Help Pool Green

[resapre]

So my neighbors called the County because my pool is green. It is a Intex 15X48. So far I have added a gallon of liquid chlorine, 1 PM Yesterday and algecide according to dicrections at 1 PM Yesterday. I added a pound of shock at 8 PM last night. I am constantly brushing the pool and cleaning filter cartridge every 15-30 minutes. Last night my husband brought home a pump and we dropped it in pool to move the water from the bottom. It did great getting all the garbage up. It did a great job, but he had to take it back to work today. I tested the water and here is what I got.

TH 400
FC 0
PH 8.4
TA 180
CYA 100

Not sure what it all means though, as I usually go to Leslies pool store and have my water tested and they sell me the store. lol. Can't do that this week. Since my FC was 0 I just went to store and bought 2 bottles of 96 OZ of Clorox bleach. I put one in not sure if I should do the other. I have until Friday to clear it up or they will drain it and put a lien on the house. I thought about draining it but then the neighbor will complain about the water, and two garden hoses connected is not enough to make it from yard to sewer thing.

I am hoping someone can help me as I need to clean this up asap.

[aylad]

Hi,

If your pool is 15 feet in diameter with a 48" water height, I'm calculating about 5300 gallons. With a CYA of 100, you have to get the chlorine up to 25 ppm and hold it there by testing and adding more chlorine to stay above the 25 ppm mark as often as possible, until the pool clears. In 5300 gallons, each gallon of 6% bleach will raise your chlorine by 11.3 ppm, so 2.5 gallons will get your chlorine from 0 to about 28 ppm (it won't stay there long, though). After the initial dose, the more often you can test for chlorine and bump it back up, the faster the pool will clear. For additional doses, each 1.5 cups will raise your chlorine by 1 ppm. The more consistently you stay above 25 ppm, the faster the pool will clear.

Going to Leslies and letting them sell you the store isn't a good idea--it's probably why your numbers are so out of whack. Your pH seriously needs to come down to the7.0-8.0 ppm range, but if a lien on the house is at stake, I would concentrate on the chlorine and clearing up the pool, then fix the other stuff later.

You're going to need a reliable way to test your water, and strips aren't gonna do it--at the levels you'll have to maintain, the strips will bleach out. Try going to your local WalMart and see if they still have any of the 6-way drop-based kits that sell for around $20. IN absolute worst case, you can get the pool store to do the testing, but do NOT buy any of the stuff that they will want to sell you. Your hardness is already to high for cal-hypo, and your CYA is too high for dichlor shock. Bleach is gonna the the answer for you, unless they sell liquid chlorine, which is just double-strength bleach but sometime at a lower price.

Good luck with it!

[resapre]

Hi. So I have both more bleach and another gallon of liquid chlorine, which is best to use? I used liquid chlorine yesterday and it did not raise my Chlorine level to anything. I did add 3QT size container of bleach this morning and now my FC is reading between 5 and 10.

I also am using this power blaster vac thing and it is picking up a lot of algea and sludge off the bottom as well as brushing it every 15 - 30 minutes and cleaning filter cartridge.

Will the PH being so high affect the green and algea? I do have dry acid, should I add that?

Thank You so much for answering so quick.

[kelemvor]

Hi. So I have both more bleach and another gallon of liquid chlorine, which is best to use? I used liquid chlorine yesterday and it did not raise my Chlorine level to anything.

Bleach and liquid chlorine are exactly the same chemical compound (Sodium Hypochlorite). The main difference is that liquid chlorine is usually stronger. You'll need to know the concentration to use it effectively, and it should have a label on it that says (perhaps 10% or 11.5% or 12%). The other difference is usually price. Where I live, liquid chlorine is much cheaper than bleach; but in many areas the opposite is true.

The bleach should also indicate a strength such as 5.25% or 6% or something else. If each gallon of 6% bleach will raise your chlorine by 11.3 ppm, then a gallon of 12% liquid chlorine will raise your chlorine by 22.6ppm.

Here's the "but". But, if your liquid chlorine or bleach is old it will be weaker than what it was sold at. The higher the concentration, the quicker it loses strength. If your jug of LC was very old, that could easily explain why adding a gallon didn't do much. Freshness counts with Sodium Hypochlorite, especially at higher concentrations.

To clear things up you're going to need to test and dose as often as possible. The more consistently you are able to keep things above 25ppm, the quicker you'll clear the pool. Also make sure you're running the pump 24x7 while cleaning up and of course cleaning the filter media when the pressure reaches 10lbs above the reading you see after cleaning it (while you're cleaning up the mess, the pressure can rise very quickly). The pH needs to be brought down to prevent scaling issues, but at 25ppm the pH readings won't be super reliable.

Edit: Don't stop shocking when the pool first becomes clear. You'll know you're finished when you can go from sundown one day to before sunup without losing 1ppm of FC. At that point you will be able to let the FC level drift down to somewhere between 8 and 15ppm in order to keep things nice and clean. It shouldn't be hard to maintain given your very high CYA level.

[Spensar]

If you are using pucks or sticks for chlorine, best to stop using them. Those also included stablizer, also referred to as CYA. At 100, that level is plenty high and requires higher chlorine levels to clear the green up. If you keep using them, the CYA level will keep climbing.

Seeing as you are in Nevada, I would guess that water is is fairly $$, but removing half or so to bring the CYA down would not be to practical. Keep pounding it with bleach in the meantime, and it will take more than you think. Killing the algae uses up chlorine quickly, and you need to keep the levels up. Over a few days the water will likely go from green to cloudy/milky, and then to clear. As posted above, don't let up on the chlorine levels because the water isn't green anymore, if you do the algae will grow back.