Very Cloudy/Foaming issues

[CarlD]

A TA of 900 meant you had to put 90 drops of the R-0009 in to get the sample to go from green to red. Are you sure that's what you did?

Review of TA test
1) Fill tube to 25ml mark
2) Add 2 drops of R-0007 and swirl
3) Add 5 drops of R-0008 and swirl--sample should turn green.
4) Add 1 drop of R-0009 and swirl
5) Repeat #4, counting drops, until sample turns red and stays red.
6) Multiply # of drops added by 10--that is your TA number.

CH:
1) Fill tube to 25ml mark
2) Add 20 drops of R-0010, and swirl
3) Add 5 drops of R-0011, and swirl. Sample should turn red or pinkish red.
4) Add 1 drop of R-0012 and swirl
5) Repeat #4, counting drops, until sample turns blue.
6) Multiply # of drops added by 10--that is your CH number.

Hope this helps.

[Apatton]

I accidentally added a 0 to my TA figures yesterday. Haven't been getting much sleep due to the newborn, my bad...

FC - .4
CC - 1.2
TA - 100
CH - 500
pH - 7.0

Question about the Calcium Hardness...when I take the test, it indicates that my color will turn red after adding the R 0011. Mine keeps turning purple; like royal purple. I went ahead and continued adding drops until it turned blue and it took 25. That seemed excessive, especially considering I did the 10ml test.

I purchased an additional chlorine floater and some liquid chlorine to help boost my chlorine levels, will be adding that to the pool here in a moment.

[CarlD]

Um, you're still doing the CH test wrong.
1) You MUST use the 25 ml line. It's the FAS-DPD test that you do to the 10ml line
2) Not sure what purple means...you may have no CH, but I won't swear to it.
3) If you added 25 drops of R-0012, that means you have CH of 250, not 500. But if you did it with a 10ml sample of water, I don't know WHAT the heck it means!
4) On your FAS-DPD test (FC/CC) use the 10ml line and each drop counts for .5, not .2. It's good enough.

[Apatton]

It says that if high CH is anticipated, to use 10, and multiply drops by 25. I skipped it the first time since it was purple, but decided to do it this time...eventually turned blue with 25 drops which is actually 625 apologies

[BigDave]

@CarlD: The K-2006 has instructions for a 10ml CH test in the lid.
@Apatton: CH of 625 is quite high. Do you fill with very hard water or was it something else?

[Apatton]

I suppose my task today will be to test my hose water. Will report back with findings this evening.

[CarlD]

Thanks BD.

Yeah 625 is super-high. Ben has a way of reducing it...I think it involves (counter-intuitively) putting lots of Cal-Hypo in the skimmer.

[Apatton]

Just tested my tap water, it's at 300 ppm CH.

CarlD - I'm open for any and all suggestions on how to reduce my CH, hopefully this will resolve my cloudiness issues.

[Watermom]

I'm going to ask Ben to chime in on your thread.

[PoolDoc]

Ok -- let me start by quoting stuff from earlier posts:

Pool became a green monster . . . Tons of shock and green algecide later (Swimtrine Plus - full container) pool turned a beautiful blue with all the dead algae on the bottom...sort of a cream color. I've been running the pool 24/7 every weekend in addition to my 8 hours at night, lots of back washing, vacuuming, and trying to keep my chemicals up No matter what I do I cannot get rid of the following:

- Pool is insanely cloudy, cannot see bottom. I have put in tons of clarifier, including BioDex - Clearex 500, no beneficial results.
- When pool is circulating there is a TON of foam buildup on the surface. I thought it would pass after weeks of cleaning/back washing/maintenance, but so far it hasn't seemed to dissipate.

Items used to clean up very green pool: Fresh n clear oxidizing shock (non chlorine shock), Hydro clear shock, and a gallon of Swimtrine Algecide (63% copper ethanolamine). I understand that I probably used too much, but having battled this pool for weeks with zero improvement (in fact it was getting worse) I was getting fed up.

I have also added a ton of pool clarifier to try and clear up my cloudy pool, everything from your basic buy one get one free stuff at shady back alley pool stores, to Clearex 500 that I get at the larger retail pool stores. Once I determined the Clearex did nothing to dissipate the cloudiness, I knew i had a problem.

FC - .4
CC - 1.2
pH - 7.0
TA - 100
CH - 625
CYA - 75

I should also note that your filter performance seems doubtful -- I don't know whether it's working properly or not . . .

SO . . .

First, you've got pool chemical voodoo soup. That means, we can't be sure how anything we suggest will work out. There are many reasons we tell people to avoid useless chemicals in their pools, but one important reason is to keep things simple enough so that we can offer advice that will work. Unfortunately, in your case we can only offer suggestions that we HOPE will eventually work.

Second, it's not likely that calcium is part of your current problem . . . UNLESS you've done something that you forgot to mention. With a pH of 7.0 and a TA of 100, a CH of 600 is actually on the LOW side!

Third, given your high doses of foamy algaecide, and your low levels of chlorine, foaming and cloudiness were INEVITABLE!. Unfortunately, your situation is complicated by having added copper algaecides that will tend to stain your pool once you begin raising chlorine levels.

Your chlorine level SHOULD be 10% of your CYA level -- 7.5 ppm. You have a level of about 1%, far, far too low.

Do this:

1. Turn your pump on 24 hours per day, 7 days per week till this is resolved.

2. Cautiously, gradually, raise your chlorine level to 5% of your CYA (~3 ppm) over a 48 - 72 hour period. This page, http://pool9.net/cl-cya/, partially explains the chlorine-cya relationship.

3. Meanwhile, use borax (http://pool9.net/borax/), 1/2 box at a time, to raise your pH to at least 7.2.

4. AND, order these cal hypo tablets: CCH Calcium Hypochlorite 2 5/8" Tablets 50 lb bucket. If you can get equivalent tablets locally, that's fine. BUT, make SURE that you are buying UNDILUTED, UNMIXED calcium hypochlorite in tablet form.

The reason is that, used in a skimmer in conjunction with a sand filter, the chlorine + calcium carbonate mixture will help strip the goo -- INCLUDING COPPER -- from your pool and put it on your filter where you can remove it.

However, while you use these you will need to (a) turn off any heater, (b) empty any feeder [cal hypo MUST NOT come into direct contract with any other form of chlorine], (c) make SURE that you don't add chemicals on top of, or next to, the cal hypo tabs.

When you receive these, I'd recommend splitting them into 3 heavy duty garbage bags. Seal 2 as best you can, and return them to the bucket. Be SURE to open the OUTSIDE when you're ready to use them; the bags will accumulate fumes, though the dryer they are, the less they will fume. Use the tabs in the 3rd bag, for now.

Once are ready to begin suing these tabs, retest pH, TA, CH and post results. You may need to raise the pH a bit first. (There's some complicated stuff going on here, and I doubt you want to read all the details. I KNOW I don't want to type all of them )