Inherited a pond, trying to turn it into a pool!

[Yeggim]

Most likely I'm doing it wrong! I started waiting after I had a sample turn clear, then turn pink again while I was making notes (Just with the 871, still testing for FC). I'm really on day 1.5 of trying to get the hang of this, so I'm learning as I go. I just made an assumption that the pink coming back was a sign I hadn't accounted for all of it. Sounds like my FC is probably much lower than I thought...

Hey Mark, you're doing great. That's a big pool you took on and even though it's a bigger swamp than a lot of pools, the principals are the same. You have to kill everything in the water with chlorine and then it has to be filtered out.

Try and keep it simple. Get a solid free chlorine test number.
Next test your Ph. If your free chlorine is 10 or below you can pretty much trust the Ph reading and make adjustments based on those readings. If your free chlorine is high and your ph is in range, or a little high, leave it alone. High chlorine will skew your ph reading toward the high side and if it reads low and you have a solid free chlorine test that reads 15 or above, throw a couple boxes of Borax in just as a precaution.

Now, on to the kill zone. Bleach. You know first hand that you're gonna need a lot. Don't be caught short. Stock up on that 12.5% stuff. I used a little over 5 gallons of 12.5% on my pool and it's 1/6 the size of yours and my water was barely green.

Assuming we have your test problems sorted out, I'll bet your FC is low or gone. If that's the case, dump 5 gallons of the 12.5% bleach in. Test an hour later after it's circulated. Odds are that it will get eaten up fast. Bring it back up to 15ppm. Test again and repeat as often as you're able. If your swamp is eating it up as fast as you can pour it, jack it up to 20ppm.

While you're feeding the monster swamp the chlorine it needs, you have to filter it. DE filters are very good at this. As you kill the algae it will settle to the bottom and little by little the water will clear. As your pump circulates the water and filters out the suspended particles, you should be able to see deeper and deeper as time goes by.

Don't kill your motor and pump. If your filter fills up in a few hours, you cant run it unattended. Let that stuff settle. Don't rile it up. Once you can see the bottom, you can vacuum to waste if water replacement is not a problem.

You need to keep your water circulating as much as possible. If your filter is clogging up quick, back off on the amount of DE. Use a little less than the manual calls for.

[barma16]

Oh boy!

My testing technique was completely wrong. All my chlorine results have been massively overstated. As of this morning I have about 0.6ppm FC, and 2 gallons of 12.5% left. The pool store doesn't open until 10 .

pH is 7.4, and I've got 100ppm Total Alkalinity. Is it worth adding CYA at this point to stabilize the bleach and avoid too much UV breakdown? There's none in there at the moment - levels were <30ppm when tested Friday, and I haven't added any.

Also, before discovering this site, my local pool store sold me some "Turbo Shock" powder which is 78% Calcium Hypochlorite. 5lbs was $25, but it did make a (color) difference quickly. This may be a sacrilegious question here, but would that sort of concentration help me any as a kick-start to getting my FC levels up?

Thanks,
Mark

[barma16]

...You have to kill everything in the water with chlorine and then it has to be filtered out...

...While you're feeding the monster swamp the chlorine it needs, you have to filter it. DE filters are very good at this. As you kill the algae it will settle to the bottom and little by little the water will clear. As your pump circulates the water and filters out the suspended particles, you should be able to see deeper and deeper as time goes by.

Don't kill your motor and pump. If your filter fills up in a few hours, you cant run it unattended. Let that stuff settle. Don't rile it up. Once you can see the bottom, you can vacuum to waste if water replacement is not a problem.

You need to keep your water circulating as much as possible. If your filter is clogging up quick, back off on the amount of DE. Use a little less than the manual calls for.

Thanks for the encouragement I don't mean to be pedantic (and feel free to call me a pompous ass if I am - my boss does, regularly!), but when you say kill it "and then" filter it, do you mean once it's all dead, or filter as I go?

My filter currently clogs in minutes rather than hours, even after stripping it down, hosing the fingers clean, and adding minimal DE - I understood from Ben's earlier post here that live algae will clog a DE filter very quickly, so I've just been recirculating while I try to kill it all off; planning to start running it through the filter when most of it is dead. Water replacement is not a problem, so running the dead stuff to waste is an appealing alternative to back-washing every half an hour!

[barma16]

OK, forget the Turbo Shock...

I added 5gal 12.5% and was at 11.4ppm FC after an hour. Added another 3gal, and an hour later the count had shot up to 27.5ppm. Is it reasonable to assume that the first 5gal hadn't fully dissipated by the time of the first test? I reviewed and followed the Taylor video, so I'm pretty sure I'm testing correctly now.

I can see a marked improvement in the color already - it's definitely lightening. I'm letting the levels calm down a bit now (just tested and still have 25.5ppm after another hour). I guess that at these levels I don't want to be adding any CYA yet?

[Watermom]

Wait on the CYA. You probably don't want to go quite so high with your chlorine since it is a vinyl liner. I'd probably go 15, 20 max.

if you have cal-hypo on hand, it is fine to use that for awhile since your calcium level is low at 70. But not for too long. High calcium can cause cloudy water issues. I probably wouldn't let it go higher than 200-300. Then just bleach or liquid chlorine. Or else, just forget the cal-hypo and stick with bleach. From your last post, you seem to be making some head way.

[barma16]

Thanks - getting that high was accidental. My second dose was based on the results an hour after the first, but I don't think the initial dose was fully dissipated by the time I added the second. I'm down below 20 again now (19 when tested on the hour); and planning to stay below. I just have bleach at this point, but it seems to be doing the job

[Watermom]

It will do the job if you consistently maintain shock level. Keep us posted .......

[barma16]

Consumption, if that's the right term, is slowing - only lost 0.5ppm in the last hour. There's less sun at this time, which I expect makes a difference. I've been wondering about volume all day - the 40-45kgal I quoted in my first post was the contractor's best guess, and seems high to me.

I've been crunching numbers since, and I don't think there's more than 35kgal in there. The pool is L-shaped; 44' long by 16.5' wide with an additional 6' at the bottom part of the "L". It's 3' deep along the shallow first 19', dropping to 8' deep at the deep end. The corners are all cut.

I also reckon 1gal 12.5% is adding about 3.4ppm based on measurements. If 1gal of the 12.5% should add 2.8ppm to 45kgal, then 3.4ppm/gal means 35k is in the ballpark. Seem reasonable?

Here's how it looked at 12:00, in case the visual helps make sense of my ramblings...

Sunday 1200.jpg

[Yeggim]

Thanks for the encouragement I don't mean to be pedantic (and feel free to call me a pompous ass if I am - my boss does, regularly!), but when you say kill it "and then" filter it, do you mean once it's all dead, or filter as I go?

My filter currently clogs in minutes rather than hours, even after stripping it down, hosing the fingers clean, and adding minimal DE - I understood from Ben's earlier post here that live algae will clog a DE filter very quickly, so I've just been recirculating while I try to kill it all off; planning to start running it through the filter when most of it is dead. Water replacement is not a problem, so running the dead stuff to waste is an appealing alternative to back-washing every half an hour!

Hey if you can't filter yet then you can't filter. But you definitely have to keep circulating your water. If I had to break down and clean a DE filter every hour, I'd be at my wits end. Don't abandon trying to filter but if it has to be one or the other, keep it on recirculate. If you stay on top of the chlorine you'll be able to run the filter for longer periods once you kill all the algae. After you filter the dead stuff that's suspended in the water you will be able see the stuff that fell to the bottom.

Another thing--the word SHOCK is meaningless. Chlorine is chlorine. It's the amount you put in that determines if you're shocking or not. As they say on this great forum, "shock is not a noun, it's a verb."

[barma16]

Hey if you can't filter yet then you can't filter. But you definitely have to keep circulating your water. If I had to break down and clean a DE filter every hour, I'd be at my wits end. Don't abandon trying to filter but if it has to be one or the other, keep it on recirculate. If you stay on top of the chlorine you'll be able to run the filter for longer periods once you kill all the algae. After you filter the dead stuff that's suspended in the water you will be able see the stuff that fell to the bottom.

That's the plan - looking forward to turning the filter on... but not quite yet. I'm on recirculate 24/7 at the moment.

Another thing--the word SHOCK is meaningless. Chlorine is chlorine. It's the amount you put in that determines if you're shocking or not. As they say on this great forum, "shock is not a noun, it's a verb."

Amen