Oak Pollen in pool

[Bob Hannon]

Here is Sarasota FL we have lots of Live Oak trees. This year they pollinated much more heavily than usual, dumping a green cloud into my swimming pool water and all over its Marcite interior. A new filter element and daily cleaning thereof, plus several vacuumings finally got rid of the green-yellow color. I added liquid algicide and a clarifier. Chlorine (powder shock) is a bit high, pH is normal, but the water remains a bit cloudy, even two days after the green was gone. Any ideas?

[Pool Helper]

Liquid algicide, clarifier and chlorine shock together may have put a load on the pool water balance. Overdoing any of these may cause cloudy pool water. Give the pool a few days and it will return to normal.

[MJ in Austin]

After doing a lot of research along with trial and error, I uncovered some fact to help get rid of the stains left in the pool and hot tub by the oak trees. The dark brown stains were not the same stains day after day, but rather new stains each day. The chlorine will bleach out the existing stains in about a day, but each day new residue falls from the trees and creates more. I have found that the following steps helped tremendously :

CHEMICAL LEVELS
Staining is much worse if the Ph is high. Chlorine dissolves the stains and works much more effectively when the Ph is balanced. Keep the chlorine levels higher than normal as well.

CIRCULATION
Brush the bottom and sides of the pool and hot tub where the stains are. This helps get the organic matter up into the path of the chemicals. I couldn’t figure out why the stains in the hot tub were 10X worse than the stains in the pool, until I realized that the automatic cleaner in the pool was keeping the water moving instead of letting particles settle on the bottom. So, I turned on the hot tub spillway during the hours when the pool filter/cleaner was not on to keep the water moving, and also brushed often.

CLEANING
Keep the skimmer baskets cleaned every day, as well as the automatic cleaner basket and the filter basket by the pump. Scoop what you can with a net, but you will need a fine-woven net. They have these at the pool stores. Every piece of matter you get out of the pool by hand will be one less ugly stain.

TREATMENTS
Anything falling from the oak trees is organic. I found a natural product called “Pool First Aid” by Natural Chemistry, which attacks the organic residues in pools. Use as directed. I was cautioned that it might take a couple days for this to work and not to over apply it.

At last, the pool is looking crystal clear and there is only a few stains re-occurring as the oak season is finally drawing to a close. There’s two seasons a year, as the acorns fall around November and pollen in the spring.