Not sure whats wrong

[bstevensa]

Ok, first off this may have been answered already but I'm not sure so Ill ask anyway.
I realize its a little early but due to my wife hosting Bunco night in a few weeks I decided to get the pool cleared up. Over the winter, like every winter since I have had the pool, the water turns green. I began by testing the water with a k-2006 (bought last year thanks to this forum) and the proper chemicals to raise the PH and Alkalinity to good levels (I added a little each day for 3 days to get both to proper levels). Also while adjusting PH and Alkalinity, I kept the Chlorine at 20ppm. After 3 days I stopped loosing any chlorine overnight and the water was blue but cloudy. I should mention that this pool is 33' AG round pool and, with out getting in it, it is hard to get all the leaves out of the center. What I would do is get as much as I could then let the pool circulate and pull more leaves to the center then the next day pull more leaves out and so on until I got them all out. After the pool began to hold Chlorine I decided to brush the bottom ( I don't know why I decided to brush instead of vacuum but i did). The next day after brushing the water turned BROWN and is staining everything. At first it was clear with a brown tint. You could see stuff suspended all in the water so I thought that it would clear it self up in a few days. I have basically not done anything but maintain the chlorine lever for 3 days now and the Brown tinted water has turned into DARK BROWN water. Even when I draw a sample for testing, that water has a tint to it. I plan on vacuuming to waste today to see if it makes any difference. I have not added anything but shock, baking soda and soda ash.

These are my reading as of this morning

FC - 21
CC - 0 <----not sure if this is good or not
PH - 7.2
Alk - 90
Cal - 100 <---Vinyl lined pool so im not so worried about this
CYA - 80

Any suggestions?

[Watermom]

Hi, Brian, and welcome back to the Pool Forum. First of all, a CC of 0 is perfect. It is what you want it to be.

Are there still a lot of leaves in the pool? You might try turning your pump off for a few days and see if everything will settle to the floor of the pool and then you can try vacuuming it up very slowly so as not to stir it up again.

Once you can get the leaves out, then you'll want to run your pump 24/7 and let the filter do its job. You might try adding a little DE to your sand filter to help it filter out the small bits of stuff. You can read more about that here:
Adding DE to a Sand Filter

What kind of shock are you using? If it is dichlor, you might want to switch to liquid pool store chlorine or just plain unscented bleach. Dichlor is stabilized which means it adds CYA and your CYA is already high enough.

[PoolDoc]

Have you been adding WELL water? Do you have iron in your tap water? When you backwash your filter, what does the backwash look like.

Some of what you are describing sounds like oxidized iron . . . and FC=21ppm would definitely oxidize iron, even with CYA=80ppm

[bstevensa]

Ok I did another good sweep of the pool and I believe all the leaves are out now. I did go ahead and turn off the pump and will give it a day of so to see what if anything settles to the bottom then I will vacuu to waste.

I have not added any water since last summer. As for backwashing I am doing it everyday and it's always very brown discharge water.


#fingers crossed

[bstevensa]

OK I left the pump off for 48 hours and nothing changed. If anything the water might have gotten a little darker. I spoke with a lady that cleans pools (not an employee of any type of pool store) and she also mentioned that it sounded like metal. She thought that maybe me adding water here and there through out the summer last year that maybe sometime I had a little iron in my water. Just a note, I am on a community water system that gets its water from a near by lake BUT there has not been a licensed operator in the last 3 years so we have been under a "Boil Order". This might explain getting a little iron or something in my water. Anyway, after a little research, I added a bottle of Natural Chemisty's: Metal Free. I chose this because it was phosphate free. After 16 hours now there is no change in my water. Everything is still VERY brown and if its white, its stained. I still get brown water when backwashing, and like normal backwashing it clears up after a minute or two. Any suggestions? Is there a way to check for metal?

FC - 13
CC - 0
ph - 7.0
Alk - 90
CYA - 80

[aylad]

You can usually ask your water system office for test results on your water. Alternately, you could take a water sample into any local pool store that does water testing and ask that it be tested for metals. When you dip a glass into the pool and get a water sample, does it appear brown in the glass?

Also, take the lid off of your toilet tank in the house--do you see brown or orange staining on the inside of the tank?

[PoolDoc]

Is there a way to check for metal?

Checking your toilet tank is a good way to see whether - and what kind - of metals may be in your fill water, provided you do NOT have a water softener, and provided that your pool and your toilet get water from the same source.

To test your pool, you can use either Iron Out (from the laundry section of Walmart or wherever -- contains sodium hydrosulfte and sodium sulfite) OR Vitamin C tabs (ascorbic acid)

If you put either one on iron or copper stains, they will lift or at least change those stains. But, they won't affect organic stains much at all.