Serious help needed

[xoroniox]

My problem was really close to this so this should be about to help you out. here in south fla the last hurricane knocked down our screen enclosure over the pool and blocked off the pool needless to say we didnt touch the pool for 4months, no chemicals or water topoffs. it was down about 1/3 of the way inground pool by the way, so the first thing i did was to remove all the crap possible in the pool. i used the regular pole net with a fine mesh net (old net i had because i bought all new stuff for when the pool was clear again) and it took me 100+ nets and skims to get the junk out of the pool, many days of work. also the weight of the crap you are netting out of the pool gets really heavy and i broke my old net and pole. after i took out as much as possible, i used my old cartridge (2+ years old i bought a new one again for when it is clear) and shocked the pool with tons of bleach, i mean alot my pool was forrest green and looked like a swamp with tons of creatures and bugs growing/swimming in there. it took me 3 weeks or high dose shocks and filtering 12hours/6days a week to get it clear again. my advice to you is do NOT fill the pool up, shock the pool and then net tons of times to get all the junk you can out, keep the shock level high and filter non-stop it will get clean. i figure you might as well keep the water level low that way less bleach is needed to shock it and once it is clear again raise the level and bring in more bleach to acceptable range. also having less water is a plus when trying to net and clean out the pool with the pole/net. good luck its really hard work but the savings is great. local pool company wanted $1100 to drain, acid wash+refill, chemical startup for my 12,500gallon Inground diamondbrite pool. i did the exact same thing myself for a total of $200 including all new pole,net,broom,cartridge. hope this posts helps, took long enough to write LOL
-Arron

[CarlD]

There's a pool skimmer called a "leaf rake" that holds enormous amounts of junk and even has a squeegee at one edge to scrape on the bottom. It holds at least 10x as much as a regular skimmer and works better at the bottom of the pool.

[Sunny32504]

Thanks for the help! I have started to fill the pool because I could not filter without having it up to the skimmer. I think i am going to get in there and try to vaccum as much stuff as possible and pick up the sticks with my feet as I go along. I am going to chlornate alittle because the bugs scare me that are in there swimming around . I will keep in touch