Cloudy water but levels are good. What to do?

[summrlovin]

My husband and I bought a house with an inground pool. It's an older one, probably built in the 80's. It's a concrete bottom with tiled sides. We left the water in over the winter, this is our first spring with the pool. We vaccumed like crazy, skimmed like crazy, had an algae bloom, killed the algae, vaccumed like crazy again, added some two different chemicals to make the water "crystal clear" over several days. It's still cloudy. We used test strips and the levels are coming off as safe to swim in, but I don't want the kids in it until it's completely clear. What are we NOT doing that we should be doing? We have a sand filter, we have replaced the sand and backwashed it. I really hope someone can help with this, it's causing marital strife.

[sunlove]

I really hope someone can help with this, it's causing marital strife.

LOL!

Not sure how many days it has been since you killed the algae but it may still be suspended in the water (albeit dead) because it's hard to filter. I've been dealing with hazy water for about a week now because of this.

[aylad]

Hello, and welcome to the forum!! Like Sunlove said, many times the hazy water is because you haven't filtered out the dead algae. However, it could also he that all the algae is not dead yet. Your best bet is to:

1) not put anymore clarifiers in the pool
2)dose the pool for now with enough chlorine to maintain greater than 3 ppm at all times,
3) give us a list of all the chems you've put into the pool (ingredients, not just "shock")
4) give us a set of test results taken with a drop/ based kt (no strips!)for Cl, pH, TA, Ch, and CYA. If your wal-mart has the 6-way kt that sells for about $20, that kit would be a good one to start with.

I'm sure we can help you clear it up, and this will help us to help you.