New Pool Owner

[METAL VIPER]

Hello all,

I just moved into a house that has a pool. Never had any prior experience with pool maintenance until now. I get the hang of most of everything, but I've run into a few problems. First, I have a cartridge filter that I recently replaced the cartridges to. I doubt the previous owner ever cleaned them by the look of it. Whenever I vacuum the bottom, all is well and the pool looks great until a few hours later when I see dirty back on the bottom. Obviously, the cartridges are not doing their job, but since they're brand new, I have no idea why it's like that. It's been incredibly frustrating.

Second, the pool is far too basic. It's cloudy and the pH is over 8. The pool is about 25 feet long, quasi-rectangular, and goes from 3 feet to 12 feet (yes, 12 feet!). I dumped 1 gallon of muriatic acid into it and the pH hasn't budged. I still have another gallon, but I'm left wondering how much is it going to take to make progress.

I really enjoy the pool and the crash course in maintenance that I've had. Won't be too long and I should have everything conquered, but I really need to figure out these 2 dilemmas

[Watermom]

Hi and welcome to the Pool Forum!

Can you post current water testing results taken with a drops-based kit? How did you add the muriatic acid?

Do you know the volume of the pool? What kind of pool is this and how big is your pump?

Regarding the vacuuming issue ----- Do you see dirt blowing back in through the return jet? It could just be dirt that is getting stirred up into suspension as the vac passes over it that is settling back down to the pool floor. That is pretty normal. No matter how slow I go with my vac head, later there will be some dirt resettled on the pool floor.

[METAL VIPER]

Hi and welcome to the Pool Forum!

Can you post current water testing results taken with a drops-based kit? How did you add the muriatic acid?

Do you know the volume of the pool? What kind of pool is this and how big is your pump?

Regarding the vacuuming issue ----- Do you see dirt blowing back in through the return jet? It could just be dirt that is getting stirred up into suspension as the vac passes over it that is settling back down to the pool floor. That is pretty normal. No matter how slow I go with my vac head, later there will be some dirt resettled on the pool floor.

The kit I have is a Taylor K2100 that was already with the rest of the pool supplies. After adding 5 drops of the reagent per instructions, it is still heavily basic. I added a quart a day until the gallon was empty and it's still basic.

I don't know the total volume of the pool; how would I go about finding that out? It's an in ground, concrete pool.

As for the dirt - I don't see it immediately see it getting blown back, but once I'm done cleaning, it looks great. I come back a few hours later and I can see dirt that is in 2 immediate areas - close to the 2 return jets, but in a larger area, since it floats around before it settles

[PoolDoc]

Yeah, sounds like Watermom's idea was right: you've stirred up some dust which disappears till it resettles.

Volume: measure length, shallow width, deep width and repost.

[aylad]

I sounds like either what Watermom suggested, and it's just residual dirt resettling (I have a couple of spots in my pool where dirt reappears daily), or it's possible that your cartridge filter is being overdriven by your pump, and what you're vaccuming is just going through the filter and back into the pool. What size pump is on the pool? Also, if you'll list the other water test results that Watermom asked for, we can help you figure out how much acid you're going to need to drop your pH. Have you recently had an algae bloom?