Clearing swimming pool water

Hi all, Our pool is finished at last after various delays - just in time for the kids to go back to school! Anyway, due to the drought and the spring/well nearly running dry, we had to fill it by pumping water from the lake. It started off as dark green/brown soup and now seems to come to a full stop at a palish green colour. We have used algicide in the highest recommended dose, twice, used chlorine shock treatment and are running the salt machine for ongoing chlorine generation. On the advice of a friend we slung in a load of bleach as a further chlorine shock. We have used a flocculant product twice which the first time gave a huge improvement, the second time a tiny one. The sand filter is running nearly all the time and being backwashed as necessary. pH is a bit high since I overdid the alkali a bit, but refilling with acid water is bringing it back down again.

Anyone have any experience of this sort of situation please? We are planning a big pool party on Saturday, and whilst the water is just about acceptable I'd rather have it crystal clear. Ideas anyone??

TIA

-- Holly, in France Holiday Home in Dordogne

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Reply to
Holly, in France
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Barley straw is said to work with ponds - you just chuck it in and remove several days later. Probably no good for Saturday though.

Reply to
jacob

Yup, had the same problem with our pool this year, just wouldn't clear. In the end it took about 5 or 6 weeks, although it's crystal clear now.

Use liquid chlorine - it's the stuff farmer's use, I think a 22% solution or similar. I added half a 25l drum of the stuff. That should turn the water nice and milky cloudy. I use Goldiflock tablets with the filter, running it more or less continuously for a couple of weeks, backwashing regularly, although any flocculant should work OK. Took three or four weeks to get to the stage yours seems to be, then a further two or three weeks to completely clear, so you're probably out of luck for crystal clear this week end! Unfortunately, there's no magic wand solution to sort it out overnight.

Get the wine flowing copiously, if it's hot nobody will care after a few glasses.

Go easy on the stabilised chlorine granules or tablets, if you're using those. The stabliser (cyanuric acid) doesn't break down in the same way that the chlorine does, so the concentration builds up and you finish up with 'chlorine lock', where there's so much stabiliser in the water that the chlorine isn't released. The only solution to that problem is to part empty the pool and refill to reduce the stabiliser level. Stabiliser levels are normally kept under control with regular cleaning, backwashing and topping up, together with rain water.

Liquid chlorine doesn't have the stabiliser, so there isn't the same sort of problem. I use a mixture of liquid and stabilised chlorine. Liquid chlorine breaks down much quicker, usually within 24-36 hours, depending on water teperature and amount of sunlight.

Reply to
The Wanderer

The best way is to really shock it really hard.

First backwash the filter, then get a 25 litre drum of liquid chlorine of about 10% - 15% and bung it all in.

After a few hours, replace flocculent. If Cl level too high when you want to use it, use Cl remover.

BTW, you mentioned "bleach", do you mean domestic bleach?

Reply to
Nigel Molesworth

Yebbut would you want to swim in this chemical soup? The "dark green/brown soup" from the lake sounds a lot more enticing frankly!

Reply to
jacob

... and the risk of someone getting drowned or injured is considerably increased!

Reply to
usenet

Are you on the list for a sense of humour transplant?

Reply to
The Wanderer

Arrgghhhh! an aberrant apostrophe! I plead guilty but insane.

Reply to
The Wanderer

re green pool water

At least it's not just us then.

I added 30 litres as recommended on the container "a glass and a half per cubic metre" - nothing like accurate instructions :-) But in answer to Nigel's question, yes, it was domestic bleach which is only 2.6%, so it probably wasn't much of a shock to anything.

Right, thanks, the magic wand was really just what I was after! Thanks also for the tip about the chlorine stabiliser, which we are not using but is well worth knowing about. The water is improving all the time, the flocculant seems to be the answer. I suspect that a given amount of flocculant can only coagulate a certain amount of particles, and that's why it continues to improve it. I reckon that at the moment we could probably convince people it was very expensive specially imported sea water, at a pinch. It's visually acceptable though and not too chloriny or too salty, people seem happy enough to go in it.

Hmm, I think everyone around here might be pretty immune to the effects of the wine at this stage of the summer :-) Thanks again everyone, roll on the party.......

-- Holly, in France Holiday Home in Dordogne

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Reply to
Holly, in France

[deleted]

Hmm..

When I used to maintain a pool back home flocculant was added at night, and left to settle. The next day you vacuumed all the crud off the bottom.

Seems to me if you're trying to filter out the crud it will take even longer (Because you vacuum straight to waste, wheras trying to filter it you just crud up the filter & require frequent backwashing)

H
Reply to
Hamie

Ah, sounds like you're using an 'automatic' pool cleaner, like a creepy krawly or similar. These are fine for on-going pool maintenance, just to get rid of stray leaves and debris that fall or blow into the pool, and to suck up any *thin* patches of dead algae, but they're not the thing to use when your pool is heavily contaminated with debris.

You need to splash out (pardon the pun) on a suitable pole, a length of vacuum hose, a suitable 'skim-vac' adaptor and either a liner or concrete pool suction head, depending on the type of pool.

The 'skim-vac' adaptor merely sits over the top of the leaf basket in the skimmer, fix the vacuum head onto the pole, join the adaptor plate to the vacuum headplate with a length of vacuum hose, and feed the pipe into the pool from the vacuum head upwards IYSWIM, to make sure you get most of the air out of the pipe.

Fill the pool to the brim. Set the multiport valve on the side of the filter to 'waste'. I'm assuming you've got a proper multiport valve - NEVER alter it with the pump running, you'll tear the rubber diaphragm inside, then you've got more expense.

Close the inlet valve from the sump and any other skimmers you might have, start the pump, pop the skim vac plate over the skimmer basket and you have maximum suction on the vacuum head. You then manually vacuum everything out to waste, always keeping an eye on the water level. Takes me about an hour to vacuum my pool when it's not too dirty! Again, there's no easy magic wand way.

You might just have a separate vacuum point installed, the pipe goes straight into this and you're then relying on the debris basket in the pump rather than the skimmer to collect any large bits of debris, leaves, etc, but you'll need to adjust the appropriate inlet valves adjacent to the pump.

HTH.

It's promising to be a reasonable day here, shall probably be in mine this afternoon - temperature is about 32°C.

Reply to
The Wanderer

snip snip..

Thanks for that, you're quite right, I didn't explain in detail but that is what we are doing. Last night's dose of flocculant has cleared the water completely, we can actually see the bottom of the pool this morning, but it will get stirred up again in a mintute by the vacuum, see below.

We are vacuuming the crud but our vacuum works off the main pool suction line so the waste, apart from heavy particles which get collected in a gadget on the cleaner hose, goes into the sand filter anyway. Then the cleaner sort of judders/throbs as it goes and stirs up a fair bit that it can't suck up, so this ends up in the water but does seem to get filtered out eventually.

I'm just off out now to try to guide the cleaner round to the worst bits, since it goes at random and doesn't reach some areas, then I'll leave it to it's own devices for a couple of hours.

Thanks again

Holly, in France Holiday Home in Dordogne

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Holly, in France

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