Green pool turned to milky blue..

[Jonzjob]

I won't hijack Lanslow's thread so here goes..

On the 27th I took the summer, bubble, cover off our pool. It had been on there for a few days because of the weather. Rain and wind. When I took the cover off I was surprised to see, or not to see, the bottom of the pool and a lovely green colour! As I said, there had been a lot of rain and wind and the rain had washed loads of sand dust and pollen out of the air. It had almost obliterated the car windows and they were so bad they had to be washed off. I am sure that was the reason for the green.

I checked the chlor at 1.4ppm, PH 7.2,   TA 150ppm and Cya 37ppm. Water temp 29ºC.

So I chucked 20 20gm pastiles of trichlor in one of the skimmers and poured about 8 ltrs of 12% javel in over one of the return jets and put the pump on 24 continuously for 48 hours. I also gave it a brushing to get all the rubbish up into the water.

I kept the chlor up above 10ppm and the water turned from green to a blue milky colour. I let the chlor level drop a bit and then vacced the rubbish out to waste and put the chlor back up to 10+. The milky is clearing very slowly. After the vac to waste I had to top the water level back up. Then I put the floating safety cover on this morning.

I have just checked the levels again and they are

Chlor free     6.16ppm

Chlor total    6.77ppm

PH                7.0

TA                144

CH                76

Cya               41.

I need to get the TA down to less than 100, but what is the best way to do that? The Cya is slightly low, but I don't think that's a problem.

Any ideas as to the best and quickest way to get the pool back in balance would be well received.

[Théière]

Morning Jon,

OK lowering the alkalinity, you need to cause aeration in the water so pointing the jets skyward will help, slightly loosening the pump pre filter lid so as to cause it to draw in air but what I do is connect the blow side of my shop vac to a pipe tied to something heavy or fixed like the pool ladder and leave that running for a few hours (I use a speed controller on mine) then when the pH has risen (quickly with your level of Alk ) add more acid to bring the pH down again to 7.0 and repeat several time until the Alk is lower and pH is normal again.

My pH is around 7.2 and Alk is around 40ppm. My tap water is very high in alkalinity around 260ppm so I have to do this several times after water top ups hence preferring rain water for topping up.

[Jonzjob]

Well, all was clearing well until I decided to vac to filter this afternoon and I stood and watched the c r a p being blown back in via the return jets as I was doing it. So I then decided (twice in a day??) to regenerate the Zelolite because it obviously wasn't doing its job properly. 6Kg of salt went into the water emptied filter housing and I filled it back up again with more eau. I will give it 36 hours of running as normal with the filter on bypass. Then rinse out the salt a few times by draining the filter housing and a good backwash and all will be hunky-dory, please???

The jets are pointing skywards and causing good turbulence so that should help with the TA. So it's a watch this space time. I have always been very patient, except when I need to be [:-))]

Edit : -  Just a thought? Would passing wind in the pool help with aerating it [8-)][8-)][blink]

[Théière]

Zeolites regeneration is more to do with it's ion exchange properties regarding ammonia removal. As chlorine binds with ammonia faster than zeolite can ion exchange it doesn't make a huge difference in a swimming pool with chlorine in it, fine for natural pools and aquarium/ponds etc.

Jets skyward, sounds like a RAF command! bu are you getting lots of bubbles?  I knew you'd suggest Le Petomane as a solution but I am sure you couldn't keep it up long enough even after a few pint of Youngs. [B]  Lots of finer bubbles do better than large bubbles if you can manage that but don't follow through!! [+o(][:-))][:)]