How long for water to clear?

[camppool]

Just starting to get our pool ready for the summer. It's an inground 20,000 gallon older concrete. The old owner used to drain, clean, paint and fill every year. This is my first year and my pool professional said we should just vacuum, add chorine, backwash, and wait for the pool to clear. The water turned from green to brown (due to our rusty well water) and has been a cloudy brown for the past 2 days. I have been vacuuming and scrubbing regularly and backwashing about every 4 - 6 hours. CL is at 1.6 with a combined of .2, PH is at 7 I haven't done the other tests, thought I should try to see the bottom first.

How long should this process take????

Thanks for your help

[chem geek]

The brown is probably iron and that won't get cleared unless you remove it with a sequestering agent. The cloudiness will slowly clear with higher chlorine levels, brushing, and filtration (including cleaning the filter -- backwashing if sand, etc.) -- usually within 4-7 days. A flocculant (OMNI Liquid Floc Plus) can speed up the process (at a cost) if you an vacuum to waste; otherwise, a clarifier can also speed it up (at a cost).

[tjsdwhit]

To clear the metal out of your pool use a sequestrant, I would also ask you what type of filter because after adding the sequestrant you need to filter for atleast 24 hours if you have a cartridge filter band a DE filter. If you have a sand filter it may take longer. I have fought the metal from my well for a year now and I found a weekly routine with sequestrant and atleast 7 hours a day filtering. when you need to ad water use your soft water cause most softners take all types of metal out. Also ad water directly to your skimmer so it goes through the filter before entering your pool.