Sand N' Sun Pool - New To This-milky Water?

[Sarah]

Hello,

I have Sand N' Sun pool from Wal-mart. I just filled it and followed the instructional DVD that came with the pool, but I have milky-white water. I have shocked the water, but not sure what to do now.

I have been reading the posts at this site for the last hour and I am pretty sure I have to adjust the chemicals. Can someone list for me the order in how to correct this, or post a link to a list that may have already been made?

Also, I was wondering how much climate and water source matters with pools. I live in Minnesota in a rural area. My water comes from our well, and it is hard water. Thanks!

[prawny]

Hi Sarah,

If you have a test kit you should post all your readings including the calcium in your pool and a plain glass of water from your tap. If you have really hard water and have shocked using a calcium hypochlorite type product you could easily have caused the milky water problem. Post your results so we have something to work with.

[Sarah]

OK here are the results:

POOL:

TH- 200

FC- 0

pH- 8.0

TA- 200

CYA- 30-50

Tap:

TH- 400

FC- 0

pH- 7.8

TA- 200

CYA- 0

Thanks for doing this for me!

[itabb]

It does not make much sense that TH is higher for fill than for pool. It should be the same for both. Consider investing in a drop based test kit, preferably the K2006, or at the very least, the K2005 (if you keep your chlorine below 10ppm). Or anything other than strips.

I wonder if you shocked it with non-clorine shock. Anyway, if your readings are anywhere near correct, add lots of chlorine. Don't use Dichlor granules or calcium hypochlorite. Use only sodium hypochlorite (bleach). It's the only type that won't mess with your hardness or your CYA. And you don't want to mess with either at this point. Also, maybe add a bit of Muratic Acid to get the PH down to 7.5. And run that filter 24/7 until it clears. Get your FC up to 20ppm, and keep it there until it holds overnight. You can use Great Value ultra bleach from wally world at 2.25 a gallon. Get lots of it, because each gallon will raise a 10,000 gallon pool 6ppm FC. If your pool is around 5000 gallons, you'll need 2 gallons just to get over 20ppm FC. Then you'll probably need another 4 to maintain that level for a while and burn off whatever is going on.

If you can't get muratic acid easily, you can use sodium bisulfate (dry acid). You'll need to add more after you add the bleach, because sodium hypochloride will raise your PH. Once you get this under control, we can deal with your TA. While your getting bleach at wally world, grab a box of 20 mule team borax. This is just in case you over-acid or your PH drops as your FC drops later, you can use 20 mule team to bring up your PH. A little goes a very very very long way.

Since your coming from a well, you probably have metals. Consider a metal sequesterant, such as Jack's Magic blue. I'd just get some and dump it in, just because it's from a well. You can test later to determine if you have metals. Worry about this after the chlorine problem.

This is my best guess. You have a different pool than I do, so I might not know if this level of chlorine will cause a problem for your pool. Maybe someone else has a better suggestion for dealing with a portable pool.

[hatetoskim!]

Sounds like another case of cal-hypo in one of these small pools.

itabb - you mentioned that the dichlor is not a good solution. What are the down sides of it? I have been using it about a month now, but let me know what I should be keeping an eye out for. It also has a ph of 7.0 so I do not need to do much adjusting.

[itabb]

Monitor your CYA levels (cyanuric acid). If you do a lot of backwashing (a lot), you might be ok, but probably not. CYA protects free chlorine in sunlight. However, the more CYA (stabilizer) you have, the less effective the chlroine is at sanitizing your pool. For example, if you have no CYA, then you only need FC 1 to sanitize, but it will all burn off in 20 minutes in sunlight. If you have a CYA of 50, you need FC 6.5 to sanitize, but after 7 hours, you should still have a FC of 3, which is probably enough for most things. Above 50, and you start having issues with keeping your FC high enough. After 100 CYA, your pool is just dangerous. You can lower CYA by changing out some of the water. You can use dichlor until your CYA is 50, then switch to sodium hypochlorite (bleach). I think for every 1ppm FC you add using dichlor, you will add .9ppm CYA. So if you add enough dichlor to get to 5ppm FC, you will have about 5ppm CYA. If you keep record of how much dichlor you added since the last refill, you can probably predict your CYA levels, and when to switch to bleach. The difficult thing with dichlor is that the more you use it, the better your FC hold each day in the sun, but the higher FC levels you will need for sanitizing and shocking.

[Sarah]

Sorry I didnt get back sooner, but here is what we've done. I bought a diffrent test kit, called Aqua Chem , no strips. Before I tested it witht he new kit, I added a total of 2 1/2 gallons of bleach and about 2 cups of Muratic acid (called ph down at wal-mart). Ran the filter for over 24 hours. It started to clear, but only on the outer rims of the pool. I thought it coudl be that there was not enough water movement so I started to stir it around every hour or so until I went to bed. At this point I tested it with the strips and wierdly enough, all readings were normal, except that I didnt get a FC reading at all. Plus, my water was no longer just milky, it was also turning brown.

Now, I tested it witht he new kit and here are my numbers:

Chlorine and Bromine were way off the reading. The highest color it would read was a solid yellow and the water turned orange. I will re-test this tomorrow.

pH 7.8

No hardness detected

Alkalinity was 280ppm!

The kit suggested not to perform the pH, TA or Water hardness if the Chlorine exceeds 3.0 or if the Bromine exceeds 6.0 so I dint know if these number mean anything right now anyway. I did not test the CYA with this kit (yet)

Out of curiousity, I used another test strip and here are those numbers:

TH : 200

FC/BR: 1/2

pH: 8.4

TA: 240

CYA: 150

Now what do I do??? I should have tested wtih the new kit before adding the bleach. How do I get rid of the high levels of Chlorine and Bromine

[Sarah]

Sorry I didnt get back sooner, but here is what we've done. I bought a diffrent test kit, called Aqua Chem , no strips. Before I tested it witht he new kit, I added a total of 2 1/2 gallons of bleach and about 2 cups of Muratic acid (called ph down at wal-mart). Ran the filter for over 24 hours. It started to clear, but only on the outer rims of the pool. I thought it coudl be that there was not enough water movement so I started to stir it around every hour or so until I went to bed. At this point I tested it with the strips and wierdly enough, all readings were normal, except that I didnt get a FC reading at all. Plus, my water was no longer just milky, it was also turning brown.

Now, I tested it witht he new kit and here are my numbers:

Chlorine and Bromine were way off the reading. The highest color it would read was a solid yellow and the water turned orange. I will re-test this tomorrow.

pH 7.8

No hardness detected

Alkalinity was 280ppm!

The kit suggested not to perform the pH, TA or Water hardness if the Chlorine exceeds 3.0 or if the Bromine exceeds 6.0 so I dint know if these number mean anything right now anyway. I did not test the CYA with this kit (yet)

Out of curiousity, I used another test strip and here are those numbers:

TH : 200

FC/BR: 1/2

pH: 8.4

TA: 240

CYA: 150

Now what do I do??? I should have tested wtih the new kit before adding the bleach. How do I get rid of the high levels of Chlorine and Bromine

TuesdayI will re-test the chlorine/bromine levels and also the CYA. We've had 2-3 days of 90 degree weather so hopefully it can burn off some of that bleach!

[itabb]

Now, I tested it witht he new kit and here are my numbers:

Chlorine and Bromine were way off the reading. The highest color it would read was a solid yellow and the water turned orange. I will re-test this tomorrow.

Looks like you have an OTO test kit. For the problems you appear to be having, this is not going to help you fix them. Your TC may be way off the charts, but does that mean you have Free Chlorine or has most of it combined? This is a very important question. If most of it has combined, add more chlorine. If it is free, let it burn off. OTO measures only Total, which is Free plus Combined. See the difference? Furthermore, you need to know how much as combined so you know how much chlorine to add to get to breakpoint.

When you are ready to fix this problem, get a Taylor 2006 test kit from taylortechnologies.com. Shipping is free. At this point, you are just guessing. I know this test kit is expensive. So ask yourself, when do you want to start using the pool? It was a tough pill for me to swallow, but it has paid for itself in saving me from my pool store owner.

OTO kits should not bleach out unless your TC is above 25ppm. Unless you added sodium bromide to your pool, you do not have any bromine. Just focus on the chlorine numbers. Does your pool stink? That is a sign of high combined chlorine. You may actually need more chlorine, but you won't know until you get a good test kit. At this point, nothing else matters but your chlorine. You can attempt to measure PH if you add some sodium thiosulfate, maybe 5 drops, to your PH test sample. It is usually part of the alkalinity test. It will have an effect on your PH reading. I forget the effect.

With a CYA level of 150, if that is correct, you will probably not be able to get a chlorine level high enough to clear the water, much less maintain a level of santitation. I don't know what chlorine level you have to have in order to properly test the CYA level using reagents.

[Sarah]

The test kit reads:

To obtain free chlorine reading match the colors within the first 10 seconds of adding the OTO. The continous development of color indicates combined chlorine. The result should be fully developed in 2 minutes.

I will do the test again and post the results.

I really want to have this pool swimmable by the weekend. Think at this point I am just dreaming?

[Sarah]

I tested the chlorine again and the first reading was a little darker than 5.0, then it just continued to get darker.

[itabb]

I'm mostly concerned about your CYA levels. They're basically unsafe. I think if you want to be swimming by this weekend, you want to completely drain most of the water from the pool, say 75% of it, and refill. If CYA of 150 is correct, this will leave you with 37.5. You can drain all of the water to be sure though. I would, if I had a supply of dichlor.

Refill the pool. While filling, retest your fill water to be sure of the readings. Adjust PH to 7.5 (about 13oz of dry acid or 9oz of muratic acid for 5000 gallons). Since you are filling from a well, add a bottle of Jack's Magic (blue stuff or pink stuff) to get the metals out. 32oz (1 bottle) per 10,000 gallons. Add enough dichlor to bring the pool to FC 20 (which will bring your CYA to about 19). This is about 25 oz at 5000 gallons. Run your filter 24/7, and leave your pool exposed to the sun during the day. Each evening, check the chlorine levels (preferably with a titrate test kit) and add dichlor to bring up the level to 20ppm. Test each morning and make sure it is FC 19 or higher. If it isn't, add more dichlor. If it is, your done and let the FC burn off.

Do not add more than 65 oz of dichlor this season over all. Once you've added 65 oz of dichlor, your CYA will be about 50 and you need to switch to Clorox bleach.

I'm no expert, but I think this is what I would do in your situation.

[Sarah]

Thanks again for all your help. I will keep posting as it progresses!