Had leaves in it, now have the water blue but still cloudy

[inultus]

Ok, kind of a long story. Pool had not been opened in 3 years. I scooped and scooped to get leaves out, hired a guy to put chemicals in, scrub the walls and give me advice. It is now blue, but still cloudy.

Tested the chemicals yesterday with brand new strips. Everything ok, but stabilizer was down. Put in 3 pounds of stabilizer. Scrubbed pool walls with brush. Put my (older, but still working) Aquabot in to clean. It worked for a while but after and hour or so got the treads clogged a bit with leaves and small twigs. Apparently there is still some junk in the bottom. Should I keep scooping, or wait until the cloudiness settles or keep running the Aquabot or what? Thanks!

[PoolDoc]

It's very hard to clean up a pool that still has sludge and debris in it. If you can scoop it up, you should.

Aquabots are NOT made for dirty pools. They work will in cleaning pools that are ALREADY almost clean, but have a little debris or silt. Sludge pits need hand cleaning, leaf eaters or commercial vacuum systems.

*** MAINTAIN CHLORINE LEVELS AS YOU CLEAN!! ***

Get a cheap OTO / phenol red kit. (Yellow / red drops) Make sure the pH is between 7 and 8. Then forget about every thing else, except chlorine. Use PLAIN 8.25% household bleach to maintain a dark yellow chlorine level while you are cleaning. Get as much bleach as you think you'll need . . . and then triple it. (For a 10K gallon sludge pit, I'd get at least 100 ppm or 9 gallons. And, I'd expect to buy more.)

If the pool starts to turn green, while you clean, add another gallon for every 10K gallons of pool water. Once the bottom is clean and there are no traces of green, you can start to worry about other stuff, like clear water.

[inultus]

Thanks for the help. Got it almost completely clear and the debris is all gone now. Aquabot is doing its job at this point. I can see about 2' from the bottom in the deep end but I do know that all the green/debris is gone. One other thing, there are small bubbles coming out of the outlet in the shallow end (there are 2 outlets, one in shallow and one in deep end). I know that means a leak somewhere but I can't find it. I'm not losing water. Any ideas? I have some trees growing near the underground plumbing, I'm afraid that the roots have come into contact with one of the PVC pipes underground. Thanks.

[PoolDoc]

One other thing, there are small bubbles coming out of the outlet in the shallow end (there are 2 outlets, one in shallow and one in deep end). I know that means a leak somewhere but I can't find it.

It's a SUCTION leak -- air leaks IN, rather than water leaking out. I've never been very good at finding them, but the most common locations include the pump basket lid, the point where the suction piping connects to the pump, and the valves on the suction side of the pump (skimmers, main drain, etc.)

[inultus]

Yes, the pump is fairly new, o-ring and lid of basket are in good shape, however I did clean and re-seat it. I also put teflon tape on the pump/piping connection and re-assembled it. The skimmer looks to be in good shape, however the tree roots go very near to where I would imagine the underground piping comes up from the main drain.

However as stated I am not losing water, and this type of leak doesn't really affect anything does it? I can't see how it would affect the chemicals or anything like that.

[PoolDoc]

A suction leak can cause a pump to lose prime, and can make it impossible to re-prime.

It is also a source of aeration, which will have a continuing effect on carbonate alkalinity.

That said, it's not uncommon for these effects to be small enough, to be tolerable -- especially when the alternative is digging up the deck!