Help - brown stinky dark murky pool

[pairadocs]

Like Kurt said, I'd get rid of the pucks. they're simply a distraction an will eventually add too much CYA to your pool.

I don't understand why i need to get rid of the pucks?

I thought CYA helps keep the chlorine from breaking down to fast and leaving me high and dry without any chlorine???

If you say so, I will remove the pucks in the morning. I figured they wouldn't do a whole lot anyway because it is cool here in Delaware, and the pucks seem to dissolve so slowly when it is cold water.

Confused

[waterbear]

I don't understand why i need to get rid of the pucks?

I thought CYA helps keep the chlorine from breaking down to fast and leaving me high and dry without any chlorine???

If you say so, I will remove the pucks in the morning. I figured they wouldn't do a whole lot anyway because it is cool here in Delaware, and the pucks seem to dissolve so slowly when it is cold water.

Confused

You do need CYA in your pool but the problem with pucks (and other forms of stabiized chlorine) is that as you continue to use them your CYA levels also continue to rise. This means that you then have to raise your FC level to compensate for the high CYA levels to keep enough ACTIVE (and not bound up the the stabilizer...CYA) in your pool which then adds more CYA, etc. It is certainly ok to use the pucks as long as your CYA levels are low but once they get too high you will either need to partially drain or switch to a non stabilized chlorine. Many (if not most) people on the forum choose to add the required amount of stabilizer to the water and then chlorinate with non stabilized chlorine (bleach being the first choice). It is a very ecomonical and easy route to go. Once again, here is the link for Ben's (PoolDoc) best guess chart for CYA which will help explain the relationship between your CYA level and the amount of chlorine you need at different CYA levels for normal sanitation and for shocking
(http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=365)

if you haven't already done so I would download mwsmith2's bleachcalc program as suggested. It allows you to calculate how much bleach, acid, bicarbonate, etc. you need to put into your pool to get it where it needs to be and it is very easy to use. It will make your life much easier! Here is the link again
http://www.hal-pc.org/~mwsmith2/BleachCalc262.exe

A few other thoughts...
The advice you have been given so far is sound and the posters helping you are experienced ones. It might seem overwhelming at first but if you just follow it your pool will clear.
I would suggest getting a good drop based test kit and testing your own water! The one sold on the sister website www.poolsolutions.com is probably the best 'bang for your buck' (kit PS 234) but there are also excellent kits from Taylor and LaMotte. You want a kit that will check:
Free Chlorine
Total Chlorine
(These two tests are most accurately done with the FAS-DPD test which is a titration test and can read high levels of chlorine but a DPD test (uses a color comparator block) is ok as long as your chlorine levels don't get very high. These tests have a pink color when testing. The other chlorine test is OTO which gives a yellow color and only tests Total Chlorine...good for quick checks on your normal chlorine levels, however)
pH
Total Alkalinity
Calcium Hardness
CYA
You can pick up an inexpensive 5 way kit from Walmart (about $15) but it uses OTO and will only test total chlorine even though the directions say otherwise and there are some problems with the calcium hardness test that might make it's results unreliable but it is certainly better than no kit or even worse, test strips!

The brown water is most likely from algae. If the pool was covered all winter then it got no sun which is what algae needs to produce chlorophyll so you probably have brownish varieties growing.
IMHO, your first line of defense against algae should be chlorine. If there are a lot of organics in your pool it might take a LOT of chlorine to burn them all up but it will work. Try to get as much stuff out of the pool as you can manually. If you can't see the bottom to vacumn to waste try using a leaf net to get as much stuff off of the bottom that you can. Hit your pool hard and often with chlorine (bleach) and it will start to clear as the other posters have suggested. If you don't believe it check out these picture in the first post in this thread of Duraliegh's pool!
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=1300

Keep an eye on your filter pressure. DE filters can clog quickly with an algae problem and you might need to backwash it fairly often as the pool clears.

Keep the faith, have a little patience, and you WILL be swimming soon!
Hope this has been helpful.

[pairadocs]

downloaded and played around with it. checked the cya chart too.

thank you for the assistance as it is slowly starting to come together in my head.

your explanations are very helpful and provide clarity to my mind, and hopefully my pool.

tomorrow i will be on the hunt for cheap bleach, because it sounds like I will be needing a ton of gallons before this brown is gone.....

[pairadocs]

Thanks to all of your suggestions, I am happy to say I awoke to a pool that is no longer brown.

Overnight, 10 ga of bleach and 4 bags of AquaChem shock plus (found it in the pool chemical shed so I used it, don't know exactly what it is), the pool is a nice aquamarine color. Anything is better than mud brown.

I am very thankful for you all taking the time to help me.

I will be water sampling later this AM.

Water is still sooooo murky cloudy that I can't see the bottom despite all night filtering? Backwash time?