How long to clear dirt?

[Simmons99]

How brown is brown?

When our pool was being built they installed the lights after the water was in and they found that a conduit was blocked with concrete and mud - which they blew into the spa. The floor of the spa was like a pig sty it was so thick with mud on the bottom and it took our filter about 2 days (48 hours with the pump on consistantly) to clear out the sediment in the water. We had to manually vac VERY slowly to get it all off of the bottom though without it kicking it back into the water.

Have you tried cleaning your filter medium to see if that helps. We cleaned ours about 4 times in 7 days to clean out all the mud/junk that was in there. Aslo are you using a jet nozzle- not a spray nozzle - they clean the cartridge filters much better!

Can you post a picture?

[dawndenise]

Not so much brown as before, but that dreaded greenish hue. The stuff accidentally thrown in the pool never became mud-like, but disintegrated and dispersed.

Since posting, my working theory is that it's algae - possibly that hard-to-kill stuff that others have posted about. I still don't believe that we could have put that much dirt into the pool for all the brown sediment I've been brushing up the last day or so, although that seems to have lessened a fair amount today.

It's really hard to believe that my pool looks like this because I'm diligent about my chemical levels (DH would say I'm a fanatic about them...). The only precursors I've had to this incident are a day or two of very light, white haze, a rising pH and dropping TA. Both had been rock stable throughout the summer. And, of course, the organics being blown in (or dropped in by DH).

Filter is OK, rechecked that last night and it obviously had been working, holding brown dirt like when we cleaned it 10 days ago, but a much smaller amount since it had only been 10 days. Filter has been on 24/7 since Saturday, except for rechecking/cleaning, so that's almost 3 full days now.

Took the pool to mega-shock last night thinking this might be that hard-to-kill algae, going for 28.5. This AM it was 27.5 FC and 0 CC but still hazy/cloudy. Top step is clear and one can see the bottom, but definitely not clear. Have brushed 2x already today, retested about an hour ago at 24.5 FC, 0 CC and added enough bleach to go to about 29.5.

The jet nozzle is a good idea. I'm not too computer savvy on the photo stuff, but I'll see what I can do.