Copper nightmare

[Npaga]

Our pool heater was replaced before balancing chemicals. Practically no pH. Here is the timeline of events:

heater installed, black oil on the bottom (copper)

began process of adding Metal out/vacc’ing running filter. Pool filter has been cleaned twice and continuously stops working because it’s covered in green and blue 

added pH because the copper turned to blue cloud, drained the pool 2 ft by trash vacc’ing, filter not working bc needs to be cleaned again. Refilled and blue cloud back. 
 

Do we just drain the entire pool and start from scratch?? Is it improving and just takes time?? Help!!

[waterbear]

17 hours ago, Npaga said:

Practically no pH

All aqueous (water based) solutions have a pH. Do you mean the pH was very low? What was the number and how was it obtained? (strips, liquid reagent read in a color comparator, direct pH meter, colorimeter reading a strip, disc or vial?)

17 hours ago, Npaga said:

black oil on the bottom (copper)

Black oil on bottom of what? Copper can produce dark stains on some surfaces (i.e. fiberglass) but ususally stains blue to green. Not sure what you mean by black oi (copper).

17 hours ago, Npaga said:

added pH

Do you mean pH UP or pH DOWN. This is important.

 

17 hours ago, Npaga said:

Help!!

First step, post a FULL set of test results NOT done with strips. Include a test for copper if possible. Post it along with details on your pool (size in gallons, above or in ground, sanitizer used-trichlor tabs in a feeder or floater, calcium hypochlorite, dichlor, Salt water chlorine generator, etc., pool suface-plaster, fiberglass, vinyl). This way we can better tell what is going on in your pool and then advise you. However, based on what you have described I suspect this is what happened:

Your pH crashed dangerously low (probably because of use of trichlor tabs in a floater or feeder) and total alkalinity was not maintained high enough for trichlor (probably because you are either not testing or testing with strips, which are useless for balancing water).

The low pH damaged the copper heat exchanger on your heater and leached copper into the water

You added pH increasr which caused the copper to precipitate out of the water as copper carbonate and possibly also copper sulfate if you regularly use a non chlorine shock. This is the blue cloud that is clogging your filter and is actually a good thing because the copper is in a form that can be filtered out. Bad news is that your filter will quickly clog. If you have a sand filter it means backwashing. If  a cart you need to clean it whenever the filter pressure rises 8 PSI above baseline. If DE backwash and then recharge to prevent fouling the grids. Once you get all the copper out you will need to change out your filter medium (new sand, new card, breakdown and full recharge of DE)

However, let's take this a step at a time and the first step is the test results.