Not sure whats wrong

[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?

[bstevensa]

Yes the sample water I get with a glass is brown tinted but the water in my tank is not and there is no brown staining there.

[aylad]

Do you have a filter of any kind on the water that comes into the house?

Janet

[Watermom]

It may just be the breakdown from the leaves if you had a lot of leaves in your pool. Run your pump/filter 24/7 and see if whatever it is will filter out. Check your pressure on your filter before you start and watch and see if it is rising.

[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.