Inherited a very dirty pool with my foreclosure purchase

[denisbaldwin]

Hello everyone!

First post to this forum, and I'm hoping I can get some sound advice.

6 Months ago, I bought a foreclosed home here in Clearwater, Florida. The home came with a pool that, according to neighbors, hadn't been maintained in the 3+ years that the house was vacant. As you can imagine, it was disgusting.

I made the call to try to correct the water instead of draining it. I'm starting to think that was the wrong move.

I bought one of the long handled scrubber/brooms and worked the magic of manual labor before ever powering up the pump, pushing all kinds of crazy debris (cinder blocks, 20+ garbage bags of leaves, a small dead dog, lots of plastic, etc.) to the end and removed it manually. I had four of my friends all with the deep welled leaf nets pulling pile after pile of muck and debris from the bottom. We literally filled my F-150 TWICE with stuff going to the dump. The water was BLACK.

I bought a new pump for it, a Hayward Super II 2.0HP with a 1200 series Hayward filter. New filter element courtesy of Lowes. With some rewiring and a move to 2" tubing (to fit the pump), I got the pump working. Water moves! I took a water sample to Pinch A Penny with measurements of my pool, who loaded me up with chemicals (chlorine, and a bunch of other stuff). Per their instructions, I've been running the pump 24 hours/day now for the last 3 weeks, turning it off three times/day to take apart the filter and skimmers (both in the pump and on the side of the pool) and cleaning them. Every time I do, the main skimmer is about 1/3 full, the internal pump skimmer a little less than that and my filter cartridge completely packed with a grey water and soot.

I go out every day for an hour, pushing the scrub brush and net against the bottom. I'm not getting a whole lot of anything coming up. No big plums of leaves, no big plumes of muck anymore. Just a bit here and there.

That said, the pool is still filthy. Even after over $200 worth of chlorine and chemicals, now the second filter cartridge (as the first one was "unusable" by Pinch A Penny's standards after 2 weeks) and constant care, the pool isn't getting much better. The water has gone from black to a milky green, but I still can't see more than a foot below the surface.

All of that said, I had a few questions.

1. Am I crazy? Shouldn't I just empty the whole pool, scrub down the walls and start from scratch now?

2. Am I being impatient? Should I just let the filter continue to run, continuing to shock it and add chemicals daily? continue to clean it?

3. Do I have a bigger problem than I'm aware of?

4. Is it wise to run the filter without the cartridge? just to stir the big chunks around and into the skimmers? Seems it clogs up literally in 10-15 minutes with pressure up to 30-35 with the filter in place. This is really becoming a full time job!

Any help you guys have would be greatly appreciated. I'm at my wit's end. :\

Denis

[Enhance Pools]

You need to floc the pool, then vacuum it to waste rather then trying to filter it out.

[Bill]

Hello Dennis, just came in here to get some of the same advice as you. Just bought a house with a pool that has not been maintained in a couple of years. Our pool was almost empty so we fully drained it and gave it a good bath with a mix of water and muriatic acid, no idea if that was the right thing to do but the pool looked a lot better afterwards.

Filled it with tap water and it looked great for a few weeks until we got some warm weather and sunshine, then it went green. Shocked it and started working on the filter, which is running but not necessarily working. Its a really old system and I know zip about DE filters.

Good luck with your pool.

[Bill B]

Quick update, we put some sand in our filter (filter sand from Home Depot) I know, dumb thing to do but a totally noob mistake. Somehow the pool cleared up and looks great, you can see a spec of dirt on the bottom of the deep end so it looks like it may be working.

BTW, what happens when you put filter sand into a DE filter?

[Xclusive]

BTW, what happens when you put filter sand into a DE filter?

Don't. You will shred the filter grids. And they are expensive to replace. Add DE only. Or is it too late? If it is, clean and check the grids for any tears.

[Bill23707]

My senario is just about like yours. Purchased a foreclosure last August with a neglecterd pool for about 3 years. Although it was covered it still contained several 50 gal bags worth of debris as well as 1000 or so tad poles. I opted to pay a local pool company to square it away and get it up and running properly. They cleaned it out and got it running for $1,000.00. I had them back about 4 times for problems which they never did resolve. I ended up using it about 3 times because the water was usually jacked up.
This year I decided to have a go at it mysel but not off to a very good start. Tried to drain about half of it today in order to add fresh water but it seems the bottom drain doesn't work or there is a valve problem. What is the best way to diagnose this? It drained until it reached the bottom of the side skimmers. Depsite turning the valve from bottom to skimmer and back I could not get it to drain further. A pools filtration system can't work correctly with a blocked bottom drain/skimmer right?
I also found in cleaning out the filter (DE) that the mainfold was broken. Not sure if the pool people broke it last year or it was that way and they just didn't bother to replace it nor tell me about it. (They had replaced the DE filters so they would have seen this).
I'd like to love the pool but have thought of several dump truck loads of dirt could solve the problem faster. Any help gratefully apreciated.

[november17]

Tried to drain about half of it today in order to add fresh water but it seems the bottom drain doesn't work or there is a valve problem. What is the best way to diagnose this? It drained until it reached the bottom of the side skimmers. Depsite turning the valve from bottom to skimmer and back I could not get it to drain further. A pools filtration system can't work correctly with a blocked bottom drain/skimmer right?.

I'm pretty sure that is a safety feature so people don't accidentally drain all the water out of their pool. I think it just means you have a well built pool. I ended up buying a submersible utility/sump pump to drain mine (I'm in the process of replacing the liner). I've heard you can use tennis balls to plug the skimmer lines if you're dead set on draining water out without buying a sump pump, but I haven't tried it.

[poolmucker]

Been through same thing. Dragged stuff out with skimmer net for days. Ran pump and DE filter for days. Lots of clorine. Visibility went from 6 inches to almost one foot. Figured out this wasn't working. You can drain part way by putting two pool vacumn hoses into skimmer intake pipes. Once the pool gets below half way down it is hard to keep the suction going, so you can't do a complete drain with the pool pump.
Get a sump pump from Harbor Freight, $39. 1984 GPM Item No. 9465. Add some roll up pool drain hose and pump for about a day. Use round bucket to guide hose over pool edge without kinking. As you pump use a plastic leaf rake to bring up sludge into shallow end and let the water drain out. Keep working toward deep end as water goes down. Use rubber edged dust pan duct taped to a stick. This makes a gental edge shovel to scoop up muck without scratching the plaster. Have a helper use bucket and rope to get the sludge out of the deep end. Also use pressure washer carefully or you will leave marks in the plaster where you removed the surface. Get high rubber boots and safety glasses to deal with muck. Pool drain cover will probably be stuck. You may have to cut with tin snips or something to get the grill off of the pot. Do not damage the pot. Then force water from the hose back through the pump to the bottom drain to get out dead gophers, frogs and toads stuck in the pipe.. Use pool vacuum hoser in skimmer taped up to trash can. This keeps the water you are putting in through the pump from coming out the skimmer and gives it all to the bottom drain flush. Also think about pool paint as long as you got everything drained and cleaned. Draining pool saves time, lobor and a small fortune in filter pump electricity. A night and day difference in time and hassel.

Drain, clean, paint (optional) and fill. Anything else is a waste of time. For paint used National "Sky Blue" WOW it looks better than new. Pool painting is a whole 'nother subject so don't have time for it here.

[abunnystale]

i need help,my d.e. grid filters were replaced and now my pressure at tank is 20 psi when normal its at 10 psi and now my skimmer has low suction.my back flush vavle is stuck it wont slide back and forth changed gasket and lubed up with high temp plumbers grease.pool is green trying to get suction right to continue cleaning.

[Guest]

Been through same thing. Dragged stuff out with skimmer net for days. Ran pump and DE filter for days. Lots of clorine. Visibility went from 6 inches to almost one foot. Figured out this wasn't working. You can drain part way by putting two pool vacumn hoses into skimmer intake pipes. Once the pool gets below half way down it is hard to keep the suction going, so you can't do a complete drain with the pool pump.
Get a sump pump from Harbor Freight, $39. 1984 GPM Item No. 9465. Add some roll up pool drain hose and pump for about a day. Use round bucket to guide hose over pool edge without kinking. As you pump use a plastic leaf rake to bring up sludge into shallow end and let the water drain out. Keep working toward deep end as water goes down. Use rubber edged dust pan duct taped to a stick. This makes a gental edge shovel to scoop up muck without scratching the plaster. Have a helper use bucket and rope to get the sludge out of the deep end. Also use pressure washer carefully or you will leave marks in the plaster where you removed the surface. Get high rubber boots and safety glasses to deal with muck. Pool drain cover will probably be stuck. You may have to cut with tin snips or something to get the grill off of the pot. Do not damage the pot. Then force water from the hose back through the pump to the bottom drain to get out dead gophers, frogs and toads stuck in the pipe.. Use pool vacuum hoser in skimmer taped up to trash can. This keeps the water you are putting in through the pump from coming out the skimmer and gives it all to the bottom drain flush. Also think about pool paint as long as you got everything drained and cleaned. Draining pool saves time, lobor and a small fortune in filter pump electricity. A night and day difference in time and hassel.

Drain, clean, paint (optional) and fill. Anything else is a waste of time. For paint used National "Sky Blue" WOW it looks better than new. Pool painting is a whole 'nother subject so don't have time for it here.