Green hue in clear water...

[PoolDoc]

Remove your salt cells and look at them; flush them with plain water if necessary. Check and see if there is ACTUALLY any scale on them. Don't clean them, if there's not. If there is, ignore your dealer, get the mfg manual and follow THEIR instructions.

Pool store testing for metals is not reliable; we pretty much ignore it.

[waterbear]

You have a dark blue pool and the water was a clear green hue. Iron tints the water yellow and against a blue background will make the water look green. What kind of salt have you put in the pool. Some 'pool salts' are actually food grade salt and contain an iron anti-caking compound and will add iron to your pool. Solar salt is your best bet and less expensive.

No Mor Muriatic Acid is simply the brand of sodium bisulfate or dry acid sold by United Chemical . It is nothing special and the same as any other dry acid. It is the WORST thing you can use in a salt system because it forms sulfuric acid when dissolved in water which produce sulfates and sulfates are not good for salt cells!
Do not use vinegar or dry acid to clean your cell (your pool store is giving you very bad advice!), you use a 4:1 mix of water to muriatic acid as explained in the AquaRite manual on page 8,which I will quote:
Mild Acid Washing: Use only in severe cases where flushing and scraping will not
remove the majority of deposits. To acid wash, turn off power to Aqua Rite. Remove
cell from piping. In a clean plastic container, mix a 4:1 solution of water to muriatic acid
(one gallon of water to one quart of muriatic acid). ALWAYS ADD ACID TO WATER -
NEVER ADD WATER TO ACID. Be sure to wear rubber gloves and appropriate eye
protection. The level of the solution in the container should just reach the top of the
cell so that the wire harness compartment is NOT submerged. It may be helpful to coil
the wiring before immersing the cell. The cell should soak for a few minutes and then
rinse with a high pressure garden hose. If any deposits are still visible, repeat soaking
and rinsing. Replace cell and inspect again periodically.

What are your thoughts?

That your pool store does NOT know what they are talking about!

[Sparkle]

Latest update...

Added 40 lbs of salt Saturday, because I determined that amount should push the system reading to the high end of acceptable, but get the salt "stick" tester into the acceptable range as well.

At the same time, I added 1/2 box of Borax. Tested a pH a few hours later and added second 1/2 of box. Also added a littel water as the level was getting a bit low.

A few hours later, I checked the system reading for salt. It said 3500. Ran the system on 60% until dark. With a basic chlorine test the level seemd to be rising, but still not acceptable. Basic chlorine test early Sun morning before the pump kicked back on was hardly detectible. I let the pump kick on and run for a couple hours, then checked the system reading again (3400 ppm--no idea why the difference). Basic chlorine test registered about 0.5. During all of this, pH was holding steady at 7.4.

I decided to remove the cell one more time and inspect....Still didn't see any visible signs of build up...Pressure washed it with garden hose into a 5 gal bucket...A few tiny bits of debrise washed into the bucket (looked like tiny aunts). It seemed as thought the additional salt had made a difference becasue the chlorine level was increasing slowly. Even though it wears on the cell, I needed to determine if all of this had made a difference (remember the pool store had me run at 100% aand we never even made it into the acceptable range for FC), so I set the system on super-chlorinate. We only did the one time the previous year (as per pool store instructions after a large swimmer load including a couple clean dogs), but will try to never do it again. Early this morning, with super chlorinate still running, our basic test is showing right at 2 ppm!!! I'm going to let it finish it's 24 hours and retest. At least the cell seems to finally be working.

The salt "stick" test went from 2640 to 3330 24 hours after adding the 40 lbs of Aqua Salt. pH this morning looks to be 7.5. This afternoon, I plan to try to reset the system readings to see if the numbers will line up a bit closer to the "stick." With the current jump in the reading over night, our system has our level as high as it will accept it.

Current test readings for recap and those I didn't mention...
pH 7.5
salt "Stick" 3330 System has jumped from 3500 to 3400 to 3600???
TA 80 turned clear, but 90 to get fully red
CYA 65

I'm going to get 2 more lbs of CYA today. 2.64 ilbs should put me exactly at 80, so 2 lbs will certainly be safe. I feel safe in this because by my original calculations, 7.04 lbs would have taken me to 60 and 10.56 lbs would have taken me to 80 (using my nearest estimate of gallons in my pool---22,000). I've added a total of 8 lbs and we are at 65 ppm, so I feel good about 2 lbs not pushing me over.

If any of this sound wrong or sets off alarm bells for you, please let me know! I'm trying to catch on as quickly as possible, but I could easily make a mistake!! The pool store will try to talk me out of the additional CYA. Im also going to return the baking soda!!

I'll have to let you know about the hue this evening. I'll have my husband get in with a mask to let me know if any of the cloudy look under water has dissipated. Last year, you could film under water and not appear to be under water because it was so clear. I'm sure with all of your help, I can get there again!!

Thanks for restoring hope and removing a great deal of frustration!! :-)

[PoolDoc]

I would add the CYA; I wouldn't add baking soda UNLESS you have a concrete pool OR are having pH fluctuate up and down.

Also, please put your pool info in your signature (pool type, size, pump/filter make/model, etc.): http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/profile...=editsignature

[PoolDoc]

And . . . include the specific Aqua Rite model and cell size, as well as installation year.

[Sparkle]

The pool store had a reading of 55 for CYA before I bought and added another 2lbs yesterday. They showed pH at 7.7...lokked more like 7.5 or 7.6 by my home kit? At least a pound of CYA was dissolved before the pump kicked off last night. Chlorine got up to about 2.5 ppm after running about 26 hours on super chlorinate (is this adequate?). FYI, it was about 65% cloudy and 35% sunny yesterday and completely overcast so far today.

We also did the recallibration of the salt system and the reading was great and settled in nicely at 3400 ppm (perfect agreement with the store and within 70 ppm of what I could detect with the "stick").

We had between 1/4 and 1/2 inch of rain overnight. The salt system reading went UP to 3500??? Our FC is barely detectible and the pH looks to be around 7.4.

Weather and time didn't permit my husband to get in last night to eyeball the water clarity, but from above the water it is much clearer and I'm no longer detecting a green hue at all.

Now that the cell is at least producing a noticeable increase in chlorine, could the rest be related to the CYA level? Just out of curiosity, would it be damaging to the cell or the fiberglass if the level goes slightly higher than 80? Any suggestions?

[PoolDoc]

+ It won't damage anything for the CYA goes higher; you'll just have to compensate a bit by maintaining slightly higher chlorine.
+ Don't worry about discrepancies of 200ppm between salt tests: the tests are NOT that accurate.