Newbie needs help. Need a Plan Of Attack To Get This Pool Open

[NullQwerty]

Hey...I'm Sorry...My terminology may be off...adjust for the newbie factor . What I meant was that during the winterizing process, the filter was opened up and cleaned. I called it Grids, but it may be fingers. Also I thought it was called backwashing what I'm doing, but maybe I'm wrong. When I say backwash, I mean I push the handle at the top down slowly and then up quickly 6-8 times which removes the DE (the filter manual calls that process 'bumping'). Then I open the drain valve and let the water and DE drain out. I then turn on the pump to further clean it and get the gunck out. I then close the drain valve, start her back up, and then add more DE.

The size of my pool is about 36 feet by about 18 feet.

My readings from the other day are here. Again, no chemicals have been added since this was taken:
Saturation Index: -0.7
TDS: 500
CYA: 70
Tot Chlorine: 0.3
Free Chlorine: 0.3
pH: 8.2
Demand Drops: 2
Total Alkalinity: 36
Adj. Total Alk.: 15
Total Hardness: 82

What do you guys think? Anything I can safely do without turning on the pump?

Thanks guys!

Waste: My problem with vacuuming to waste is that I don't have a waste line, so where do I put all the outcoming water? I imagine it would kill my lawn, no?

[mwsmith2]

Well, I can tell you this: if you don't get any Cl in there, it's not going to change. Do what I posted earlier, at least brownian motion and natural convection will disperse the Cl and start doing some good.

If you aren't going to put anything in the pool, I don't think there's much else we can do to help.

Michael

[NullQwerty]

Sounds good. I'll dilute the chlorine and spread around the pool. So should I put as much chlorine as the BleachCalc program reccommends, or will that be too much without circulation running?

Edit: I see...I need to keep adding until I get the chlorine levels up to 15 ppm, regardless of whether circulation is running or not.

[NullQwerty]

Actually, a friend of mine just had a great idea. I could drop a hand pump (like you would use to get water out of your basement) in the shallow end of the pool.

That should get some circulation going. I'll give it a shot as well (unless someone has had a bad experience with this).

[bbb]

NullQwerty, did you see my response to your question in the pool equipment thread? by the way, please just continue in one thread - it's hard to keep track when you have multiple threads going. You really should get more DE and start attacking with lots of bleach. You also really really need a good test kit right away - either the PS234 kit or a drops based kit at Wal-Mart or a pool store. See this thread for some inspiration, and read away at this site and www.poolsolutions.com.

The good people on this forum can give you a plan of attack, but you need to provide good info from the front lines (in other words, results from doing your own pool water testing from a drops-based kit) in order for us armchair generals to guide you to get swimming quickly!

ps - I think the hand pump is kind of a waste of time. An electric pool cover type pump, with the hose still in the pool, would be ok, but why bother? Best to just buy some more DE right away, and wait longer between backwashings. Most of all, get that chlorine in the pool!

[NullQwerty]

Ok...It's got chemicals in it. I added 5 gallons of Chlorine shock to the pool and at the suggestion of the pool store guy, I have three 3" chlorine tablets in floaters. I did this a few hours ago.

I went out and bought the drop based kit from Walmart (but will order the one from this site soon). I will take new readings in the morning and post them here. I'd take them tonight, but I imagine having added the chemicals so recently I wouldn't get an accurate reponse? If I'm wrong, tell me and I'll post readings tonight.

bbb...Hey, Got your response in the other thread and responded to it. Sorry...I will consolidate to just this thread going forward.

[NullQwerty]

Ok...Things are going good. This morning I woke up and the pool 10X better. Still green, but a much lighter green and there was actually some blue. The filter actually ran 2-3 hours without needing a backwash.

I threw in another gallon of the Chlorine shock. I then opened up the filter and found a bunch of DE (around 1" thick) dispersed at the top of the filter fingers. So I cleaned that out and reattached. The pressure after restarting was around 10 which I haven't seen in quite a while.

I tried vacuuming, but that caused it to need a backwash within minutes.

So, I took a water sample to the pool store (about 2-3 hours after adding that last gallon of chlorine shock). My results were:
Saturation Index: -0.1
TDS: 600
Tot Chlorine: 1.5
Free Chlorine: 1.5
pH: 8.4
Demand Drops: 3
Total Alkalinity: 42
Adj. Total Alk.: 42
Total Hardness: 79

So, at the suggestion of the pool guy, I added 45 lbs of Alkalinity increaser and 2 bags of the granular Super Sockit chlorine shock. Then in 2 hours I will add 6 lbs of PH Minus. Then, in the evening I do 2 more bags of the granular Super Sockit chlorine shock. All while I still have the three 3" chlorine tablets floating around.

After adding what I've added so far, I brushed the floors as best I could. That must have stirred up some of the remaining algae because the pressure builds up within 1 hour again, but I'm assuming tomorrow it will last longer. If not, and the algae looks better, then I'll probably acid wash the filter.

If anyone thinks I should adjust any of that, let me know. Things are looking up though.