Cloudy/Green Water

[Laci]

I have taken my water to local pool place and had tested 5 different times. 1. Said add Shock treatment, did that. 2. Needed Alkalinity, 50 lbs over 3 day period. 3rd time she said I had metals in my water, bought 3 quarts of metal magic, 4th time said needed to re-shock. 5th time chlorine level is very low. I have added so much chlorine within the past few days and I bought 1 of those test kits. Chlorine is STILL not registering and PH was low, so I up the Ph level and chlorine is still low. Where is the chlorine going???? This is awful. I have been around pools for 25+ yrs and never had this much trouble and the lady at pool place is really making me mad because everytime I go there it cost me 50 to 60 $ and this stuff she is selling me is NOT WORKING!!! $600.00 in the whole and 2 months later my pools still looks like crap!!!!

[chem geek]

Read this sticky and take charge of your own water by getting your own test kit, either the Taylor K-2006 you can get for a good online price here or the TF100 test kit from tftestkits(dot)com here which has 36% more volume of reagents so is comparably priced "per test".

If you measure the Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level in your pool and it is very high, say above 100 ppm, then a partial drain/refill is in order. Otherwise, unstabilized chlorine (chlorinating liquid or unscented bleach) will clear the pool. The high chlorine consumption can be either algae or ammonia leftover from breakdown of CYA over the winter. Again, without good test numbers it is hard to know which way to go -- with high CYA it's not worth dumping more chemicals in the water and is easiest to partially drain/refill first, but we don't know if that's your situation.

Richard