In Part 1 I showed the refurb of the filter and the adding of unions to the filter head so it can be serviced easily in the future. With the filter working, it was on to getting the pool itself cleaned up.
Here's what it looked like when I pulled the cover off. That gross looking yellow stuff is actually pollen that we had shedding from our pine trees at the time. There was so much of it all over everything and apparently it got past the weaving of the pool fabric. It's not supposed to get green like this with the winterizing chemicals that were added. I think we have such warm winters here in North Carolina that the chemicals must not last as long as they do a little further north. I'll have to take that into consideration next winter. It wasn't as terrible as it looks in the picture either. If you look closely, you can see that the water still had enough clarity that the bottom drains in the deep end are still visible, so not too difficult to treat this water and get it back into swimming condition.
First order of business was to lay this cover out in the yard and get it rinsed off. That pollen was all over it and due to the wetness of the pool, it didn't just blow away in the wind and instead stuck. A few minutes with the spray nozzle on the hose and it was fairly clean. It was left out to dry in the sun for a few hours before it was folded up and put away.
While that was drying it was on to the pool water. I stuck the hose in there on a trickle so as not to overwhelm the well and it was left like that for a couple days to get the level back up. The water was skimmed to get all the pollen and other debris out as well.
Once the water level was sufficient, the filter pump was run for the first time. The procedure recommended was to backwash for a bit, rinse for a bit, then start filtering. Once the filter was back in action, it was time to get all of the debris out of the bottom of the pool by hooking up the manual vacuum. It's important to get as much biological material out of water like this before treating with chemicals so that it doesn't waste any chlorine that's added. The water was a little bit murky so I couldn't see the bottom that great, but I did my best to get it all off. Then a double dose of shock was added and I let it continuously filter overnight.
This is what it ended up looking like the next day. I like that color a lot more, but the cloudiness was concerning to me. I found that people tend to get cloudy water even in a clean pool if they put new sand in the filter, so I chalked this up to having been caused by that. Since a lot of nastiness got deposited into the filter during the vacuuming and overnight filtering of the green water, it was backwashed again to get all that out of the system and allow the chlorine to do its job on the remaining water.
Here's what it looked like after a second day of running the filter continuously. I'm new to this, so I thought maybe just let it run a bit longer and that it might clear up.
On day 3, it was looking a little better, but as you can see, still a bit cloudy in there, and the kids were really chomping at the bit to get in and start swimming. A test of the water showed that all of the free chlorine had been consumed and it needed more. At this point another single dose of shock was added and 2 chlorinating tabs were added to the skimmer baskets. With the better visibility the bottom was vacuumed again and the filter backflushed as well.
Voila! Crystal clear water the next day. As you can see, I missed a few spots with the vacuum, but the water was satisfactorily clear. After testing and finding normal levels of chlorine in the water (I didn't want them in there if it was still too high), the kids were given the go-ahead to jump in the next day. They were so excited and went swimming even though the weather had cooled down quite a bit. Me, I just sat and watched and smiled.
That's it for this one. Until next time, keep the hive buzzing!
You killed all those little green plant/creatures! =8-o
I would really like to build a box that would separate that stuff out. Instead of using enough chlorine to kill it all (and you), it could be run through some kind of centrifuge / filter and be put on the garden without clogging up the pool filters and such.
Have you heard of any such filter?
Lol. I have not heard of one, but while backwashing the filter all of it goes onto the ground anyway. I actually found a product that adds copper to the water and supposedly allows about a ten fold lower chlorine concentration in the water and eliminates the need for any other algicide chemicals. Should save me a ton of money if it ends up working well. I was planning to put it in the next post, but I wanted to wait to see how well it worked for a couple weeks before I talk about it.
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