Drain pool?

[fjimmy123]

Hi everyone am a new member, I have a few questions but ill give a brief history of the pool. I bought a house that has a 12k play pool in-ground, pebble tech, VS motor and cart. filters and eco matic salt generator. so when i moved to the house first thing i did was clean the filters because they where very dirty like no one had cleaned them in more than year. the pool is starting to have allot of small tiny floating particles in the water looks like a dirty glass of water. so am planning on putting new filters, replacing the light with a led bulb, clean the calcium line with a soda blaster and was thinking of doing a acid wash or chlorine was but ive heard that pebble tech should not be acid washed if not really needed. so am not sure if i should empty the pool because i think no one has ever empty the pool before an its starting to get very dirty the water. the chemical level in the pool has been good and i dont have any dart spots on the pebble tech. I was just thinking of doing that to get a fresh start... thank you

[mas985]

Sounds like you might have an algae bloom. I would fix that before attempting anything else. Please post a full set of test results.

[PoolDoc]

Green particles = algae

Brown, white, or gray particles = minerals or dirt.

If your cartridges are dead (see this thread: http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthr....-How-to-clean), dirt and mineral particles will go right through.

1. You need to get a good testkit, ie a Taylor K2006. See link in my signature. These are NOT available locally, in any city we've heard of. Test your water ASAP. Test strips aren't accurate enough to help much.

2. Call your water company, and find out if you have high levels of calcium, magnesium, silica . . . or other minerals that will build up in pool water. This is a fairly common problem in AZ, due to poor quality water AND high rates of evaporation (which concentrates minerals in your pool -- same process that creates 'salt lakes').

3. If your cartridges are dead replace them ASAP. Purchase ONLY Filbur or Unicel OR genuine OEM cartridges. Filber or Unicel make most OEM cartridges, but the other after market cartridges range from somewhat lower in quality to really terrible. No-name (Chinese) brands usually seem to be AWFUL. Once you have good new cartridges, read this post [ http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?22458 ] so they last.

4. Tell us what you find (water color, cartridge condition, water co. info, etc.)