Helping neighbor with pool

[jilted]

Real quick, the water is already much less green than it was yesterday!

The granules are EZ Chlor: Sodium Dichloro-s-Triazinetrione-Dihydrate

She put in 4 jugs yesterday evening, this afternoon the FC with my cheap OTO kit was still fairly dark yellow (possibly 5'ish ppm) which was about 18 hours later. I had her hit it again with 4 more. Also she happened to have a box of 20 mule borax, so I had her put in 1/4 box.

I went back about 3 hours later and the ph was still lower than 7 so we put in another 1/4 box. Also, the FC reading on the OTO kit was dark orange.

I'll go back in the AM and test ph and FC again. She is supposed to pick up more bleach and borax this evening.

One more thing, she got the rest of the leaves out.

Thanks,
-stephen

[jilted]

Morning report: The water is no longer green, it is now blue and sort of cloudy.

She got and added 2 more jugs bleach (2.8 gallons) and the FC test is still dark orange. The local stores are not restocking this weekend!!! haha

The pH test is still showing yellow (under 7) so I added the rest of the borax she had available, about 1/3 of a box.

I will test again later this afternoon.

-stephen

[aylad]

Sounds like you're making progress

Keep working on the pH until you can get it over 7.0, and have her try to keep the chlorine in the orange zone until the pool clears. She'll need to keep the pump and filter running to filter out the cloudiness, which is dead algae. What type of filter does she have, and does she know how and when to clean it?

[jilted]

Looks like my reply yesterday didn't save... weird.

So ok... today the water is much clearer, you can see the bottom in shallow and also pretty good in the transition to the deep end. The deep bottom is close I can barely make out the bottom drain.

I have continued adding Borax and even after a half of box (the second box) it still doesn't seem to be changing at all yet. I went ahead and added the rest of box 2 earlier this afternoon. Is this common to use this much Borax if the pool has not been kept up properly? Just curious.

They have been keeping the FC up high.

The filter is sand, was changed last year, capacity is 300 lbs. She knows how/when to flush but this year her gauge is dead so I'll help her replace it. The pump has been running 24/7 since I started helping them out.

-stephen

[aylad]

It is common to use that much Borax....trichlor and dichlor are very acidic, so there's no way to know how low her pH actually was. Keep at it with the Borax until you get the pH up above 7.0.

As the algae dies and begins to be filtered out, she's going to need to backwash her filter--probably more than once, so she really needs to get a new gauge on it ASAP.

Keep the chlorine levels up at shock level until you can measure at night and again in the morning before the sun hits the pool, and lose 1 ppm or less of chlorine. At that point, you/she can let the chlorine levels drift back down, but how far will depend on the CYA level.

[jilted]

Water update: You can see the deep drain now. Not perfect, but getting close.

Keeping FC up.

Even after the other half box of Borax, it looks like maybe, MAYBE, the color is starting to turn darker but still nowhere near 7.

There is a BORAX supply issue here right now, its been days and WALMART still has not restocked. I hate to get behind. If necessary, would you suggest we bite the bullet and pick up some pH+ from Lowes?

-stephen

[BigDave]

Did you ever get a reading you trust for TA? Baking Soda and Washing Soda will raise pH and TA so ... if the TA is low and you haven't any Borax, you can use either of those.

[Watermom]

Your friend's pool volume is 35,000 gallons, right? Add larger doses of Borax. At least a box at a time and maybe even two boxes at a time until the pH starts to move. I *think* that an alk test that turns pink instead of green indicates really, really low pH. I need to verify this. At any rate, with such a high volume pool and adding a half a box at at time isn't putting a dent into it. Any other stores that carry Borax? Our grocery stores carry it and I think K-Mart. If not, you can use washing soda or soda ash if you can't find Borax. (They will raise alk and pH.)