pH is correct, chlorine is correct but blue cloudy water

Causes and cures for cloudy swimming pool water.
Milky pool water, white, pink, brown, purple, black cloudy water.
chazzermallett

pH is correct, chlorine is correct but blue cloudy water

Postby chazzermallett » Tue 07 Aug, 2007 04:50

HEy wondering if anyone could help me, I 've resently cleaned my ppol as i had a lot of trouble in the early summer. It was blue and clear for awhile but then went green with algae. I have now cleared the algae problem but shock dosing with chlorine and correcting the pH level. The chlorine level reads 1.0 which is ideal for my pool and the pH level is about 7.4 which is in the ideal range. The water has returned to the blue colour (due to blue liner) is is supposed to be yet the water is really cloudy. I don't know how to cure this problem.
Please Help If You Can.


chem geek
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Postby chem geek » Tue 07 Aug, 2007 08:12

A Free Chlorine level of 1.0 is almost certainly not enough for your pool. Not only would the Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level have to be very low for 1 ppm FC to be sufficient, but this low FC is likely to run out quickly with sunlight or even relatively light bather loads.

Water that is developing algae goes through stages: dull, cloudy, green cloudy, full green bloom. It is the opposite of what happens when a pool is cleared with algae as you can see by going backwards in this link except the green algae don't settle and clump when they are alive. Algae takes roughly 4-8 hours to double in population so it takes days to develop into a full algae bloom. You are seeing the early stages (assuming your pool was completely cleared after the previous algae bloom).

Please invest in a good test kit, the Taylor K-2006 you can get from Taylor here or from Leslie's here of the even better test kit based on the Taylor kit from tftestkits here. In any event, test your Cyanuric Acid (CYA) stabilizer level since that will tell you how much Free Chorine (FC) you need to maintain to keep away algae. Generally, you need to have a target FC of 11.5% of your CYA level with an absolute minimum FC of 7.5% of your CYA level (so you need to add enough chlorine to make sure it doesn't ever drop below the minimum by the next time you add chlorine). The only exception to this rule is with saltwater chlorine generator (SWG) pools where most can run with an FC setting that is 4.5% of the CYA level (where the CYA is usually 60-80 ppm in such pools) or a typical minimum of 3 ppm FC.

Richard
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Re: pH is correct, chlorine is correct but blue cloudy water

Postby Backglass » Tue 07 Aug, 2007 09:39

chazzermallett wrote:The chlorine level reads 1.0 which is ideal for my pool


:shock:

You need a bare minimum of 3ppm at all times...more if your CYA is high. Your pool would be shut down by the heath department if it were a public pool. You are walking the fence...a good rainstorm or high bather load and your pool will turn evil on you fast at those levels..
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