Need Some Help - Pool Water Is Green And Smells Like Lake

[jsgip]

I am first timer at this pool thing and hope someone can help me. I have a 15ft x 42" Metal frame Intex /800gph pump/3900 gal pool.

I have been using Metal Free to get the Iron out of my pool. The iron levels started at 1.7ppm last Friday and today it is at 1.04ppm. I have been cleaning the filter at least 3 times a day and have been vacuuming the bottom. Now the water is clear but is now a shade of green and smells kind of fishy/lake like.

What can I do to make it swimmable. It is very hot here and my kids are bugging me to go swimming and I am not sure where to start.

The pool store told me to add pool shock to it and it will turn brown. They also told me to add another litre of Metal Free.

Here are my readings from the pool store test:

FC 0.0

TC .01

CC .01

pH 7.4

Hardness 180

Alkalinitiy 240

CA 10

Iron 1.04

I feel like I need to take a chemistry class to understand all of this.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

jsgip

[CrazyPoolMom]

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.