First Pool... Trying to start the Open process.. Please Help

[jandh18]

Hi! I'm new to the boards... mainly because we just bought a house and it has a pool. We have never had a pool before. The sellers did a terrible job winterizing the pool and the pool was pretty nasty. We called the pool shop in town to ask what we needed to do.. just to be prepared. Well they told us that it might be a good idea to go ahead and start. So we got the filter and pump hooked up and dumped a bunch of chemicals in it... to get started.. lots of liquid chlorine and this strike out stuff to get rid of algae.. well it all worked fine.. we did lots of skimming.. thankfully we had some nice warm days to work with. Well the water turned a pretty blue within a few hours.. but was very cloudy.. so they told us to use the super clarifier and wait awhile... well 4 days later it's still very cloudy, blue but cloudy. We aren't sure what to do. Because they said it needs to be clear before we can vacuum.. but we kinda need to vacuum to get those particles out. When we first took the cover off it was very clear we could see the bottom but it was green and there was lots of algae, so we did what they said dumping the chlorine and everything in. I left that out earlier.. but that was before we added the chemicals.. then it turned pretty blue but very cloudy. Not sure what else to do.

Then comes the next problem.. our vacuum hose doesn't fit into the skimmer hole.. the sellers obviously did it somehow.. we are really confused on how to use the vacuum.. or how to get it to fit or what we need to do.. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. This is our first pool.. so we have no idea what we are doing. the pool shops aren't open real late yet.. but when we can be we are on the phone with them constantly. So any help we can get here would be great!

Thanks!!

[dynamictiger]

Congratulations on buying the pool and its great a house came with it .

Your water problem description indicates the pool is not being filtered enough. You should be running the filter non stop at this point. If you already are then please post your water test results here so we can better see what is happening.

As for the vacuum hose fitting. Are you fitting it into a plate that sits on top of the basket in the skimmer or are you pulling the basket out and trying to plug into the bottom of the skimmer?

[jandh18]

thanks for your reply! Well.. we have been trying to run it non stop.. .. and we tried taking the basket out and plug it directly into the hole... the sellers had to do it someway.. but we can't find any other type of attachment anywhere. When we tested the chlorine.. it was right at the ideal mark.. and when we tested the ph, it was very low.. but we didn't know if that mattered.. since we aren't swimming in it yet. As for other stuff.. we haven't tested yet.

[dynamictiger]

A manual vacuum hose normally plugs into a plate that fits on top of the basket in the skimmer.

Take your skimmer basket to a pool store and ask for a vacuum plate.

Keep running the filter and get more test results. Did you fill the pool off mains or a bore?

[jandh18]

Yeah, we found one of those plates tonight, but it was too big.. we are going to a pool store tomorrow.

What do you mean by mains or a bore? The lady at the pool shop told us not to drain any of the water.. and to just treat it. So we did, and it worked, besides being cloudy. it was a little bit under the skimmer plate... we filled it up to cover 3/4 of the plate.. with the hose the rest of the way.