Yes it's a great feeling!!!

Last season I was not the one taking care of the pool and we never got to swim. This year I'm in charge of it and we're on the right track so I'm happy.

Here is the semi-success story so far thanks to this site and the sister site "pool solutions" along with a pool calculator I found, can't remember if it was part of these sites.

Before:


After:


So after uncovering the pool, I started with lots of scrubbing, netting and repairing all the wall cracks and tile loss.

That was followed up with a lot more scrubbing, netting and a twice nightly/daily shock of bleach. Eventually after I netted everything I could, I started vacuuming to waste. It took several times because regardless of how slow I went, particulates would stir up and resettle again later.

Persistence was instrumental!!! I just kept remembering P.O.P.P.

Finally, I held chlorine overnight. At this point I vacuumed to waste for the final time and the pool was very clean and clear.

Next I topped the water off. It happened to rain heavy that night when I topped off, and the PH went down from 7.2 to 6.8 when I checked the next day (acid rain?). I used that to my advantage because TA was 150. With the PH at 6.8, it seemed to take about 2 days I guess to bring the TA from 150 down to 120.

I then aerated with an aerator designed for the livewell of a bass boat and also by splashing, continuously taking buckets of water from the pool then dumping them back in to create as many small bubbles as possible. The PH is back up to about 7.2 now. I'm trying my best to further aerate it to raise the PH to 7.5 without bringing the TA back up.

I didn't start recirculating the water back into the pool until today. I only ran to waste when running the pump before today.

So today with the water crystal clear, numbers good and no more particulates, I made sure all the filter cartridges were clean and cleaned the inside of the filter housing. With everything as clean as possible I switched all the valves on the plumbing (very old system) from pumping to waste, to recirculating through the jets. All was great.

Then I slowly added the recommended amount of DE slurry to the skimmer.

All still seemed great. Until about two hours later when I went to look at my crystal clear pool and found that it had become cloudy. It's not horrible, but it's definitely cloudy compared to before. I can't see the bottom in the deep end anymore.

My chlorine levels were non-existent today because I had run out of bleach and had no chance to add any yesterday and I had not used any pucks up until today. Today I found a bucket of Hypo-chlor tablets that my uncle must have hidden from last season. So I just added a puck to the skimmer.

So is lack of chlorine what caused the suddenly cloudy water?

Or is the DE going through the filter and making it's way back out the jets and into the pool? If so, how do I fix that?

My current numbers are:

FC: 0.0 (I just added the 3" puck and before today, FC and CC were holding right at 3.0 overnight)
CC: 0.0
TA: 120
PH: 7.2

That's all I can test for as far as I know.


I'm not sure what the pool used to be, but I know it was "re-surfaced" a while back with what appears to be fiberglass. However, when I removed material to better repair cracks under the coping and around the walls, it appears it used to be cement. So I patched with Dry-Lok. At least the repairs aren't leaking.

Lot's of work and lot's to learn, now I know why my Grandfather threatened to fill the pool in every year. LOL

Have a good one. ---Matt