Back From vacation

[poolmom06]

My BIL was supposed to be taking care of my pool and I came home to a green pool, I immediately dumped two gallons of bleach in and then tested my levels,
Ph was over 8.2
ALk was 130
FC over 10
CC over 10
I have added 4more gallons of a generic bleach tonight( all i could find in our small town convenience store)
Where do I go from here??
I added some acid to bring my ph and alk down

[mbar]

You really need to know your cya, so you know how much bleach to add. Please let us know what kind of pool it is, and if your combined chlorine is really over 10, and your free chlorine is over 10, then your total chlorine is over 20 which may give you false high ph readings. If you could post a full set of numbers, it would help us help you.

[poolmom06]

CYA is 30...
18 ft round AG pool,
I have added 6 big ultra bleach bottles today...

[mbar]

Oh, if you did put in 6 big jugs in a 7,600 gal pool, your chlorine is at about 47ppms!! You will kill anything that was in there, but your liner is probably bleached out. Your ph and alkalinity won't test right with chlorine at that level. I would try to drain some water and put some new water in to dilute the amount of chlorine you have in there asap.

[bradjo]

Hi;
I probably would have lowered the pH some then chlorined it as I'd want to get maximum effect from my chlorine buck but that's for another time.

I owned a pool with a liner back in the late 1970's and we got our chlorine up there unintentionally a couple of times because of algae. I can't say how high it got but we seriously overchlorinated and we got lucky and the liner was just fine but then we may not have reached your level and it was an IG vinyl liner pool so maybe that's a difference too.

I wanted to ask if the BIL remember to feed the dogs and cats?
Jo

[mbar]

Often, when you have very high chlorine levels it gives a false reading for ph. And if she added 4 gals of bleach in a 7,600 gal pool, then the chlorine was really high when she tested for ph. You can really do a lot of damage to a liner when you unintentionally take the ph below 7, and have the chlorine very high.

[poolmom06]

If I have that much bleach in it, why is my water still green?? Today I have vacuumed to water(twice), drained and refilled about 6 inches and back washed.... shouldn't my water at least lighten a little bit??
My readings are exactly the same as they were this morning... well Ph has gone down a bit...

[CarlD]

That's a REALLY good question:

If your pool is still green then there is no way your FC is 47. Sorry MBar, but you don't figure FC from what you add, but rather from what you measure.

When you are fighting a serious algae bloom you'll use lots and lots of chlorine.

Your pH reading cannot be taken accurately unless your chlorine level is down. If you are using Taylor R-0004 or R-0014 to test your pH, it will be more accurate because it neutralizes chlorine up to about (I think) 15ppm.

If you have chlorine neutralizer drops (Theosulfate, Taylor R-0007) you can add 2 drops to the pool water in your test cell before adding the pH chem.

You COULD bleach your liner if your FC is sustained higher than 15 for a while, but if you reach 15 to 20 in an algae-infested pool it probably won't stay there long enough to damage or even fade your liner.

Still, you need to be able to measure your chlorine at the higher levels, especially now. You need a FAS-DPD chlorine test kit. You can get it in the PoolSolutions.com kit Ben sells--the PS-234, or the Taylor 2006, or Leslie's FAS-DPD Chlorine Service Test Kit, but only on-line.

All three will sell you, I believe, just the FAS-DPD kit.

[poolmom06]

My water is looking more blue today... I am about to go test it, I will report back.... I can't believe the difference over night!! It's looking better! My son wants to have some friends over to swim this weekend, hopefully he can do that!!

[mbar]

Yes, I didn't take into account how fast the chlorine would be used up with the algae! I was just thinking about the amount that went in at once. I am so glad your pool is looking fine - bleach really does work every time!