Pool Water Cleanup

Broke my knee and have not maintained my pool for many months. It looks like the black lagoon. What is the best way to clean it? What is the best algecide to use? Hygie Reynolds,

 

You've had a pool so you must have a company where you buy chemicals from. Take a sample to them, have them analyze it and make recommendations.

Many times if the water is too far gone you drain and replace it. If that's a vinyl pool then a draining is not so easy.

 

For cleaning the pool, please Do NOT drain the water from your pool, use a skimmer to remove most of the debris, clean your skimmer basket, and check your pool equipment for water damage,
you can use a siphon to return your water level back to normal.

 

Say what? Your reply doesn't make sense. There's nothing wrong with draining the water and why would the pool equipment have water damage? Umm, it is used for water after all!

 

I always thought the determining factor on whether to drain or chemically treat boiled down to the cost factor - which one is more economical. Most places that sell pool supplies will analyze your water sample and then recommend which products will be needed to bring the water back to where it should be. This used to be a free service, probably still is since they expect you to buy the chemicals from them.

 

If you can see the bottom in the shallow end, even if just barely and under proper light, you can probably recover the water. Your filter and pump must be working, and ideally a vaccuming capacity exists. First skim and scoop out everything you can. Run the filter for 24 hours while scrubbing down the walls and floor to stir things up as much as you can. Maybe do this for 48 hours depending on the debris.

Then, get the pool ph to about 7.3 (probably using hydrochloric acid as the water ph is probably on the alkaline side). Let it sit for a while to get the ph stable, and keep filtering and scrubbing while you wait a few hours. Then shock the pool with 2 to 4 gallons of chlorine per 10,000 gallons. Test the chorine the next day, and if it is low and or the water is still green shock again.If after a few days you still have not solved, you can get a flocculant, Super Floc would be one, that gets solids out of suspension. Need to vaccum up the settled stuff that will be jelly like and clog your filter, so the filter will need constant clean and or backwash depending on your filter system.

The bottom line is, get the big stuff out, scrub and filter non stop for some days while shocking repeatedly with chlorine.

There are some other means to get rid of algae, copper compounds, bromines, and some other expensive chemicals, but all do a better job of preventing rather than killing off large algae blooms.

Just be careful with the liquid chlorine, you can use granules to get the equivalent of the dose noted a bit safer. And don't ever mix hydrochloric acid with chlorine, very bad, leave time between the ph treatment and the chlorine.

You will probably have residual staining, but with regular chlorine levels and sun that will fade in time.

Pool shops have the various acids and chlorines, in various forms and with varying safety. If you are smart and safe as a matter of course, the cheapest way is to use the stronger bleach solutions in a hardware store chain, and some hydrochloric acid used for concrete etching from a chain home store. Just reemphasizing this, as even a spark of bleach or acid while you pour in a pool getting in your eye will be bad news. But this is true of all pool chemicals. So just be smart and safe, put your splash goggles on.

Good luck with your knee! A good swim should help

 

hreynolds..........what was your plan of action and howzit going ?