CrazyPoolMom

Whenever my pool turns back green, it means that I do not have enough sesquesterant in the water. I am using the walmart brand htp Metal Control and it works great as long as I keep enough of it in there, and twice it has turned green on me again, but I didn't have to have the asorbic acid, I just used the metal control and it cleared it all back to blue. I thought I had staining again the second time even, kind of a yellow film on everything, the filters were orange, but that went away too.

I do not think it is true that you cannot use chlorine with well water ever. You just have to make sure and get a good metal sesquesterant into the water. I use the hth brand Metal Control from Walmart, and it works fine unless I forget the maintenance dose about once a week, then it turns a green color, and I get a line on the water line too. But all I have to do is add the Metal Control, and all is pretty and blue again. Upon filling I had a green tint to the water, shocked the water and got tea colored water. I am not on well water, but I do have a lot of iron in the water. There are people who are on well water here who do not have metals in the water at all.

I went through this same process more or less, so I feel for you. It is my understanding that the asorbic acid causes a chlorine demand, so without enough FC, the cloudy water is probably from algae starting. I would start adding more chlorine 1ppm at a time, if the water starts to turn green, add more sesquesterant. You didn't say what your CYA level is, but that matters a great deal, the higher the CYA level is, the more FC you have to keep in the pool to prevent algae. You can do a search for Bens Best Guess Chart, and Pool Calculator to find how much chlorine you need for you level, and find out how much of each thing to put to get your levels in check based on your number of gallons. Also, I would think that you need to raise that PH to atleast 7.0 again.

The best thing to do is get your own test kit so you can keep a closer eye on what your levels are, and not have to depend on the pool store. http://www.troublefreepool.com/viewtopic.php?t=259 they have the best test kit here I think, I picked up one at a pool store, paid more and didn't get as good of a deal My test for PH doesn't go that low, probably theirs didn't either, so he was just starting at 6. It's possible that you got old chemicals from the pool store also. How many gallons do you have in your pool? To Increase PH you can just use 20 mule team Borax, to increase TA and it will Increase PH at the same time, you can use Baking Soda. If you look around on that link above, they have a lot of information about this, and even calculators etc. it's called the BBB method, and it will save you loads of money. BBB is for Bleach, Baking Soda, Borax. If you ever need to decrease PH which isn't looking likely at this point lol you can use Muratic acid from the hardware store for that, and it's cheaper than the PH Down products.

I am really unclear on what you should do. You got good advise from Chem Geek, Richard on your other latest thread, you do need higher chlorine levels with that CYA level, but you didn't give him all of the INFO lol. He thinks your CYA has been too high for the FC level you were running and that it has caused you algae because he doesn't know that you have Iron and used Iron Out and have orange/Rustfilters along with your green water. I think if you follow his advise that he gave without knowing, you are going to end up probably with orange/brown water and maybe liner staining. The Orange/Rust filters and green water are from your metal sesquesterant not working properly, that Metal Free has been brought up in a lot of threads, and people have continued having problems after using it. Waterbear says to use a HEDP based sesquesterant like Jacks Magic, I couldn't find that and used the HTH brand from Walmart and it works fine as long as I keep enough of it in the water. Both times that this green water, rusty filter thing has happened, I have just added more and within a couple of hours had pretty blue water. I also drop the PH to 7.0 as advised, and I only add bleach 1ppm at a time and keep a close eye on it, and I am not having problems. If it starts to turn green, add more sesquesterant. BUT you still have this problem with the Iron Out that you have used, and I think that you have shocked enough that you should have 0 CC. and yet you have 1.3 CC. Usually Shocking gets rid of CC, So I think you still need to call the company and find out if this Iron Out is going to continue consuming your FC or not. If it is not going to wear off, you might just need to drain and then start over with the HEDP based sesquesterant. Also, since you added so much stablilzed chlorine so quickly, like all within the week, and took the CYA from 0 to 81, I think there is a chance it may go higher than 81 because sometimes it can take up to a week for it to all dissolve..... Definately get the test kit and look up Bens Best Guess Chart, and more about the BBB method for pool maintenance.

I have looked and looked, and I cannot find an answer to your question. I guess you could call the company, maybe the stuff wears out after awhile, of course with no FC by then you might have algae. There are non chlorine shock methods, but I do not know a thing about those. I hope you will follow up on this and let everyone know what the outcome is with the Iron Out in the Pool water incase it ever happens to someone else. If you do refill, do not use the Metal Free again, here is a post about that: http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.ph...rt=0#entry28585 I have seen other people in forums say that the Metal Free does not work as well as the other sesquesterants also.

I think all that you need is chlorine too. Just watch that Bens Best Guess Chart and add enough to keep your FC in line with your CYA, until you can hold the chlorine levels all night without losing FC. When the sun isn't shining like at night, and you lose FC it means you are fighting something like algae. You are right to be cautious about that CYA level. Sometimes that stuff takes up to a week to dissolve, but I think a lot depends on the brand. I put the right amount of the hth walmart brand into a sock and was dissolving, expecting it to take a week, and I had the level that I wanted in 1 day and most of the sock was still full of CYA, so I would have really over done it had I not checked that first day I am thinking. Others have reported some brands never raising the level at all. It's odd that after shocking you had CC left, usually it is 0 after shocking, so you may not have gotten your levels quite high enough for a complete shock. Sometimes chemicals lose their potency, so you think you are getting enough in there for a shock but really are not. There is a calculator over at troublefreepool.com that shows you exactly how much of each chemical you need to raise levels of FC, PH, etc, based on the number of gallons in your pool. It's called Jasons Calculator. It would be a really good idea to check out that site and find that link. And they are selling a really good test kit over there too. That way you do not have to depend on the pool stores. I do not know anything about calcium:(.

Well the thing is, you really need to know what your levels are, because the more stabilizer you have in your pool, the more free chlorine it takes to keep the pool sanitary and the more it takes also to shock the pool to get rid of combined or used up chlorine. Someone named Ben from another forum made a chart showing these numbes: Stabilizer . . . . . . Min. FC . . . . Max FC . . . 'Shock' FC => 0 ppm . . . . . . . 1 ppm . . . . . 3 ppm . . . . 10 ppm => 10 - 20 ppm . . . . 2 ppm . . . . . 5 ppm . . . . 12 ppm => 30 - 50 ppm . . . . 3 ppm . . . . . 6 ppm . . . . 15 ppm => 60 - 90 ppm . . . . 5 ppm . . . . . 10 ppm . . .. 20 ppm => 100 - 200 ppm . . . 8 ppm . . . . . 15 ppm . . .. 25 ppm So if you are having algae problems, it is likely you might actually have too much stabilizer in the pool. Like if your Stabilizer level is over 100, and you are only using enough chlorine to get the total level to 3ppm, then you end up with algae sometimes because there is not enough free chlorine in the water. It does sound like something is wrong with the chlorinator, but you really need to give a set of numbers still.

You need to give all of your tests results or no one is really going to know what the deal is. FC CC PH TA TH CYA If you do not already have a test kit for all of this, other than strips, it would be a good idea to take a sample to a pool store until you can get a kit.

I started out with brown Iron water also, but was able to get it under control by taking advise on this forum. I filled, shocked, and the water turned brown and the liner was left stained. Since then I have also cleared up Moms pool water, same problem. I was unable to get the asorbic acid, vitamin C for my pool, but I had it for hers, and it worked very well. http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.ph...rt=0#entry28401 http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.ph...amp;#entry29030 Both of these threads helped me a great deal. First you get a decent test kit so that you can measure all of the levels that you need to measure properly, not test strips. It doesn't take special brand name products that are difficult for some to find and expensive, all it takes is just reading about what to do and doing it. There is a lot of good advise on this forum.

My understanding is that Total Chlorine is all of the Chlorine in the pool, Free Chlorine is the portion of that that is available to fight off bad stuff. Combined Chlorine is the amount that has already been used up fighting something bad. Besides yucky stuff being in the pool, the thing that takes the most of the Free Chlorine away is sunlight. You need CYA to like shade the Chlorine in the pool from the sunlight. This way you do not end up with no free chlorine everytime you have a sunny day. There isn't a household thing to replace this with. Since the Dichlor has the stabilizer you will be all set with a CYA level of 30ppm once all that he has said to dissolve gets dissolved.

Gosh I wish I knew if this test kit is still good. Someone will be along that knows that. If you have to get another one, I noticed on another website troublefreepools.com they are selling a test kit that looks like a very good deal. Did you buy the test kit last year, or in 2005? They have a whole question and answer section there, so you might check it out and just read the forums to see if anyone there has had your same situation, or a similar one. I just bought a Taylor 2005 new, so I am wondering now if my test kit is still good, I hope the pool store did not sell me a 2 year old test kit that is out of date. I don't see any expiration dates anywhere on anything... I suppose you could test it yourself, and then run a sample in to a pool store and see if theirs matches.... If you don't already know, you will have to determine your gallons: http://www.pentairpool.com/includes/answerpool/poolcalc.htm here is a good website for that. And you should research the BBB method, where you can use household bleach, baking soda, and 20 mule team borax in place of some of the more expensive pool products:) You can use just bleach to shock your pool, and here is a calculator that will help with doing that: http://www.minbar.com/pool_calc.html How much chlorine that you need depends on what your CYA level is, and there is a chart for that also, it's called Bens Best Guest Chart Use the info in this chart to help you figure out what levels of chlorine you need to maintain in your pool based on the amount of CYA (cyanuric acid, also called stabilizer) that you have in your pool. (FC = free chlorine) Stabilizer . . . . . . Min. FC . . . . Max FC . . . 'Shock' FC => 0 ppm . . . . . . . 1 ppm . . . . . 3 ppm . . . . 10 ppm => 10 - 20 ppm . . . . 2 ppm . . . . . 5 ppm . . . . 12 ppm => 30 - 50 ppm . . . . 3 ppm . . . . . 6 ppm . . . . 15 ppm => 60 - 90 ppm . . . . 5 ppm . . . . . 10 ppm . . .. 20 ppm => 100 - 200 ppm . . . 8 ppm . . . . . 15 ppm . . .. 25 ppm I can't tell you what to do first, but I can tell you that with a little reading and some help from the forum experts, you should have no trouble maintaining your own pool.

I think the PH will rise on it's own as long as you aerate.

The best thing that you can do first off is to get your own test kit that measures Free Chlorine, Total Chlorine, and Combined Chlorine, along with TA, PH and TH and CYA. They are more expensive, but remember that your kids will most likely be drinking some of this pool water. CYA is stabilizer, and you have likely picked it up from either the shock, or from using the pucks to chlorinate. With a CYA of 10, your FC level needs to be between 2-5 PPM in order for it to be safe for your kids to swim. The higher your CYA level goes, the more ppm you need to maintain for the water to be safe. The only way to get rid of CYA is to drain some water out of the pool. You can look up Ben's Best Guess Chart and find out what the safe levels of chlorine are for each CYA level in the water. Using the commercial shock treatments you will pick up CYA, and also by using the chlorine pucks. I did this for years, just measuring Total Chlorine and thinking that I was putting my kids into safe water. Luckily no one became ill, but I shudder to think of it now. To shock the pool you can use just plain chlorox bleach, and not raise your CYA level, look up the BBB Method for pools, it explains how you can use household bleach, baking soda, and 20 mule team borax to help maintain your pool. You can also look up Jasons Pool Calculator and it will tell you, based on your gallons how much of each thing you need to put into the pool. Here are a couple of threads dealing with Iron problems in pool water: http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.ph...rt=0#entry29649 http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.ph...rt=0#entry28401 If you shocked the water like the pool store said, then you should have gotten rid of the green water and all, and ended up with orange water. You have to filter like crazy to get that iron/rust out of the pool of course. I was able to do this with a paper filter. In the first thread above, someone else mentioned using the Metal Free, and not getting good results. What worked for me was just the plain old hth brand Metal Control from Walmart, a double dose of it. I hope this helps some.

I have never had much luck with a waterhose vac, I seem to get more stuff in the pool off of the water hose than I get out. I have just used the inflow from the pool pump and a different hose to vacuum with. This 800GPH filter/pump isn't much but go ahead and test it with a hose to see what it will pick up. Get a hose, not a water hose, a vacuum hose, rob a shop vac or a hoover if you have to, pool stores have loads of extra hose though, and it's already clean. Have someone hold one end of the hose to the inflow hole on the side of the pool and see what you can pick up with the other end. If it does fairly well, you can start looking at pool vacs to vacuum from the pump directly into the filter. Or you might even be able to get creative and rig something up yourself. Be on the lookout for a larger pump, you can buy them directly from Intex, or from online auction sites, or even locally from garage sales and such. I have used these pools for many years, I started with a 3x12 and have moved up, pools used to come with much better filter/pumps, and most people only use them a year, getting a pool cleaned and drained and dried is a process that many do not follow through with well, and mice in storage take out lots of liners, so there are lots of larger filter/pumps out there in the world:)

What size is your filter/pump?

Someone who knows more than me will be along, but I have figured out that if you are raising the PH, if you aerate the pool, like make a fountain, so that water is dropping back onto the surface, with the outflow from the pump, the TA will not rise up along with the PH. I just use a hose to do this, you have to get kind of creative. So to lower your TA, you will have to keep droping and raising your PH while using aeration. It seems like it might be already dropping on you automatically. It would probably help abunch if you would post all of your numbers. Those are probably going to be necessary to determine what the gray stuff is I would bet.

I am waiting until I get a real test kit before asking more questions about specific levels. I am only keeping my PH under 7.4 and the TC at 1ppm for now. I still have crystal clear blue water, hopefully the kit will come soon. But I do have some general questions about dealing with Iron water. Am I correct in thinking that with this water, I can shock in the future to get rid of CC, but only using household bleach, not the bags of shock treatment? And only with the bleach if the PH is 7.0? Otherwise, even with metal control I could get iron falling out into the bottom of the pool staining everything again? And with the metal sequesterent, HEDP based, does that deplete? I have not added more water myself, as rainfall is doing that for me, should my level of that be ok? When do you add more of that? What happens if you get too much of it? Does it effect the TH Level? Is there anyway to test the amount that you have working? Also, as far as CYA goes, is that something that needs to be avoided with Iron water? Again, Thank You for your time:)

I have about the same pool a 16x4, and have been having trouble with metals. Waterbear gives excellent advise on this here is a link: http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/index.ph...rt=0#entry28401 You have to keep the PH and Chlorine levels just right or you will have to deal with the Iron falling out again. The filter/pump that they give you sure isn't much these days. I was able to pick up a 2000GPH Intex Pump with the larger B size filters, and that is doing the job for me. Others here are reporting success with the 1500GPH, and they make them up to 2500GPH. They are much cheaper than the sand filters. You can check out the Intex site, or Ebay, Amazon etc, to get a larger one. As for vacuuming, until you get the larger filter/pump, you can try just running some hose from your inflow slot to see if that will work, you should be able to get some of it as long as you keep washing the filter with the waterhose. You can test this with just a shop vac hose. I am able to run the Hayward Aqua Critter Vacuum with my pump and setup, I run it directly from the inflow into the filter, I had to get creative with adapters, and with a diverter on the outflow to keep the push of the water from moving the hoses around and throwing the aqua critter off, it doesn't work well in the wind, but otherwise it vacuums the pool very well. If you have a lot of leaves, you need the optional leaf canister too. The only thing about running a larger pump is you are usually automatically aerating the water, because the push is so strong that it causes like a little fountain. When you lower the PH, you lower the TA also, Total Alkanity, when there is not aeration, they both will rise again usually, or for me they do anyway. When you do have water splashing back in picking up air, the PH will rise but the TA will not rise. So I had to rig things so that my outflow water is not picking up air once I got the TA where I wanted it.

Before you start filling, I would strongly urge you to take a sample of the water from the hose and faucet that you are going to use to a pool store or two for analysis to make sure there are not metals like iron or copper in the water. These things can be dealt with much more cheaply if you know they are there to begin with. And pick up a small blow ring pool to set under the ladder, it really helps to keep grass, dirt ect out of the big pool:)

We owned 2 different blow ring pools, a 16x 42inches and a 18x4, used each for 2 years, the last one, the 18x4 is being used by a relative this year. I found them very durable, a great way to keep kids entertained while they get exercise and fresh air, and I would recommend it, we did not experience a lot of trouble with water spilling over the sides, and have pretty rowdy boys, and we never got a site totally level for them either. And to be prepared to replace air in the ring fairly often, as the air seems to disappear from them even when you cannot find a leak. Now the 200. dollars for the actual pool, that is just the start of it, you are looking at about 4500 or so gallons of water to fill, even more water to replace spash out and evaporation water and to clean filter cartridges, you will need replacement cartridges, chemicals, testing supplies etc. There is the BBB method where you can use clorox bleach, 20 mule borax, and baking soda to replace some of the more expensive chemicals, but some things you will still need actual pool supplies for. Also I always spent a good deal of time netting out bugs, and leaves and grass and such.

It has been said that even a blind squirrel gets an acorn sometimes, so that must be the case with because I still have pretty blue water with no staining, which could just be from lowering the PH and adding the metal control, and have nothing to do with the Bioguard Stain Remover it looks like. Could the sulfamic acid be the reason why my Total Calcium, or Hardless level is between 300 and 330? Those were the drop test readings, 330 yesterday and 300 today, I was much more careful today. I only used shock treatment the once, when I first filled the pool, and used pucks for about 3 days on slow dissolve. Oddly my CYA is showing 0 on the strip test, and less than 30 on the drop test. But I was using last years pucks..... another acorn perhaps? TA is 110, down from 120 yesterday and that should continue dropping since the PH keeps rising, I am adding the PH minus, and the return flow from the filter aerates quite a bit. I can stop that if necessary. I cannot do anything about the raindrops though, we just keep getting rain. I did not allow anyone to swim after adding the Bioguard Stain remover, swimming is going to be out until I get the chlorine levels in hand so that I am sure the water is sanitary anyway, and besides, it's pretty cold water still. I am hoping that the cooler water will slow any algae formation since I still do not have the algecide in. The lack of absorbic acid explains why I do not have a chlorine demand. I left it at 2ppm total chlorine last night and a PH of 7.0 off with the circulation filter off because we were expecting raindrops, and I did not want the PH to jump causing more Iron fallout, I have a 7.2 PH this AM with the total chlorine still at 2ppm. The strip test is still showing no free chlorine though, I have a test on order for free and combined chlorine, a Taylor test. Thank you so much for sharing your wealth of information:)

As closely as I could, I have followed the advise of Waterbear, yesterday I put Bioguard Stain Remover into the water, I could not get pure absorbic acid, but I am thinking that it just might be pure absorbic acid because it does not say, and I had to use hth Metal Control, double dose, it's HEDP based. This AM, I dropped the PH and slowly began adding clorox bleach because I was not able to get the Polyquat 60 algaecide, and was afraid to even try to substitute for it. But I figured a little chlorine would help as long as I did not get staining, and I have not. I have only added a cup of bleach at a time with the PH at 7.0, once it was 6.8 even. All I have for now is a test strip kit that measures free chlorine, it says 0, and the deluxe hth test kit with drops, the hth total chlorine test is showing between .5 and 1. So I do not know if that means that all of the chlorine that I have is combined or if the test strip is just wrong, or what. The test strip is pretty close on everything else that I have used the hth drop kit on. Of course both could be wrong. I have a Taylor 2006 test kit ordered. The PH is currently at 7.2 and I am watching that like a hawk. The water is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. Stains are gone, everything is Sparkling crystal blue. I have filtered like crazy and keep washing out the paper filter. My test results are showing CYA 0 Free Chlorine 0 TC .5-1 TH 330 TA 120 PH 7.2

Has anyone here dealt with a municipal water supply sanitized with a chloramine system? Our water authority has switched from chlorine only to this system, and as I understand it, it involves mixing the chlorine with ammoina. Whenever you fill a pool, the water is green and you have to shock the water to clear it. For the first time ever, I am dealing with Iron, and skyrocketing PH levels and I am wondering what kinds of pool experiences that others have had with a chloramine water treatment system. The levels on the pool are off right now as I have dropped all chlorine, and lowered the PH for Iron treatment. The PH was over 8.4 straight from the tap a couple of days ago though. Any imput would be appreciated.

I am pretty sure that I was able to remove all of the initial iron debris fallout from the first round with just my intex pump and paper filter. I was unable to leave for the weekend to get the necessary chemicals, so I just kept the ph lowered, cut the chlorine, and kept filtering and vacuuming. Everytime I washed out the filter, several times a day, (and night) it was covered with rust colored stuff. I used the Hayward aqua critter and vacuumed directly into the filter, and that water was very clear, and very clean. Unfortunately I did not get the metal sequesterant in before raising the chlorine level, and the PH went up also, so I have more iron fallout, and am now in the process of following waterbears directions:)