My question is for patriot. I am a new home owner that came with a 32k gallon problem, I mean pool... I live in upstate NY and a few years ago, the property was flooded by tropical storm Irene, which dumped tons and tons of river water, silt and mud into the pool. The pool had a loop-loc cover on it at the time. The story I got from the locals said that the local fire department went around town pumping out and refilling all the pools (not sure on that). Anyway, I had opened my pool a little early because I was eager to get it going for my first time, when I turned my pump on and a god awful noise came from the pump. Upon investigating this, I quickly realized that the pump had been submerged in the flood waters and it was caked with mud and bee nests and what have you. I did a bunch of damage to the pump while trying to pull it apart (because it was old, rusty and brittle), so I decided a replacement pump couldn't hurt. I picked up an exact replacement for my 1hp Hayward superpump from AO Smith. After installing the pump and getting the pool circulating, the water went green instantly. I was also still having some slight issues with water flow coming from one of the returns. So my thought was to place the exhaust side of my shop vac to the return that wasn't working to see if I could free up whatever was stopping the water from coming out. While doing this, I was comically doused with mud from the outside of the cement pad that surrounds the pool. It literally shot the water straight out and up from the ground. After much digging, I found that the tee was capped off and a rubber stopper was placed in the jet to prevent leaking (shotty repair in my book) which confused me from the get go because the pool was closed with rubber stoppers in all the ports in the pool. Before I bought the house, there was no one living in it for 2 years. The previous owner pretty much left the house as is with heat for the winter. The pool sat closed for 2+ years. I know this story is jumping around a little but I think you should at least get a little back story and insight on what I have endured thus far. When I first pulled back the loop-loc, I could see the entire bottom. there was leaves and some debris on the bottom but, to me, a first time pool owner, it looked routine. Since the plumbing problem, I had to do a few handyman tweaks to stop that return from draining the pool of 1 foot per 12 hours. I maintain water levels now and only add water when I have been vacuuming to waste or doing a bunch of backwashing. I have added algaecide, I have added super chlorite (my local store version of chlorine) which is both used for regular maintenance and shocking purposes. I have tried to maintain a cya of 30 and a fc of 10 ppm for an extended time. I have killed off the bloom and then stirred up something yet again.
So, to this point in time, my best luck that I have had is this. I added 1 gallon of algaecide, 5 gallons of the super chlorite and I circulated this for 24 hours, I then put in a liter of flocculant (sink and swim) circulated this for 1 hour and shut the pump off. I let it sit for 12 hours before checking and the pool was crystal clear to the bottom, with a lot of debris on the bottom. I vacuumed this stuff to waste and ended up stirring up a lot of stuff in the process. I let the pool sit for another 12 hours and came back for another waste vacuuming session. After doing this, I realized that I had another problem.. The pool still looked dark in the deep end, which made me panic, so I put yet another gallon of algaecide in and I brought the shock levels back up to 10ppm. After the FC level was down to about 2 ppm, I had had enough. I went and bought goggles and went in to investigate (after checking all my levels TA, and so on) the bottom of the deep end and roughly 1 foot up the angled walls was not algae (in my opinion), it was stained from sitting for 2+ years with junk in the bottom. The shallow end has white scaling (again in my opinion) from a high ph and calcium saturation. The water here is street water, not well, and the hardness isn't typically high, but the pool had river water in it. Maybe it didnt get pumped out and refilled. I am not certain on this by any means.
Anyway, so I stopped into my local pool store and they suggested that this crust is nothing more than a form of hard algae and that to get rid of it, I had to hit it hard with chemicals. So, they talked me into dumping 10 gallons of chlorine into the pool to kill off this algae as well as any floating algae (even though I had the pool pretty clear). I waited 24 hours after adding and tested the water by diluting the water in half and the color for the FC was still quadruple off the chart in my opinion. I asked if this could damage the pool and they said confidently "no". Well here it is 4 days later and the "algae" at the bottom is not coming off without a fight. My only working attempt was to have the vacuum hose with no attachment on it, and to use the vacuum hose to scrap vigorously across the bottom to lift the layer of stuff on the bottom. Also, the pool store suggested that I sweep regularly which I was doing less and less of since the water cleared but since they suggested it, I started again and now the water is cloudy white to grayish.
This is a pic of the plumbing problem
This is a pic of the color stains from what I think is decomposed leaves
http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh559/bobby32x/photo2.jpg
This is a pic of the scale/hard algae as suggested and what it looks like from my vacuum scrapping)
http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh559/bobby32x/photo1.jpg
Do you have any speculations? Do you have any suggestions as to turn this around? I feel like I am being pool store duped...
Please down size images to 800X800 pixels max. See CPP Rule 3
Images.
Bill
