.

Ben