My Green Pool Saga - Help!

[mbar]

Yes, I would drain and refill first - try to get your cya down to 50 if you can, but 60 to 90 is ok if you want to run high chlorine. We usually recommend 35 - 50 on this board. Next add the muriatic acid there is the bleach calc on this forum, Here is the link:
http://www.hal-pc.org/~mwsmith2/BleachCalc262.exe
You can use this to figure out how much bleach you need, how much acid for ph, or borax and others - in the upper left corner it says more calcs, click on that and you will see the different calculations you can use. If you go to settings make sure it is on the imperial so you get the calcs in gallons. Bring your ph down to 7.2. The ph will not register lower right away, so don't add any more than the calc tells you, it will show up later.Five minutes after adding the muriatic acid you can add the sequestering agent - like I said, add a little more than the bottle says. You can add the bleach right after - enough to bring the chlorine up to shock level. Brush the pool and Keep the filter running 24/7. Keep checking the chlorine and bring it back to shock level until you hold the chlorine overnight, then add 2 days just to be sure. You want to make sure all the algae is dead. You should see a noticable improvement in the water color after you hit it with the bleach in a couple of hours. Your water may get cloudy from the sequestering agent and the dead algae. Just keep the chlorine up, and the filter running and your water will clear up. Keep me posted on your progress. Once you take control of your own pool, you will find it much more enjoyable, and you will get to know how your own water is - everyone's is a little different! You will get used to how much chlorine your pool uses, and you will spend hardly anytime on pool care.

[Pamsel]

Hi, Marie. Here is what is probably a very dumb question, but here goes: We pay for "clean" water from a community well. But we also have a pond in our backyard in which we have installed a "wet well" which allows us to water the garden and to irrigate with water from the pond. Would it be a terrible idea to use water from the pond to put into the swimming pool? It certainly would save money, but I am thinking it would be a bad idea to use pond water because of the algae, microorganisms, etc that would come with the pond water. I just thought that perhaps the filter and the chlorine could possibly take care of whatever comes with the pond water... Wishful thinking or not? Thanks!

[mbar]

I know some people on this forum have used water from a pond. I am not sure what you would have to do differently that to get get the water clean , because I never did it, I am afraid to encourage, or discourage it. In my opinion, cleaning up the water from a pond would be no different from cleaning up a pool that was left standing and turned green, except for the amonia that would be in the water from the fish - but I could be wrong. Maybe you could pm Waste - he is really good with the chemistry of water, and the organisms that can grow.

[Pamsel]

Thanks again, Marie. First we'll get it cleaned up and then we'll see about adding pond water, when needed. I'll try to get ahold of Waste when I'm at that point.

[Pamsel]

Well, I have drained the pool about 1/3 and refilled it overnight. I recirculated the water for 45 minutes to be sure it was well-mixed with fresh water. Took readings - have no chlorine reading, no CYA reading, Alk is 310 and PH is above 8.2 (top reading on my kit). . . probably about 8.4.

Am goint to start the process now> I have attached a small tube with a 45 degree elbow to one of my jets and turned the other one upward and am getting nice aeration now. Will add 12 oz of muriatic acid to start, then the sequestering agent. I'm not sure I understand the chlorine calc chart. It seems that if my CYA reading is =>0, which it is, since I have no reading, then I need to shock to the lowest level, in other words get my chlorine level to 10ppm. Is this correct? I guess I don't understand what CYA is. It seems that since nothing has been touching the algae so far, that I would probably need to put in a lot more chlorine than I have in the past, but this seems to indicate that I need the lowest level? Am I misunderstanding something here?

[Sherra]

If you truly have a CYA reading of 0 (and with opening to a brown quagmire and having not added any additional CYA this season, it's very possible to have a 0 CYA reading), then yes, you'd use the first line of Ben's Best Guess Chart. The key to the whole "getting rid of the green" process is consistently keeping the chlorine at "shock" level until it clears up and you have a CC reading of 0 and your chlorine level holds overnight. At that point you can then let the chlorine level drift down to the "minimum/maximum" range. Consistently means testing at a minimum of in the morning and at sunset and adding chlorine to bring the levels back up to shock range. If you can do it at noon or mid afternoon also, that would be even better.

[Pamsel]

Can someone please explain why I use the least amount of chlorine when I have no CYA reading? I'm not understanding this. I mean, I have added 15 gallons and it did not clear the water. According to the Bleach calculator, I need to hadd 2.4 gallons to get to 10ppm. This just doesn't make sense to me. Also, how soon after adding the chlorox will I get an accurate reading?