The outlook is not clear!

[Father Ted]

Hi All,
New poster here. We've had out 24 ft round above ground for 8 years now. I opened it just two weeks ago and I notice I had a rip in the pool cover so the water was brown when I first opened it. I use a Hayward Cartridge filter and for the first week the water got much better, I cleaned the cartridge every day. It went from brown to green to mostly clear in 1 week. Then I vacuumed up the debris on the bottom but this turned the water very cloudy again. Since then I've been visiting the pool store almost every day to try and get it clear but with no luck. The phosphates were high at one point with a reading of 2000PPM but now that's down to 500.

I've put a lot of shock in it but the chlorine readings still come out as 0. Here are this morning's readings:

Total CL=0
PH 7.2
Alkinity 140
Hardness 180
CYA 33

I'm very frustrated and I'm thinking of switching to the bleach method. Any ideas?

[aylad]

Switching to bleach is a great idea, and should help clear your pool quickly. What are the ingredients of the "shock" that you're using, and how much are you putting in each time? Also, how are you testing?

Janet