Green (algae ?) water-test results karenkr

[karenkr]

need help bad-problem green yuky water, have been fighting it for over 2 weeks. Have added almost 25 lbs of Dura Chlor(sodium dichloro triazinetrone 57%) using dura chlor tabs -3- daily , has trichloro-s-triazinetrone 99%, and have added 2 qts of OMNI Algae Terminator. This was all done by pool peoples direction. Could not ever get chlorine level up no matter how much chlorine added. Luckily I have found your site so Im hoping you can help. From previous discussion I took your advice and purchased borax and bleach and a drop test kit. Last night I added 2 boxes of borax and 1 gallon of bleach. This am I tested cl/br: 5/10 ph: 6.8 total alkalinity: 120 total hardness: 450 cya: under 90. What do I need to do next??
I dont know what kind of pool I have other than it is not a vinyl liner and the pool people said it held about 50,000 gal.

[aylad]

Hi Karen,
First of all, in a 50K gallon pool, one gallon of bleach will only raise your Cl by about 1 ppm. That's WAYYYY too low to clear up green water. To tell you how high your Cl needs to be, we need an accurate number for CYA. "under 90" isn't close enough--because there's a big difference in required Cl levels if your CYA is 30 than if it is 80. If you can either retest for it, or have the pool store test for it and post the result, it will help us tell you what to do. With that much dichlor and trichor used (both of which contain CYA), I'm suspecting that it's much higher than 90, so we may be looking at draining/refilling part of your water. Do not add any more algaecide or anything else the pool store tries to sell you until you've come back and posted a CYA number. We've helped lots and lots of people in your situation, without the need for buying a bunch of unnecessary chemicals that just cause more problems with your water, but it's going to take a little patience and some accurate numbers.

Welcome to the forum!

Janet

[karenkr]

Thanks for the info. There is no pool store within 30 miles and today being the 4th they are probalbly closed so I will re-test. All I have to re-test with is the walmart drop test - will that do any good to re-test with that? Sure appreciate your input

[aylad]

Yes, go ahead and retest with the kit you have....but ignore the Bromine scale since you don't have a bromine pool.

Janet

[karenkr]

Re-tested the water. Results as follows
Chlorine: 0
Ph : 6.8
CYA : 100
Should I add some more borax to try and bring up Ph? I have more dura chlor but am afraid to add until I hear from someone.
Thanks

[Simmons99]

You can add some Borax to raise the PH to 7.2, but you need to get the chlorine to at least 25ppm and keep it there (testing 3X a day). There is a bleach calculator that some of the members have on their signature that can assist you in the amount of BLEACH (plain unscented ULTRA bleach) to add. NO more tablets (trichlor or dichlor)- your CYA is too high and it will keep the chlorine from being as effective.

Also a 50K gallon pool is HUGE. What are the dimensions? You need an accurate # of gallons otherwise you will be overdosing your pool.