My Green Pool Saga - Help!

[waterbear]

This mornings test results:

CL 15
PH 7.8
TA 330
Water appearance unchanged.

PH may be testing a little high since the CL level is high. I plan to leave that alone for now and concentrate on maintaining the CL at 15. Or, since the water still is not changing in appearance, do I need to get the CL up to 20?

Also, will the TA begin to come down, if I stop putting in acid and just keep aerating?

Keep hiiting it with chlorine and keep it at about 15 ppm. Like I said before, If your CYA biodegraded then there are a LOT of organics to burn off, Keep brushing and vaumning out as much as you can.
Airating is not going to have too much effect on the TA until you get the pH down to about 7.0. Reason is fairly technical. If you are interested in the reason let me know and I will post it but be aware it is chemistry nerd stuff!

With the walmart kit your pH readings are probably fairly accurate to maybe a little high with your CL at 15 ppm so don't worry to much about the pH right now. In fact, in a post about CYA biodegredation PoolDoc (Ben) said that in cases like this a pH around 7.8 is beneficial to helping clear the water. I would guess that your pH is in the 7.6 to 7.8 range now.

[Pamsel]

Ok, will just keep working on the chlorine, brush and vacuum for now. Will post an update tomorrow. Thanks!

[Pamsel]

Well, here is my morning update:

CL 10-12 (since I am doing the dilution method it's hard to tell exactly)
PH 8.0
TA 330-350 (depends on if I stop when it first turns pink or when it's red)

Pool water still unchanged in appearance...dark green and cloudy.

At 10:00 last night I brushed the whole pool again, and added 5 gal CL

I don't seem to be making much progress.

Since I have no CYA reading, I got granulated cyanuric acid last night and put some in an old knee-high and hung it in front of my return jet this morning. It's rapidly washing it out of the sock, into the pool. I hope it's not going in too fast. Someone in an earlier post suggested I do this. Is this likely to help hold my CL level, if I get some stabilizer in there?

Am I missing something? Maybe I need to be holding my CL level at 15-20 instead of 10? I would have expected my water to be clearing by now. Also, I'm wondering how I am to keep the CL level maintained at 10 when I should only add CL in the evening. Is it not correct that to add it during the day when the sun is shining is basicly to waste it? I have been adding during the day, but it is very sunny today, so I didn't add today. My last check of CL (mid-day) was 8.0.

[waterbear]

Well, here is my morning update:

CL 10-12 (since I am doing the dilution method it's hard to tell exactly)
PH 8.0
TA 330-350 (depends on if I stop when it first turns pink or when it's red)

Test is done when it turns red. Add one more drop and if there is no more color change then don't count the last drop.

hope this helps

[Pamsel]

That does help Evan. Though, if that is the case, my TA is higher than I thought it was. I have been stopping when it first turns from green to pink.
I will retest this afternoon so I know what the correct reading is.

Still no change in my water. One thing I've noticed is that there doesn't seem to be much settling out on the bottom and sides of the pool . . . seems to be in suspension. I have in the past used a chemical from the pool store (I don't know what it was, except that the name is phlox) that pulled the stuff out of the water and dropped everything to the bottom of the pool. Then I swept it to waste. That was the only thing that cleared my water last year. I'm wondering if I need to use something like that again. The chlorine alone doesn't seem to be making a dent in it...unless I just need to add much more chlorine than I have been??

[waterbear]

The cloudiness is dead algae. The filter should take care of it but it can take some time. Floc (correct spelling) or flocculant is what you used before. Sometimes it can be helpful. Also, a clarifier can cause the dead algae to clump into larger paritcles that your filter can remover more effeciently. Be aware that using either of these types of products can introduce their own problems (uaually very small). If the pool has no more green and the filter has not taken care of the cloudiness in a few days of constant running then you might want to try either one or the other. Clarifiers are better if the water is only slightly cloudy. If there is a lot of stull suspended in the water then a floccuant is a better choice. If you have not killed all the algae yet then you just need to keep up with the chlorine and THEN worry about getting it clear. It usually clears up on it's own once the algae is gone.
Hope this helps

[Pamsel]

Thank you Evan, that does help. Everything you explain helps me learn more about what I'm doing. The water is still green, as well as cloudy so I guess I will keep working on the algae with the chlorine. So far I have put 33.6 gallons of CL in since Tuesday noon and there is very little noticable difference, but this afternoon both my husband and I think the green is a lighter shade and I can now see the bottom step clearly where before I could only see the first two steps. So, it appears that something good is finally starting to happen!