high ph/ alkalinity and green pool

[PoolDoc]

4 gallons each evening, till the algae is all dead.

[vjeffcoat]

Ok, progress report, I added the second batch of bleach last night.when i tested the chlorine levels this morning the TC was a 3, and the FC was a 5. I retested before adding the third batch of bleach tonight and the levels were back to what they were the morning after the first batch, TC 1 and FC .5 On a good note, the water is a much lighter green and the visibility has improved greatly. So i guess i will add the forth batch of bleach tomorrow night and see how it goes from there.

[vjeffcoat]

Ok so my levels tonight are: Hardness - 0 / TC - 5 / FC - 5 / ph - 8.4 / TA- 120 / CYA- 30
After the forth night of bleach we were able to turn the pump off, After 1 full day of being off the water is still cloudy. We have been vacuuming the pool all day today, and it's still cloudy. Any suggestions on how to clear up the pool?

[aylad]

Was the pressure rising on your pump/filter while it was running? When was the last time it was backwashed? Why did you turn the pump off? Keep in mind that the chlorine killed the algae, but it's the filter that will remove it from the pool. If your pressure was rising on the filter, then you need to keep it running and backwash it as the pressure indicates. If the pressure was not rising, you can try adding a cupfull of DE through the skimmer to help coat the sand and help it pick up finer particles.

[vjeffcoat]

Pressure never rose above the running level so i didn't backwash. Last time it was backwashed was when we put it up this year at the beginning of July. I turned the pump off as instructed by Pooldoc on the first page. So should i try just filtration now,as we've already been vacuuming?

[aylad]

Did you try vac'ing to filter? And did the pressure still not rise then? Did you see any of it blowing back into the pool through the returns? If you vacuumed to filter, and either saw it blowing through the returns or the pressure did not rise, then you may have a problem. A 1.5 HP pump is awfully big for that pool, and I suspect it is just blowing the stuff back through the filter instead of allowing the filter to catch it to remove it from the pool.

When you turned off the pump, did ANY of it settle to the bottom, or did it look equally as cloudy as when you turned it off?

[vjeffcoat]

Yes , vacuuming to filter, pressure rose a little, i really can't tell if anything is shooting back out of the return. When I turned off the pump, the water was cloudy enough i couldn't see the bottom of the pool. When i went out this morning to vacuum, it looked exactly the same. So I couldn't tell if any had settled to the bottom or not. So I would say equally as cloudy.

[aylad]

You're probably going to need to go with a floc and vac to waste, but some flocs will just make the problems worse. Let me ask Ben to check back in on this thread so he can advise you with the best next steps to take...

[PoolDoc]

Vjeff; pardon me if I've overlooked it, but it appears you are still flying blind, and have neither an HTH 6-way or a Taylor kit. We can try things, but we're just shooting in the dark, without reliable water chemistry information.

You can buy and add a floc if you like -- I'm not going to recommend one -- some work sometimes; some work other times; none work all the time.

Since your cloudiness didn't settle, there's nothing to be gained by leaving the pump off. Given that you have an AG pools the odds are that you have an oversized pump and an undersized sand filter -- that's is what is usually installed, for marketing reasons. Worse, that combo tends to blow sand out of the filter every time you backwash, so if your filter has been in service more than a month or two, odds are it's missing a lot of its sand.

Good luck!