dkosawa

Sorry up front for the long post... So I just purchased a home with what I think is a 34,000 gallon, in-ground, vinyl pool. When I first moved in the water was crystal clear, and the water chemistry was very pleasant (not overly chlorinated). Fast forward a week since moving in, and my pool started growing some algae in the shallow end. Ok, so it's time to start paying attention to the pool, which by the way i'm completely clueless about. Luckily, I have a pool and spa store around the corner from my house, and they provide a pretty sweet service where you can bring in a water sample and they'll analyze it for you, list off the chemicals needed, and provide a details set of instructions on how to apply the treatment. Great, we did that, followed the stores instructions and nothing seemed too abnormal except that the water started to get a little cloudier. About the same time i started to noticed more and more dark matter accumulating on the bottom of the deep end. Luckily, the house came with a Kreepy Krauler. I thought it would be as easy as plugging it in and letting it rip. Well no such luck. After hours of debugging things, and learning about drain shut off valves, and pump filters. After playing/cleaning with those things I was able to get enough suction out of one drain to allow my Kreepy to start moving and ultimately become useful. I basically learned that i had to shut off all drains (1 main, 2 skimmers) except for the in wall drain that my Kreepy attaches to. Also, I learned that having a pump filter full of debris affects the kreepy. Ugh. Once my kreepy was running I left it on all night and to my surprise the pool floor was clean. Yes! So I happily removed the Kreepy and opened all of the drain valves. This is where things get strange. After opening everything up, a TON of cloudy water started coming out of the output jets. Up until that point I had not seen that much water come out of the jets, let alone really cloudy water. I closed all of the drains after a few hours except the skimmers that night, and in the morning the bottom was twice as dirty (dark matter) than I had before cleaning it with the Kreepy. Because 3 out of 4 of my shutoff valves don't have handles (broken off), and require vice grips to turn, i'm not positive that all drains were open to begin with (before I started playing with things). I'm wondering if when I opened them all, if that was the first time while i've been there that everything had been open. Question is, why did i wake up to all of that new debris at the bottom of the pool. Did that come out after opening everything up? Also, my pump timer was set by the previous owner to run for 6 hours a day. I'm guessing once i have the water chemistry stabilized i'll want to be on this sort of schedule. Question though, should I have all drains opened to the pump during the routine 6 hours?