Copper sulphate victim

[McCloud]

I recently rehabilitated the pool at my house in a bid to get fit by swimming! My pool has a marble base and the only chemicals I added to the newly borehole filled pool was the Blu52 weekley maintainance pack which comes with a booster and weekly chlorine pre packed doses.

I do not own a test kit and after all the research I had done, I was very keen to test my water and get my ph, metals, chlorine etc right. On taking my water to the local pool shop, the guy there advised I add a number of things to the pool. Amongst them where :
1.Pool acid for the Ph
2.Chlorine 2kg
3. Stabiliser
4. Copper (said it would make water clear and nice and 'Blue')
5. Something I don't remember for metals in the pool (since my water is borehole water).

I did more research and went on to add only acid to the pool. On testing the water again, the ph was perfect at 7,2. Chlorine levels however where at almost zero. Up to this point (6 weeks) the pool had maintained its colour. The pool shop guy however insisted on adding the copper sulphate (bluish crystallite form). I went on to do so as advised and since adding it my pool has a very thing metallic film right on the surface of the water and despite constant filtering surface water is also foamy thus a bit cloudy.

I have read countless pleas for help on the forum of people who have had problems with copper(wish I had found you earlier!) My pool surface seems hardly affected and besides the tin metalic veil and foamy look on top the water underneath seems quite clean. What can I do to to get rid of it. my pool is approx 50 000litres and I only added about 500-800 grams of the copper.

Also help with a general maintenance plan. Apart from the copper incident despite low chlorine levels, my pool had behaved quite well.

[PoolDoc]

Poster is in Zimbabwe, Africa. Do not offer US-based advice!

I'm sorry, but there's very little advice I can offer you, since you can not use the testing methods we recommend, and since I have no idea what sort of chemicals are available to you, nor what equipment you have.

If you tell me, you accurately tested and found your chlorine level to be 0.5 and your CYA level to be 20, I could tell you that you need to raise both, but not how to do so.

Since you have copper in the water -- but don't know how much is still there -- I can't tell you what to do with chlorine. *IF* you still have significant levels of copper, *THEN* you'll have to proceed carefully to avoid stains: most oxidizers (including chlorine) can cause the copper to 'drop out' of solution, in the form of a stain.

Good luck

[PoolDoc]

PS: your access, as a forum member, to the PoolForum is likely to be temporary. I have most of Africa's IP space blocked from registering, since I have so much spammer traffic -- and very few users we can actually help. You're connecting from a 'new bit' of African IP space, but the first time I have hacker/spammer traffic from that space, you'll end up losing the ability to login. You'll still be able to read the forum, without logging in.

I do hold open the forum for subscribers at the "Supporter" level, but that involves periodic tweaking of the blocks to let them through. However, I don't recommend subscribing for anyone outside of the EU -- we can only offer limited help to EU residents, and even less to non-North American users outside the EU. Too much of pool care depends on what's locally available.

Sorry.

[McCloud]

No problem thanks. Thought pool advice would be generic except for slight tweaks cause of different weather conditions.

Ta

[PoolDoc]

Chemistry is generic; solutions to chemical problems are specific and market dependent.

But, even the chemistry is indeterminate until you have reasonably accurate test results, and that's one of the things you're missing. Unfortunately, good pool testing supplies are pretty much a US-only product. Palintest (UK) and Lovibond (DE) make some decent testing products, but they remainl inferior, and cost 3x as much (> $300 US). Up until 2002, I could (and did) ship US kits to customers in Asia and Africa, but the post-9/11 security restrictions eliminated air shipments of chemical products of any kind.