I have been keeping at it all week. Still using the HTH test kit. I'll get the Taylor soon so I can get better chemistry numbers.

After I go the pH right and shocked the pool for a few days, I got in and got to work with my brush. I discovered a few things that don't belong in the pool that weren't helping! I got that all out and the bottom has been pretty clean since. I redirected my return jet down to keep the water moving across the bottom better. Over the course of a few days, I would find maple leaves and seeds and some green bits but haven't found any recently.

What I thought was calcium scale was probably sand algae. I used a dish scrubbing sponge to get the dead sand algae off of the wall and vacc'd and backwashed. The water is still cloudy but I can see a little deeper each day. My wife is getting a little impatient for crystal clear water. I have some floc on hand in case I need to go that route but I am going to use that as a last resort.

I was backwashing every 6 hours. By the weekend I was going 24 hrs with no noticeable change in pressure. After the sand algae deal I had to backwash again in about 4 hrs but pressure hasn't gone up much since that last wash. After reading through some other threads my next steps are either a skimmer sock or DE. It is also probably time to slow the water flow through the pump. Anyone have any luck with just leaving the vac hose attachment on the brush and leave it pointing up at the bottom? I noticed that the water flow is significantly less when the pump has to pull water through all of the hose. Smaller orifice and long hose makes for a big pressure drop.


My Cl seems to hold overnight but I loose it to UV pretty quickly. CYA reading was 0 last week. I was waiting for clear water before raising my CYA but should I start raising my CYA now so that my Cl won't burn off? I had this same problem last year. My water would start to get hazy after a couple of cloudy days. I would add Cl at night and the sun would come out and the haze would disappear.