Cloudy Water - Hooray!

[Jaclykf]

Hi all,
My husband and I are working to get my father-in-law's pool up and running for the season. My father-in-law did not winterize the pool at the end of last season, so we started with a LOT of muck in the bottom and a LOT of algae in the pool.

So far, we've used 29 pounds of shock and have all the green gone. We've swept out the muck as best we can and still get some from our sweeper when we run it. Our problem now includes cloudy water, which is blue - we can see about a foot down into the pool.

Yesterdays numbers from our water test are:
Alkalinity 22
pH 6.6
Harness 230
FCL 1.97
TCL .56
CyA 25

We added pH rise yesterday following the test. We were told by the pool place to try floccing after the pH rise was circulated for 4 hours. After circulating the floc for another hour, we shut off the pump overnight. Now, 22 hours later, the pool is still very cloudy. We used a whole bottle of floc.

Any suggestions? We can see tiny coagulated "fluffs", I'm assuming is from the floc still floating around the steps (too cloudy to see it anywhere else) .

We were also told to add the rest of the chemicals to bring it to balance after floccing. We haven't done that yet!

Our pool is a 22000 gallons, in-ground volleyball pool. Any help would be appreciated.

[Jaclykf]

Sorry.. by the way..
Our pool is vinyl, we use chlorine.
The water temp is about 76 fahrenheit, we had lots of rain earlier this week but that was before we used all the shock.

That's all I know from the info in the "please read first and include" post. Shoulda read it first

[chem geek]

See Defeating Algae. First off, if those numbers are from a pool store or from test strips, then get yourself a proper test kit -- either the Taylor K-2006 or the TFTestkits TF-100. The floc obviously didn't work since it should have settled everything to the bottom of the pool where you would then vacuum-to-waste. This is why we don't normally recommend clarifiers or flocculants.

You should filter 24/7 at this point and brush the pool to move the particulate matter to the filter. You should physically remove as much as you can (sounds like you've mostly done that) and the rest can be filtered out. You didn't say what kind of filter you have, but if the pressure rises enough than you want to backwash or clean the filter (depending on type). Also, you want to keep the chlorine level up to a shock level. If your CYA of 25 ppm is to be believed (and I doubt that number), then the shock level would be at least 10 ppm FC which you will need to maintain which means adding chlorine regularly since it will likely get consumed quickly initially. Your CH is already getting higher so use 10-12.5% chlorinating liquid (from a pool store or hardware store, etc.) or 6% unscented bleach (Clorox Regular or off-brand Ultra) instead of Cal-Hypo that it sounds like you've been using.