Cloudy 24 feet above ground pool

[PoolDoc]

If you are seeing improvement, and have gotten the better cartridges, I'd keep dosing with bleach at night . . . unless you'd rather drain and refill.

I just looked at your chart -- you've got well water. If your water is hard water with NO metals, draining and refilling might give be the fastest way, if your well can support that high rate of consumption. But if there's iron or manganese or something else in there . . . better not. Dealing with metals is a whole 'nother set of problems!

You REALLY need a good test kit. Do you have one on order?

And, if you can get some dichlor, do so. Bleach might be best right now, but you'll need the dichlor soon enough.

[etorres]

I am seeing improvements. I can almost see the brush when scrubbing the bottom. I can see about 3/4 of the way down. Before I could only see about a 1/4 of the way. If that much. It's still cloudy. I do have a kit. To make sure I was getting the readings I thought I was. I took a sample to my local pool store. He was surprise that I was getting better readings. Especially since I have not bought anything from him in the last month. According to him I only needed 1.8 lbs of PH. He tried to sell me on the Flocculant again but of course I didn't buy into it this time neither on the PH up. The Borax has helped a great deal. I didn't tell him what I was doing. I am buying the chlorine from them as I think it's a better buy. They claim that their chlorine is 10% sodium hypochlorite. I get 2.5 gallons for $5.98, the regular generic bleach at the grocery store is only 6% sodium hypochlorite and it cost $2.98 for 1.5 gallons.

Do the pool store really sell a 10% sodium hypochlorite?

At this point I think I am going to need another filter. The new filter is already looking pretty bad. It cleans off ok. But it's a little grayish/greenish when I remove it to clean it. I have been hosing it down and I even bought a cartridge bath for it. I let it soak in bleach for a few hours. When I hose it down, I get a better pressure on my return. Which brings me to my next question. Can I put another return on the pool for better circulation even though it's an above ground pool?

My previous pool was an in-ground pool, it had several of returns. We lived in south Florida, we had tons of pool service companies in South Florida. When we moved to Northern Florida we bought a house on 3/4 of an acre, the house is high up. We have a large deck out back so we thought an above ground pool would be ideal as we can connect the pool to the wooden deck. I never thought it would be such a challenge to get a pool service for it. I feel so discriminated against by the pool service companies. When I say I have an above ground pool. I get this silence on the phone or a look when I inquire in person. Then I get the "NO, SORRY". I don't see a difference a pool, is a pool and money, is money....That's another subject. Thank God for poolsutions.com and for your pool forum.

Yes, we are on a well. I don't know the readings/metals, etc. We have a whole house filter and salt water conditioner system. The whole house runs of it.

[PoolDoc]

Do the pool store really sell a 10% sodium hypochlorite?

They sell bleach that WAS 10% when it was bottled. Whether it IS 10% when it gets to your pool is unlikely in most places. But, in Florida a lot of stores have a bleach delivery 2 - 3x per week and fill reusable containers with fresh bleach. If that's what your store has . . . . it's probably a good deal.

I have been hosing it down and I even bought a cartridge bath for it. I let it soak in bleach for a few hours.

Read the cartridge cleaning guide . . . and then use TSP + bleach; not just bleach alone.

I feel so discriminated against by the pool service companies. When I say I have an above ground pool. I get this silence on the phone or a look when I inquire in person. Then I get the "NO, SORRY". I don't see a difference a pool, is a pool and money, is money....

You're being discriminated against, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Business has to go 2 ways: sellers can chose their customers and buyers can choose who they buy from. I don't fully understand how people got the idea that it was unfair for a seller to decide, "No, I don't want to sell to that market".

I do it here, all the time: I exclude Russians and Chinese because 99.9+% of the people who register from those places are hackers or spammers. If you've got a pool in Russia --you're out of luck. I block Russian IP space as fast as I find it! I can't afford to sift through 999 hackers to find one legit pool owner.

But, even here, I discriminate. I'm almost certain I blew off a guy this spring who was a spammer in Rats Mouth, Florida (Boca Raton) . . . but he lived there and had a pool there. I didn't care to spend any more time digging; once I discovered he'd done some spamming, I just blew him off.

And, it's perfectly reasonable for pool guys to blow off AG pool owners. YOU might be a good customer, but as a class AG pool owners are not. A service guy who tries to serve them will go broke in a summer, on any business model I'm familiar with. The reasons are too complex to explain here.

I did the same thing, with commercial service customers. I got LOTS of calls from hotels, motels and apartment complexes. But after a few experiences, I just made up excuses to get them off the phone: working for them was a seriously money-losing process. It can be done in Florida where there are strict, and strictly enforced pool codes. But not in Tennessee or Georgia, where many counties have no code, and even places they do inspect the pools only 1 or 2x per summer.

It makes sense, to someone who's never been in business for themselves, to tell businesses you have to serve ALL potential customers, no matter whether you can make money doing so or not. But, all small business people understand that doing so is to get on a fast train to a French style economy, with hardly any entrepreneurial business development. And, of course even then, the French discriminate ferociously against non-French.

Yes, we are on a well. I don't know the readings/metals, etc. We have a whole house filter and salt water conditioner system. The whole house runs of it.

Do you fill the pool with 'softened water'?

[etorres]

Yes we fill it with soft water. We never plumbed it directly to the well. We just haven't gotten around to it.

[PoolDoc]

If you used softened water, odds are calcium is not part of your problem. Of course, you won't know for certain till you can test.

[etorres]

The pool store guy said I needed to add some Calcium but he said not to worry about it until I cleared the pool.

I can finally see the bottom of the pool. It's still cloudy but I can see it. I can even see the liner. There was some dead algae at the bottom of the pool. The were some clusters of them, no dead leaves maybe one or two of them. I vacuumed to waste but as I vacuum it spreads through out the pool making it cloudy again.

Is there anything I can do or add to speed up the processes?

I clean the filter daily, I brush twice a day.

[PoolDoc]

The pool store guy said I needed to add some Calcium but he said not to worry about it until I cleared the pool.

He's right that you don't need it now: but you don't need it later, either.

OK, what can you do to speed it up.

1. Relax. You do not need to brush or clean your filter 2x per day!

2. Your cartridge is probably shot. If you will send me pictures of your filter, filter label and cartridge, I'll see if I can locate the correct Unicel replacement for you. Do NOT get a replacement from your pool store. Most retail replacements are Asian made and poorer quality. A new GOOD cartridge would likely fix your vacuuming problem.

I was going to make more suggestions, but they won't help much if your cartridge needs replacing. Cleaning 2x per day + dirt shooting through the cartridge is a VERY strong indicator that you need new!