Clear up cloudy water

[aylad]

The single, very best thing you can do, is to be patient and stop throwing stuff in the water trying to clear it up. It did not get in that shape overnight, and it won't clear overnight.

Flocculants (at least some of them, anyway) have their place in pool care, but not at the point where you are right now. As you can see, they usually just make things worse instead of better. The pool store will be glad to sell it to you as long as they can convince you to buy it--but at this point it's money wasted.


To clear the pool, you first have to make sure that everything is dead. In order to do that, you have to maintain your shock level until you're no longer losing chlorine at night. Without a CYA level, though, there's no way to know if you actually attained your level, and without the ability to test the water, there's not much of an accurate way to test chlorine at night and the following morning to rule out overnight chlorine demand. Assuming you actually DID kill off all the algae, you have to be patient and give the filter some time to do the job. It won't be immediate, but throwing more stuff into the pool is going to prolong the problems, not clear them up. Do you have a working pressure gauge on the filter? Is the gauge rising as the filter is running? What size filter, and what size pump do you have?

If you will please post some test results from your water, taken with a drop-based kit, and fill out this short chart about your pool's info, we can probably help you get it cleared up. You really need your own test kit--we highly recommend the K-2006 linked in my sig, but at the very least you're going to need the cheapie OTO (uses red and yellow drops for chlorine and pH) and a fairly accurate CYA level.

Here's the pool chart... Pool Chart Entry Form

[PoolDoc]

I went through your Pool Chart data, and summarized it in your signature.

You're spinning your wheels trying to operate a 14,000 gallon pool with a 1HP pump and a 40# sand filter. Nothing we can help you do, will overcome the problem with that tiny, undersized filter! That filter would be barely adequate for a 6,000 gallon pool, but ONLY with a much smaller pump! You'd need to restrict flow to 15 GPM -- a little more than a fast garden hose.

At your current flow rates, with a 1HP pump, you are not only forcing all the dead algae THROUGH the filter, you are shredding it into pieces as it goes. So, as you filter longer, the problem gets worse instead of better!

Sorry.

[bross1990]

We have stopped putting any chemicals in other than chlorine, yes we do have a working filter gauge and it does rise while pumping. We are using a test strip type tester and showing little low on chlorine and PH.

As for the filter I'm laughing at myself when I read that it is not a 40# sand filter, I don't know the for sure size of it but it is at least a 21" hayward it took 7-8 50# bags of the filter sand to fill it, The pump is a 1 HP hayward, I will try to get the exact size filter asap!!

[PoolDoc]

1. Get the pH between 7 and 8.

2. Get the chlorine above 5 (dark yellow with OTO drops!) and keep it there.

3. Get a good testkit, and check your CYA (stabilizer) (links below -- you can check local Walmart availability via the link)

4. Filter 24/7; try to slow the flow if you can.

+ Here are links to the kits we recommend:

HTH 6-Way Test Kit @ Walmart
Taylor K2006A (3/4 oz bottles) @ Amazon
Taylor K2006C (2 oz bottles) @ Amazon