CYA/crystal clear green water

[mbar]

I am not really sure of what is going on in your pool. It does sound like there may be a metal problem. I would not do anything else to the water now except get chlorine and cya in it. Once the water is sanitized, then we can treat the metals. Just work on getting the water ready to swim in first. You can swim in a pool that is stained, but not in water that is not sanitized. If you can get your water tested and post some numbers again we can help. Remember the stabilizer will not show up for a while, so you will have to keep up with the chlorine demand. One way to test if your water is holding chlorine is to test the water after the sun has gone down, and again in the morning before the sun hits the pool. Once the chlorine holds with 1 ppms, then you are good to go. It means that it isn't fighting anything in your water. Sometimes the metal out you put in will use up chlorine too. Once the water is sanitized, then we can work on the metals.

[purplegirl]

I was unable to get to the pool store so I don't know what the CYA reading is. When I get back I will try to get all of my levels and then I will post. Thanks again and have a good weekend!

[purplegirl]

okay so the pool is still green and cloudy (from the phosphate remover, even though it's been 4 days since i put it in)

i had the water tested at the pool store and the readings were:
ph: 7.2
Alk: 110
TC: 2.0
CYA: 30-50 range

so the pool is sanitized, but still green?
i clean the cartridge everyday, and everyday it is brown and has some gook on it? nobody is swimming in the pool, how can it be so dirty?
should i try a metal remover again to get the green out? and which one?

how can i get the cloudy water to be clear without adding another pool store product?

[PoolDoc]

Hi Purple Girl;

(Why purple?)

Anyhow, sorry I didn't look in sooner. Green water on first fill is often iron from bacterially mediated corrosion of steel pipes or containers. I know from more experience than I care to remember that in such cases:

• Iron tests will show little or no iron.
• Chelants and metal treats have little affect.
• It will EVENTUALLY dissipate with chlorine, sunshine and filtration.
• It's perfectly safe to swim in, if your chlorine level is good and your water clear.

But, I'm afraid you've been "poolstored", to use Carl's word. Phosphate removers work by precipitating phosphorous in one of two forms, one of which is hard to filter out. The other form is REALLY hard to filter out. (To be fair: the pool store staff probably doesn't know ANY of this.)

With a DE filter, it's not too bad. With a sand filter, my experience is a week plus. I've never tried to remove with an undersized Intex cartridge filter, and I'd never want to do so. My guess is that with an Intex filter it might take forever, or at least till fall.

Basically, AG pool filters come in two flavors: those that don't work very well, because they are too small, and those that work really badly because they are WAY too small. Intex pools fall into the second category.

IF you fill with clean water, and IF you never let it get cloudy, THEN it's possible to keep the water in an Intex pool clear. Otherwise, not so much.

So, it looks to me like you've got two choices.

First, you could just live with it. So long as you keep the chlorine up, and everything else OK, the iron will eventually filter or settle out. Then, you'll have a blue cloudy pool, instead of a green cloudy pool. Of course, you'll need to be careful: you'll have no warning when algae is starting, so you'll want to keep the chlorine high-ish.

Or, second, you could drain and refill. Your pool will STILL be green when you start, but you won't add the phosphate remover this time, and it will be ONLY green, instead of green and cloudy.

Do NOT waste your money on metal removers: they don't. They just help the metals stay IN the water; they do nothing to get the metals OUT of your water and pool. Besides, they often don't work with biologically sourced iron.

PoolDoc

[purplegirl]

Wow Pool Doc that was a thorough analysis!

Purplegirl because I like purple, no other reason - pretty boring actually

One of the metal removers I used seemed to work in the beginning but then leveled off and then obviously still left my pool green.

Could I use a clarifier to get the cloudy out?

I hate having two problems now!

I wonder if I could call my water company to fix the corrosion. Of course that wouldn't help me right now.

I have to think about what I want to do, but you've given me a lot of good insight.

Thank you!!

[PoolDoc]

Clarifiers only help the filter filter by making the particles clump together -- if the filter sux, clarifiers don't help much. Besides that, clarifiers can only make certain types of particles clump -- I'm not certain, but I don't think the phosphate particles are the 'right' kind.

Ironically, if the particles aren't the 'right' kind, clarifiers actually make things worse!

Regarding the corrosion -- the "corrosion" is probably just normal 'inside of the iron pipe' corrosion; the water company wouldn't consider it anything that needed fixing. In any case, the 'fix' is to replace the water mains entirely, and in this economy, that will NOT happen till it has to happen!

PoolDoc

[purplegirl]

Thanks again Pool Doc, you've shed a lot of light on the situation. We are thinking about draining and then asking a neighbor, who has a crystal clear pool, if we could pay to use their water. My only concern with that is when I need to top the pool off after swimming and such. Do you think the amount of water over the course of the summer will turn the water green?

[purplegirl]

Thanks again Pool Doc, this is just so frustrating because our neighbor has always had a clear pool, it's starting to feel like it's our bad luck.

You say chlorine is part of the battle, we have a SWG, which I know makes chlorine but will this "type" of chlorine be suitable for our purposes? Sorry if this sounds like a silly question - I only barely understand the salt conversion process.

[Watermom]

Chlorine is chlorine regardless of the source. SWCG will produce chlorine; however whenever you need to shock or superchlorinate it is usually better to use another source (like bleach or liquid chlorine) and save the wear and tear on your cell and thus extend its life.