CYA/crystal clear green water

[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?

[PoolDoc]

Might. Probably won't. Can't tell for sure.

PoolDoc


PS:
There were some comments about the safety of draining a vinyl pool. IG (inground) vinyl pools can almost never be safely drained -- you'll often loose your liner if you do. AG (above ground) pools can be drained safely, depending on size and liner type. Little ones almost always can be drained. Large ones, may not be able to be drained.

But Intex type pools can always be drained.

[CarlD]

Especially the donuts--you have to drain them every season.

[purplegirl]

I drained my pool and started refilling it using a different water source (my neighbor's hose, whith permission of course ) the pool is not quite filled 1/4 of the way and already we are have tinted green water. The liner is a checkered blue print. i have no idea what could be causing this discoloration. could it be metals even though i haven't introduced chlorine into the pool yet. i am almost positive it isn't algea. please help!

[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.

[CarlD]

Having had an Intex 15' donut for 3 years I can assure that if you keep your water properly maintained the filter should be sufficient. But I can also assure you that if you run into problems you will be washing down that cartridge every 24 hours and it STILL may take weeks to clear up. About the only thing you can do with confidence is sanitize the pool with lots and lots of chlorine--but clearing cloudy water or constant precipitation? VERY hard to do.

But if it's sanitary and you check your chlorine levels every single day, you CAN keep it safe enough to swim in.