Cannot Get Rid of Cloudy Water

[PoolDoc]

This year has been very difficult for many, so while that may not be a consolation, you can be assured you are not alone.

What can I do to get this thing clear??

1. In your situation, if you have clear city water, the fastest way maybe to drain and refill. You may want to look at water costs and see whether you should consider that option.

2. At this point, you've got chemical hobo soup in your pool, which tends to make us very cautious. We don't know what's in there besides algae, and we don't want to make things worse. For that reason, we can't really give you the sort of aggressive response plan that would apply if you ONLY had algae. In particular, we have to rule out using any flocs and clarifiers, since we don't know how much is left in your water and since an overdose can work in reverse, making fine suspensions that are almost impossible to filter. (In the future, NEVER floc, till ALL the algae is dead!)

3. You are still killing algae. Until it's all dead, thinking about clearing it up is sort of a waste of time. Kill it; then clear it out.

4. You've ordered kits, so the most productive thing you can do (besides checking drain / refill costs) is to (a) make sure the chlorine levels stay high, (b) put your filter on "RECIRCULATE", (c) run your pump on low speed, or otherwise throttled back, and if at all possible, (d) check to make sure that your sand filter is FULL of sand, and that the sand is not greasy or in clumps.

Pushing dead algae through small AG sand filters hooked up to big AG pool pumps is not productive, and may fracture the algae particles making them much harder to filter out.

In a small pool like yours, I'd personally probably take the chlorine as high as I though I safely could (depends on your stabilizer level), turn the pump off, brush till there were no more 'clouds' of green, and continue to maintain high chlorine using bleach for several days WITH THE PUMP OFF. Dead algae may settle out -- live algae will NOT. Once it was settled, I'd then use a manual vac and pole, to vacuum the algae off the bottom, by SIPHONING the water out, with the vac hose.

[True Blue]

Ajb, the only additional thing that I can offer is that I am pretty much in your same situation! My water is still cloudy white. I don't see any green anywhere and I brush and vacuum and keep my chlorine high. Best of luck!

[Watermom]

True Blue --- I'm kinda not surprised that you are having trouble filtering out. Your pump is mighty powerful for that small volume pool. (We may have told you that before, and if so, sorry to repeat. We read and respond to SO MANY posts per day that it is hard to remember who we have said what to!)