Just pulled cover off.. green swamp water

[slade8200]

So we had some problems with the winter cover this year and all the crap on the cover went into the pool. Now we have green swamp water in the pool. We had this one other year and had to clean the filter every hour for about three days before we could see the bottom. This is a 4-foot deep, 27' round above-ground. We have a DE filter. Is there a way, or are there certain chemicals I could use to get the water clearer faster? Thanks for the help.

[Watermom]

That very same thing happened to me one year! Not a lot of fun, but actually pretty easy to clean up. Lots of chlorine (bleach) will do the trick. Scoop out as much of the debris as you can and run your pump 24/7, cleaning the filter as often as is needed. If you can post a current set of water testing results taken with a drops-based kit, someone here can better advise you. If you don't have a kit, let a pool store test for you but just don't buy all the stuff they will try and sell you. The kit we recommend is the Taylor K-2006 or 2006C which is the same kit with larger quantities of some of the most used reagents. Click on the Amazon link in my signature below to find it.

[PoolDoc]

Slade;

*Live* algae plugs DE filters rapidly; *dead* algae does so MUCH more slowly. So, kill the algae.

As Watermom says, it will take lots of bleach. I'm guessing you are about 15,000 gallons (27' x 3.5' water depth), so each gallon of bleach will add about 4 ppm of chlorine. For a swamp, you probably need to think in 16 ppm / 4 gallon doses.

Do this:
+ Go to Walmart and purchase a cheap OTO/phenol red test kit and about 24 gallons of bleach. You can also get a few boxes of borax and some stabilizer if you can find that there.
+ Make SURE (really, really sure!!) that if you have a feeder, tab feeder, Nature 2 or other gizmo the tabs, filler, cartridge, etc is REMOVED.
+ Run the pump / filter 24/7
+ Add your bleach THROUGH the skimmer. This will kill the algae on the DE, first before the bleach reaches the pool and will help relieve the rapid plugging of the DE.
+ Meanwhile, keep scooping and vacuuming.
+ Test the pool 1 hour after each bleach addition; repeat the dose EVERY TIME the chlorine goes below 3 ppm.
+ If the chlorine is still high, but the OTO does not turn ORANGE, and the filter is stopping up, add *one* gallon via the skimmer, to see if that will relieve the high pressure. If not, wait 15 minutes and then clean the filter again.

With a DE filter, you should be able to clean your pool up pretty quickly (a day, maybe?) if you can keep working on it.

Ben

[slade8200]

Hey thanks a lot, I will try that. I was reading some other posts and it seems like all these years I could have been backwashing my filter instead of taking out the grids and hosing them off. Obviously I'll have to hook up some extra plumbing to make this work, wish I thought of it earlier!

[slade8200]

Instead of bagged shock, is it better to use bleach? If so, what's the ratio, one bag of shock = 1/2 gallon of bleach?

[Watermom]

Instead of bagged shock, is it better to use bleach?

Depends on what your water testing readings are. I personally just use bleach for shocking and for daily chlorination, but if your CYA is low enough, you can shock with dichlor.

If so, what's the ratio, one bag of shock = 1/2 gallon of bleach?

Dunno. Plus, there are many types of bags of shock of various sizes.

[madwil]

1 gallon is close to 1 bag of shock...
1 gallon 6% adds 6ppm to 10k gallons
1 lb bag I think adds 7ppm- so slightly more, but not twice as much like the price!
PoolDoc note: This used to be true, 15 years ago. But unfortunately more recent 'flavors' of shock include widely varying 'blends' with varying levels of available chlorine. So, it is no longer a generally true statement -- it is true only in the specific case of unblended calcium hypochlorite shock with 68% available chlorine.

Also, most/all bag shocks add other things- either cya (stabilizer) or calcium; so they're ok on a temporary basis but over time will add up to problems

[slade8200]

I now have all the leaves and visibile dirt out of the pool. The water is now cloudy with a light green color, but I can see the bottom. My chlorine is at 4, pH is 7.4, alkalinity at 80, cyanuric acid level is pretty much non-existent. Could this be contributing to my cloudiness? What's the best way to raise it? I have one of those 2.5" chlorine tabs in the skimmer at all times, and I have been adding 3/4 gallon of bleach when my chlorine drops to 1. My DE filter is still clogging after 2 hours of running, so I guess it's picking up a lot of crap in the water still. Any help is appreciated, thank you.

[PoolDoc]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't sound like you've been using the 4 gallon doses of chlorine bleach recommended. As noted earlier, your DE filter will clog up much less once the algae is dead.

Trying to maintain just 1 ppm of chlorine is kind of 'spitting into the wind' here.

Ben

[slade8200]

The stuff in the filter is now more of a brown instead of the green it used to be. Is this dead algae or something else? I'll keep up the 4 gallon dose to keep the chlorine above 4.