Lay My Hat

I'm hoping against hope that there's a pool expert here today! We're in Brittany, arrived on Tuesday to get the place ready for Dutch family arriving July 6th......
So, the pool is cloudy, greenish-blue although no visible algae. It's fed via an automatic dosing system and it seems that the pH pump has been reading high so therefore has pumped in massive doses of pH-, about 10L worth over the last few months when a 20L container would normally last several years. We have now replaced the pH pump, the local pool shop said pH now almost normal at 6.8 but chlorine at 0.16.....not good. Chlorine dosing pump reading 650mV so we think it's reading all types of chlorine, not only the free chlorine. We have now 'shocked' the pool with 10L of chlorine, plus 1kg of stabiliser, have never ever had to take such drastic measures before. But, 4 hours later there is no change to the cloudiness of the pool, although there's now a distinct smell of chlorine.
Problem 2 - Heat pump has failed as well so if anyone knows a heat pump engineer anywhere in Brittany that could come and have a look over the next day or two......

I'm not an expert but the smell of chlorine that we associate with pools is usually from chloramines (a form of combined chlorine that isn't very effective as a sanitiser).

If you are using liquid chlorine from a pool shop, the normal treatment is to add a lot more chlorine. Without tests I can't guess how much but I would add another 10 litres if I had it (and go and get some more!) to see what happens. Surplus chlorine can be eliminated if necessary but imho is less of a problem than a shortage.

See https://www.poolcalculator.com/why-is-m ... -clean-it/ or similar for clues.

Thanks Richard, we eventually discovered that the whole of the bottom of the pool was a thick layer of algae so I think the problem was dead algae. We put the pool robot in to suck it up but the filter wasn't coping and had to be backwashed every few minutes. Eventually we decided the condition of the water was so bad that we've now emptied the pool and will start again!

Hi Kathy, just read your post and Richard is correct more chlorine. If you want things to change quicker add more still, you won't hurt a liner even at these levels.
I see you are remedying the situation so all's well after no doubt a bit of frantic hard labour.
I wouldn't bother with a pH pump, if the pH goes high it won't go much higher than 8.2-8.3, that's still swimmable safely, on the other hand dumping in acid because of a malfunction can cause catastrophic liner damage and human damage too.
You'll need to get stabiliser (CYA) into your new pool water asap to keep the chlorine around more than a few hours.
Post a set of water test results when you are ready and I can advise, CYA is the most important chem in the pool it controls it more than pH.
Good luck!

Thank you so much Teapot! Have never heard that we shouldn't be using the pH pump before...!

So the pool is almost full, has taken almost 24 hrs to fill, so we're starting off with brand new water - how much CYA should we put in there? The pool is 43,000 L. We were aiming for 25-30 ppm, and are going to dose at 1200g of CYA, what do you think?

Our tap water's pH is about 6.8, TA about 80, Calcium hardness is 130ppm. Anything else we should measure? We've got a Taylor FAS-DPD testing kit - my husband's new toy.

Update..... TA is actually 100

Pleased that it will be sorted Kathy, a real worry if the pool doesn't look good.
Teapot or anyone else what would you recommend as an all round home testing kit? I have a salt pool and add cya but have no way of testing for it.

KathyG wrote:Update..... TA is actually 100

All seems pretty good, I take it the pH is without any chlorine present?
If so that will naturally rise with chlorine.
My foremost question is, what caused the green swamp issue? I say that as my pool has been untouched for almost 16 months with the winter cover on and apart from the usual fine dust/dirt that finds its way in the water is still clear, I have a non woven mesh cover that blocks out the light, mesh covers are a waste of time.
I used a phosphate remover before closing months ago and jolly jelly clarifier.

Vera wrote:Pleased that it will be sorted Kathy, a real worry if the pool doesn't look good.
Teapot or anyone else what would you recommend as an all round home testing kit? I have a salt pool and add cya but have no way of testing for it.

Have you a salt tester?
The best kit for the money is, I believe the LaMotte color Q pro 7, this digital tester test for the most common things pH, Alk, calcium hardness, CYA, Chlorine free and total and bromine if used. The kit contains a lot of test reagents 100+ for each test so you won't need to order any more for a few years. Other testers look cheaper but ship with as little as 10 test reagents so if you compare like for like they cost more.
If you just need an accurate CYA test these are available very reasonably to.
I sell the La Motte range as they are the best for the money, if there was better with similar company support I would sell those instead.

Thank you. I have a salt tester and my chlorine generator alerts when salt is needed.
I have looked at the pro 7 before so good to have it recommended.

teapot wrote: All seems pretty good, I take it the pH is without any chlorine present?

yes, just our tap water that's going into the pool.

teapot wrote:My foremost question is, what caused the green swamp issue? I say that as my pool has been untouched for almost 16 months with the winter cover on and apart from the usual fine dust/dirt that finds its way in the water is still clear, I have a non woven mesh cover that blocks out the light, mesh covers are a waste of time.
I used a phosphate remover before closing months ago and jolly jelly clarifier.

Last summer we had a mild algae problem quite often, treated with algaecide. Our winter regime is to leave the circulation pump running twice a day for 15 mins just to keep the water moving. It doses chlorine if necessary at those times. Has worked for about 13 winters so far.

Unfortunately at some point during the winter, the tubing to the ORP pump failed, and the pH probe also failed and was readying a high pH, so the pump dumped about 10L of pH- into the pool. Our caretaker/cleaner/'pool man' replaced the tube and set it to run for 8 hrs daily, told us the pool was green at that stage..... I guess it had had a major algae bloom, the excess pH killed it all and it lay as a thick sludge at the bottom of the pool.

It's been 9 months since we've been here, so normally would have discovered the problem in March when we'd normally have come over. But not sure when it happened.

We need a pool man like you in West Brittany but none to be had!

Unless it's a copper based algaecide it won't touch an algae bloom. Unfortunately copper can stain so needs to be used with care. The non copper ones are junk. The chlorine you have tries it's hardest to oxidise the algaecide out of the water so using up the chlorine quicker. Better to just use more chlorine. Just another pool industry con!

Maybe you guys can also help with my problem. I'm new in this field and totally lost with tons of different information.

The problem is that I am having issues keeping water clean. According to the test strips, the chemical balance is ok. However, the water keeps clouding up. Maybe I just need to "shock" the water?

KathyG wrote: But, 4 hours later there is no change to the cloudiness of the pool

Have you tried using flocculent - it attracts small particles and clears cloudiness. We had a similar problem earlier this year and flocculent cleared it.

AlexCaro wrote:Maybe you guys can also help with my problem. I'm new in this field and totally lost with tons of different information.

The problem is that I am having issues keeping water clean. According to the test strips, the chemical balance is ok. However, the water keeps clouding up. Maybe I just need to "shock" the water?

In case someone is having the same problem, I found info that cloudy water can be caused by improper chemical levels, so I bought new test strips and the result was totally different from the previous one. So I shocked the pool to fix water and kill bacteria. It worked but the water is still not clean enough.

So I continued searching for the answer and found out that the environment and weather may also be the cause of dirty water. In this case, good scrubbing and cleaning might also help. So I bought a new robot-vacuum and a triangular-shaped vacuum head for my regular vac. The water is still dirty, but it's way better than I had before. Hope, I'm on the right way.

By the way, all info I found in this article. And my new vacuum head I found here.

Hope it will help 😉

P.s. I wanted to attach the pic but couldn't figure out how to do it